Chapter 1

I died on a cold, sterile hospital bed, a bottle of pills empty beside me. The last thing I saw was a news report on my phone. My father, a man who built a tech empire from nothing, had died of a heart attack. The headline said loan sharks had harassed him. They were my loan sharks.

Madison, my sorority sister, my best friend, had set it all up.

She was the one who suggested the Spring Break trip to Cancún. She claimed it was on her trust fund, a generous gift for all of us. She collected our IDs and Social Security Numbers to book the "all-inclusive" package. In Mexico, she drugged me and sold me to a cartel trafficking ring.

I still feel the grit of the dirty floor against my cheek, the flash of a camera phone. The video went viral.

When I escaped, broken and bleeding, and confronted her, she turned everyone against me. My boyfriend, Kevin, was the first to side with her. He called me a slut, said I went looking for it. The whole friend group testified against me. They said I wandered off, that I was unstable.

The university expelled me, rescinding my scholarship. The video was everywhere. The cyberbullying was relentless. Then the loan sharks came. Madison had used my stolen identity to take out millions in predatory loans. They found my father. The shock and grief of what happened to me, combined with their threats, killed him.

He was my only family. My secret protector. The world thought I was a poor scholarship kid. No one knew he was my father. He wanted me to have a normal life.

With him gone, I had nothing left. So I ended it.

Then, I opened my eyes.

I was in the sorority house living room. The air was thick with the scent of cheap air freshener and hairspray. Madison was standing in the middle of the room, a bright, fake smile plastered on her face.

"Okay, everyone! Cancún here we come! I just need all your IDs and SSNs to finalize the booking. Let's get this done so we can start packing!"

It was happening again. The day it all began.