Nobody Cares

Jessica Winslow is a first year law student in Florida when she is raped. The assault happens at a drug-fuelled fraternity party to which she has been taken by Daniel Hanington, her childhood sweetheart. Daniel does nothing to help her. They break up.
For the rest of her life, in her dreams, Jessica relives the trauma. Every day she sees the features of her unknown assailant in the face of her son, born of the assault. Adam bears no resemblance to Daniel. The father was someone else.
Over the next twenty years Jessica is consigned to a lonely struggle for self-esteem. Adam grows up with a mother who cannot love him. Daniel graduates from university, finds a job and gets married, but he cannot shake the memory of his cowardice. And Jessica's assailant? Jessica's assailant steps up his game.
Samuel Kumar, spoiled son of a single father, is drawn to St. Andrews - a town unscathed in the 2020 pandemic - as a safe place to advance his academic career and to invest. He uses the financial heft of his father's Texas-based wealth fund, Kumar Capital, to take ownership of the law school where Jessica is now a professor. Kumar's plan favours foreign over local students, triples the cost of tuition, sells courses on the internet, and lays-off most of the staff.
Everything Jessica has worked to achieve is being undone by a man whose background she does not yet know.
Samuel Kumar, however, recognizes Jessica immediately from a twenty-year old photograph he has hidden in the top drawer of his desk.
A core group of professors gets wind of compromise in Kumar's past. They learn that the hidden photograph is an image of Jessica Winslow, naked and unconscious, taken at the long-ago toga party. They learn that many other people have been hurt by Kumar's callous pursuit of pleasure and by Kumar Capital's drive for profits.
When Samuel Kumar is killed in a hit-and-run, the list of suspects is long.
Police learn that Kumar is the third fraternity "brother" to die a violent death. A member of the House of Lords in Great Britain and a senator in Washington committed suicide after an anonymous letter destroyed their reputations.
The investigation zeros in upon Jessica Winslow. Though her legal team prevails, the investigation leaves its mark. In the eye of many who learn her story, Jessica is a killer who had no business taking the law into her own hands. She flees St. Andrews, a place where she had hoped to be for the rest of her life.
In fact, the hit-and-run was an accident. The town rallies around to protect the driver's identity. No charges are ever filed.
Daniel Hanington, not Jessica, wrote the letters that ended the lives of two former classmates. He wanted, in his own cowardly way, to punish those who had hurt her. His self-loathing has him drive his jeep into the Saint John River. He never dares to confess.
Samuel Kumar's father is devastated by the death of his only child. He uses his political connections to find out all he can about the tragedy. He learns about the existence of Adam, his grandson. In a surprise phone call, Adam is asked to join his grandfather in Texas.
Adam Winslow moves to Sugar Land, where he finds acceptance for the first time in his life. He joins his grandfather's firm. He then uses Kumar Capital anonymously to help his mother find peace.