At the age of twelve, Adut is walking home with her neighbour, Smo Payne, who is the same age and in the same class when the pair is accosted by a group of older boys from their school. Adut manages to flee but twelve years old Smo is shot several times and dies as a result of exsanguination resulting from multiple gunshot wounds.
Adut knows the names and identities of the boys who murdered Smo, they are students at her school. One of the killers is the principal's son and the other three perpetrators are from very powerful and influential families.
When Adut reveals to Smo's father the names and identities of the boys who murdered his son, a terrified Mr. Payne decides to sell his family home and moves out of the province to an unknown location, taking Smo's siblings with him.
In the days, weeks and months following Smo's brutal murder and his family's disappearance, Adut's parents find themselves caught up in a brewing storm between a persistent journalist who is willing to go to all lengths to get to the truth, a principal who is determined to protect her son from going to jail for a murder that he committed, three affluent families who are willing to do whatever it takes to cover up the hideous crime committed by their respective sons and a foreign missionary who suspects that young Adut may be in danger and is willing to put her life on the line to protect her.
Many years go by and the incident is seemingly forgotten until a teenaged Adut falls in love with Bob, the son of a billionaire, and suddenly finds herself thrust into the world of the rich and famous, the same world of the boys who murdered Smo Payne many years back when she was only twelve.
Adut finds herself stuck between two terrible choices: continue to stay silent about a brutal crime that she witnessed or tell Bob that his cousin and his friends murdered her twelve years old neighbour a couple of years back.