Speak.

Four years before the story begins, nineteen-year-old Raven Monroe walks to Rayne-Moore University's music hall to practice her cello for a Juilliard audition.

Four years before the story begins, nineteen-year-old Raven Monroe walks to Rayne-Moore University's music hall to practice her cello for a Juilliard audition. Her stepbrother Axel has just won a football game; she sent him to chase a girl while she went alone. In the empty practice room, four masked figures ambush her—three men and one woman. They beat her, stab her in the side, break her leg, gag her, wrap a leash around her throat, and lock her inside a metal locker. For three days she drifts between consciousness and childhood memories, sustained only by the music the custodian Lex plays in the room nearby. When Lex finally hears her tapping against the locker door, he pries it open and calls paramedics. Raven mouths a silent thank-you as they carry her out. It is the last time she attempts to use her voice for years.

Four years of silence end when recovered memories demand answers

After four years at Lorne Wood Mental Institution, Raven Monroe—twenty-four, mute, prone to violent episodes—returns to Rayne-Moore University as a sophomore. She's been secretly weaning herself off sleeping pills her psychiatrist prescribed, and fragments of the night she was locked in a locker have begun resurfacing. She remembers a tattooed hand belonging to Tyler Prescott. Her mother Sofia and stepfather John think she's facing her fears; in truth, she's hunting. She needs to know who else was involved and why they tried to kill her. Axel, her devoted stepbrother, drops her off with a hug she can't return, unaware that behind her silence, Raven is building a case—and possibly a kill list—against the people who stole her voice.

Her obsessed psychiatrist takes a counselor job to follow her

Damon Archer has treated Raven for nearly four years, and what began as clinical fascination has metastasized into all-consuming obsession. He installed cameras in her room at the institution, watched her sleep, catalogued her every gasp. When her mother mentions Raven is transferring back to Rayne-Moore, Damon resigns that same night and applies for the campus counselor position. By dawn he has the job. He arrives before she does and sneaks into her dorm room to plant a hidden camera in the smoke detector. He tells himself it's protection—she sleepwalks, she has episodes. But Damon knows what coils in his chest: Raven Monroe is not leaving his orbit. He will be whatever she needs—doctor, lover, accomplice—so long as she remains his.