When the exclusive Grosse Pointe High School class of ’93 plans their reunion weekend at a luxurious Lake Michigan estate, it promises champagne, reminiscence, and rekindled friendships. But beneath the designer outfits and practiced smiles, each attendee carries a devastating secret from their final year of school.
There’s Claire Bennett, now a high-powered prosecutor, who never explained her sudden departure senior year. Marcus Wright, the tech billionaire whose meteoric rise followed a suspicious tragedy. And Elena Santos, the acclaimed journalist who’s spent decades investigating what really happened that blood-soaked winter.
As a winter storm cuts off access to the estate, the past crashes violently into the present. Someone knows what they did—and they’re ready to make each player pay. One by one, their carefully constructed lives begin to unravel as long-buried evidence surfaces and old alliances shatter.
In this pulse-pounding psychological thriller from Dirk Volcano, luxury masks malice, success conceals sin, and no secret stays buried forever. When the weekend ends, not everyone will make it out alive.
Perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers and Lucy Foley’s The Guest List.
The cream-colored envelope sat unopened on Claire Bennett’s mahogany desk, its expensive paper stock and perfect calligraphy mocking her like evidence from an old case file. The return address read “Grosse Pointe High School Class of ’93 Reunion Committee,” but Claire knew the flowing script belonged to Elena Santos – the same Elena who had built her journalism career asking all the wrong questions about that final year of school.
Claire ran her finger along the sealed edge, her prosecutor’s instinct telling her to preserve the evidence. But this wasn’t a crime scene, just an invitation to face old ghosts. The late afternoon sun streaming through her corner office window caught the gold accents of her legal diplomas and professional accolades. Everything she’d built in the thirty years since graduation felt like armor against the past.
With a swift motion that betrayed her hesitation, she sliced open the envelope. Inside was an invitation to a private weekend reunion at Marcus Wright’s new lake estate. Of course it would be at Marcus’s place – the tech billionaire loved nothing more than showing off his success. The guest list was limited to their inner circle: Elena, Marcus, herself, and the four others who had once been inseparable. Seven friends, now successful strangers bound by secrets they’d sworn to take to their graves.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Elena: “Got the invitation? We need to talk.”
Claire’s throat tightened. She thought of the old newspaper clippings Elena had tried to show her years ago, the questions about why Claire had suddenly transferred schools mid-senior year. About the night none of them ever spoke of.
The invitation promised luxury accommodations, gourmet meals, and a chance to “reconnect and reminisce.” But as Claire studied the elaborate card stock, all she could see was the crime scene photos that still haunted her dreams – evidence that had vanished along with any official record of what happened that winter night in ’93.
A knock at her office door made her jump. Her assistant poked her head in. “The DA needs the briefing on the Morrison case.”
“Right,” Claire said, slipping the invitation into her desk drawer. “Tell him I’ll have it in an hour.”
After her assistant left, Claire pulled out her phone to decline the invitation. Her finger hovered over Elena’s text. A winter storm warning crawled across her screen – the first major system of the season approaching Lake Michigan.
The same weather they’d had that night.
Instead of responding to Elena, Claire found herself typing “Accept” on the reunion RSVP page. Someone among their old group was finally ready to talk. And this time, Claire would make sure the truth didn’t stay buried.
She glanced at the framed photo on her desk – seven beaming teenagers in their graduation robes, arms linked, whole futures ahead of them. By the end of that summer, one would be dead and the rest would be bound by a pact of silence.
The forecast called for heavy snow the weekend of the reunion. Perfect weather for old secrets to surface. Claire closed her laptop and turned to the Morrison case files, but her mind was already racing ahead to the lakeside estate where six people who thought they’d gotten away with murder would soon come face to face.
The invitation had promised a weekend of reconnection. But Claire knew better. This wasn’t about rekindling old friendships. This was about reckoning with the past. And someone was finally ready to make them all pay for what they’d done.
Outside her window, the first snowflakes began to fall.
One elite neighborhood. Seven successful alumni. Thirty years of buried lies.