Adrian Vale

1

He was only supposed to be her professor. what happened to make things change? The first thing Anna noticed about Professor Adrian Vale was that he never seemed to blink. He sat at the back of the lecture hall, tall and impossibly still, his dark eyes moving over the room as though he were memorizing every person inside it. At thirty, he was younger than most of the professors at the university, but there was nothing young about him. He was controlled. Calculated. Quiet. And Anna couldn’t stand him. From the moment she walked into his social work seminar, something about him unsettled her. He never raised his voice, never insulted her, never gave her a reason to hate him. Somehow, that made it worse. He simply watched her—as if he knew something she didn’t. Sarah told her she was imagining it. Anna wanted to believe her.