Nineteen-year-old Sydney Newbern leads the typical college student life until one day her roommate invites her on a hiking trip. Little does Sydney know that it’ll be the day her life turns upside down. Nothing will ever be the same.
Kidnapped by a stranger, Sydney wakes up alone in a small room with a tattoo etched on her palm in black ink: 777. Then, she finds out her family is being watched. Her kidnapper will kill them if she doesn’t comply with his instruction: swallow a red pill daily. Things get weirder when she realizes the number on her hand decreases by one every day.
When Sydney finally escapes, she knows she can’t go to the police or back to her family—her kidnapper might hurt them. Trying to figure out what to do next, she discovers supernatural beings exist, and one crosses her path. The enigmatic vampire needs something from her, so she strikes a deal with him. But will his help suffice in solving Sydney’s problems? Will she manage to remove the magical tattoo before it hits zero?
When insecure sophomore Emma gets a part-time job, she’s thrilled. The job is a six-week- long project where she’ll be coding a website for a martial arts studio. For Emma, a computer science major, it’s perfect—a great way to gain some real-world experience. But her excitement quickly evaporates when she finds out that her boss is Ryan Damon, the mean, arrogant guy she has slammed into, twice.
Ryan Damon, the son of the famous, late movie star Bruce Damon, suffered a great tragedy at the age of seventeen. When he was vacationing in Europe, a schizophrenic man, who had been hearing voices in his head telling him to kill Bruce Damon, broke into the Damons’ residency in Manhattan, New York, and murdered Ryan’s father, his mother, and his ten-year-old sister. Now, with his heart cold as ice, Ryan doesn’t let anyone in. But when Emma enters his life, everything changes—for both of them.