Sweet Violence

Henry Rothwell is the world’s most celebrated survivor. After escaping a horrific fire that claimed everything else, he transformed his trauma into a literary empire. As a bestselling author and an enigmatic, untouchable professor at Wexley, he lives a life defined by the narrative of his own resilience—or so the public believes. When a hungry, ambitious student lands the coveted assistantship under Rothwell, he expects to be mentored by a legend. Instead, he finds himself trapped in the shadow of a man whose carefully curated history refuses to add up. The silence surrounding the fire feels less like healing and more like a carefully guarded weapon. Beneath the veneer of academic prestige and stoic fame, Rothwell is anything but the clean-cut hero the media champions; he is a man harboring jagged, dangerous secrets that demand to be unearthed. As the assistant moves deeper into Rothwell’s orbit, the line between academic curiosity and obsession blurs. He realizes that the story isn’t finished—it’s merely waiting for the right observer to expose the monster hiding in plain sight. In a game of psychological cat-and-mouse, the hunter is quickly becoming the hunted, and the truth may be far more lethal than the memory of the flames.