By Gwyn Devereaux
What if the person you should fear is someone you are grateful to have in your life?
The neighbor who knows your routine. The benefactor whose generosity feels like a lifeline. The authority figure whose reputation makes questioning them seem unthinkable.
Someone you trust enough to let your guard down.
the Madness behind their Prey: Silenced, Part 1 begins there—with ten unsettling stories exploring how predators gain trust, turn familiarity into access, and conceal their intentions behind the roles people welcome them into.
Before the danger has a name
It is easy to imagine recognizing a threat when it arrives. It is harder to imagine thanking it for coming.
Help, attention, generosity, and reassurance can all feel like reasons to trust someone. In Silenced, those familiar gestures become part of the tension. As each relationship unfolds, the question becomes increasingly uncomfortable: what does this person want, and how much access have they already gained?
The reader may begin to suspect something before the person being targeted does. Or a new detail may change the meaning of everything that came before it.
That uncertainty is where these stories take hold.
The people in their path
Each of the ten stories approaches the danger through a different relationship or circumstance. Together, they explore how control can develop beneath an appearance of kindness, familiarity, or authority.
But the predator is only part of the story.
There is also the person who believed the offer of help. The person who saw no reason to question a familiar face. The person left trying to understand when a relationship became something frightening—and whether anyone else will recognize what is happening.
Their trust was human. What someone chose to do with it is what makes these stories disturbing.
Why I began the Prey series
In the Madness behind the Mask and the Madness behind the Gavel: Justice, I tell my own story of betrayal, stalking, survival, and renewed faith.
With the Prey series, I turn to storytelling to explore hidden patterns across different lives. A collection gives me room to examine more than one route into danger: the trust someone cultivates, the position they occupy, and the opportunities that position creates.
My purpose remains personal. I want to bring those patterns into view and keep the people being targeted at the center of the telling.
Your entrance to the Prey series
Silenced, Part 1 can be read independently of Mask and Gavel. It begins a separate branch of the Madness collection, with ten stories that invite you to look closely at the people the characters trust—and recognize patterns that may feel familiar in your own life or the life of someone you care about.
Red flags begin to show themselves in ordinary relationships. Then come the stories that keep changing, the explanations that unravel, and the details that no longer make sense or fit.
My hope is that these stories help readers recognize those warnings, take their instincts seriously, and seek support before the danger deepens—before it is too late.
In Silenced, the stakes are life and death. These stories explore psychopaths and the people they target. Some characters survive. Others do not.
For the people in these pages, the warning signs demand more than a closer look. Their instincts are alerting them to danger—urging them to find a way to safety while they still can.
If you recognize something of your own experience, do not dismiss it. You do not need to wait for certainty before reaching out for help or planning a safe way to leave.
While the person being targeted is still trying to make sense of the lies, the predator may already be relying on their trust to keep them close—and their silence to keep help away.