For readers of DARK PLACES by Gillian Flynn and THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN by Dot Hutchison. Eleven-year-old Michael Romanov's mother would rather cuddle a cobra than touch him or meet his gaze. Yet she never stops lavishing affection on his older brother. A seventeen-year-old bully protected by her adoration, he lives to poke and prod Michael. His father, absent too often, turns a blind eye, doing nothing, and so colludes with the pair, leaving Michael to endure the daily abuse and injustices. Why? No physical deformities set him apart, so why has he always felt different? Disgustingly different? What's wrong with him? He's smarter than anyone he knows, so why is he unlovable? Bruised and wounded, the dark heart of the boy fractures. In a chilling moment of retaliation, Michael executes the perfect, logical plan . . . A plan that knocks a budding psychopath off the thin line between redeemable and doomed. This first dark, pulse-pounding book in The MisFit Series, probes unflinchingly into the raw pain of neglect and rejection from birth.