If you asked ten different people about Alexi Smith, you'd get ten different stories.

The girl who stayed after class to tutor a struggling freshman.

The student council president who somehow convinced half the university to volunteer at charity events.

The daughter of one of Stranton's oldest families who still smiled at custodians in the hallway and remembered the barista's name at the campus café.

The perfect girlfriend. The perfect friend. The perfect student. The perfect daughter.

Funny how nobody ever questioned someone that perfect.

Stranton had been built on names like the Smiths. Old money buried beneath polished marble, scholarship funds, ribbon cuttings, and photographs of men in expensive suits shaking hands with people just important enough to be worth remembering. Long before Alexi ever stepped onto campus, people had already decided who she was supposed to become. All she had to do was play the part.

So she did.

She smiled when she was expected to smile. Laughed when everyone else laughed. Held eye contact just long enough, no matter how it made her skin crawl. Said exactly what people wanted to hear, even when they didn't realize they wanted to hear it. By the time she reached college, it wasn't something she consciously thought about anymore. Reading people had become as natural as breathing. A slight pause before someone answered a question. Fingers tapping against a desk. A smile that reached someone's mouth but not their eyes. Tiny things. Meaningless things.

People loved calling Alexi emotionally intelligent.

She found that funny.

There wasn't anything magical about understanding people. Most of them practically narrated themselves if you bothered paying attention. They told you what they feared, what they wanted, who they wanted to be. Sometimes with words. More often without them. The rest was easy. Tell people what they needed to hear. Become whoever they were looking for. Leave them convinced they'd found you. It was almost effortless.

Almost.

Because no matter how convincing the performance became, it never followed her home. Beyond the iron gates of the Smith estate, after the jewelry came off and the heels were abandoned somewhere on the hardwood floor, there wasn't an audience left to perform for. Just silence. The kind that settled into the walls of a house too large to ever feel lived in. Sometimes Alexi stood in front of the full-length mirror in the entry hall longer than she meant to.

Not out of vanity.

Out of habit.

As if, after spending an entire day becoming exactly who everyone else needed her to be, she was still trying to remember who looked back when nobody was watching.