Getting A Head - J. K. Winter

A harmless old woman. A trail of missing girls. A secret hidden in plain sight. Angela Bruni looks like a harmless old woman wandering the historic streets of Padova with her small dog and shopping trolley. To anyone who passes her, she is forgettable, just another lonely figure moving quietly through the city. But Angela has a secret.

For years, young women have answered her advertisement offering a cheap apartment. Many arrive hopeful, looking for a fresh start in a new country, trusting the opportunity placed in front of them. They come with plans, with dreams, with the belief that they are beginning something better.

Some never leave.

Behind the walls of her family home, Angela keeps trophies from those who trusted her. Hidden from view, her private world tells a very different story, one built on control, routine, and a silence that no one questions closely enough.

When Sofia Rodriguez, a quiet student from Ecuador, disappears after visiting Angela's house, the police assume she has simply run away, another missing person in a world that rarely looks too closely. Cases like hers fade quickly, lost among countless others.

But Julie Cosolito does not believe it.

As Julie begins investigating Sofia's disappearance, disturbing clues start to surface, pointing toward the one person no one suspects: the frail old woman everyone overlooks. What begins as doubt slowly turns into something far more dangerous as Julie moves closer to the truth.

Angela Bruni has spent a lifetime staying one step ahead of suspicion. She understands how to remain invisible, how to be dismissed, how to exist without ever being truly seen.

And anyone who gets too close to the truth may lose their head.

GETTING A-HEAD is a psychological thriller about control, deception, and the danger of underestimating the wrong person.