Jace Merrow was born with a monster sleeping inside him. His mother just did everything she could to wake it up. To the neighbors, Evelyn Merrow was elegance—an award-winning researcher, the kind of suburban mother people praised on Facebook. But behind closed doors, she treated Jace like a project she needed to perfect. Every mistake earned a punishment. Every achievement earned a sharper demand. When Jace finally snaps, the house goes silent. The only thing standing between him and a murder charge is the trembling man hiding behind the bedroom door—his father, Nolan Merrow, who lets Jace handle the police with a bloody knife still on the counter. The officer believes his story. Jace becomes the boy who cried “kitchen accident,” and Evelyn becomes a memory. But death doesn’t end anything. Because Jace has a secret: He’s been talking to someone online for months. Someone who calls himself Crimson. A legend on the dark web. A sculptor of bodies. A philosopher of violence. And Crimson has one message for him: “I’ve been watching you, little lion.” At first, Jace thinks Crimson is taunting him. Until the letters start arriving. One envelope says: “HELLO, KILLERS.” The other is written in his mother’s handwriting. Inside, Evelyn confesses the truth: There’s a man she spent years running from—a man she called the Lion King. A man even Crimson fears. A man who sees Jace not as a son, but as a successor. Now Jace is caught in a nightmare triangle of three predators: the manipulative father who survived the murder with him, the faceless mentor who teaches him how to kill, and the Lion King, who wants his “little lion” back. Every secret Jace uncovers drags him deeper into a family legacy soaked in blood. And every step forward forces him to ask the question he never dared: Was he born a monster… or made into one? To survive, Jace must choose which monster to become— the one they raised, or the one he truly is.