Scorched Innocence

After graduating high school, 18-year-old Emily wanted nothing more than a quiet summer. Instead, a fire destroys her home and leaves her and her mother with nowhere else to turn. Her mother’s boss, a wealthy and isolated man named Charles, offers them shelter in his large estate in exchange for help keeping the place in order. The arrangement seems simple at first—until Emily begins to realize that the fire, their sudden homelessness, and Charles’s “generosity” may not have been accidents at all. Charles has watched her for years. Debt, carefully cultivated obligations, and the slow corruption of her mother’s loyalty and maternal love become the instruments by which he draws them both deeper into his home. What presents itself as refuge reveals, layer by layer, the shape of a cage. Beyond the estate the world proves no kinder. Every attempt at escape seems only to tighten the circle around her. And what, if anything, will remain when the fire has finished its work.