A Thriller
By Michael Salmieri
It doesn’t change your mind. It builds the need to believe.
Releases October 31, 2026. Pre-order the Kindle eBook on Amazon, or join the newsletter for launch-day news.
Adriana Palmer helped build a system that could make people believe almost anything. Then she walked away.
Three years later, a four-second deepfake carries the unmistakable signature of her classified work. The trail leads to a political intelligence firm, a Senate campaign, and Rachel Whitfield: the mentor who taught Adriana how power really works.
Her technology has come home. Its targets are American voters. And its greatest weapon is not a lie, but the need to believe one.
Working with investigative journalist Stefani Nair, Adriana follows the machinery beneath the campaign. Every source has something to lose. Every disclosure gives the system another chance to rewrite the story. Even the evidence can be turned against her.
To expose what she created, Adriana must confront the people she once trusted and the part of herself that still wants control.
Knowing the truth will not set her free.
Michael Salmieri is a Pennsylvania-based author of character-driven thrillers that blend suspense, intrigue, and moral complexity. His novels range across crime, politics, espionage, technology, and institutional power, following people caught between duty, survival, and the consequences of the choices they make.
As a public adjuster and business consultant, he has spent his professional life navigating conflict, weighing competing accounts, and looking beyond the accepted version of events. That experience informs his fiction through layered plots, credible pressure, and characters whose decisions matter as much as the dangers confronting them.
