Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, gender discrimination, sexual violence, rape, child abuse, child death, death by suicide, substance use, addiction, graphic violence, illness, death, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and cursing.

The Prologue has two unofficial parts, and the first section focuses on the serial killer nicknamed Casanova. The setting is Florida in the summer of 1975. Casanova hides inside the walls of a large beach house owned by the Pierce family. Casanova reads sexually explicit books like Pauline Réage’s novel Story of O (1954), and he has a gun. Casanova looks “handsome” and “preppy,” and he’s attracted to the Pierces’ daughters, the high-school student Coty and the 13-year-old Karrie. As Casanova prepares to murder the family and sexually assault the daughters, he imagines the newspaper headlines and senses that his life has finally begun.

The second unofficial section of the Prologue centers on the serial killer nicknamed the Gentleman Caller and takes place in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the spring of 1981. The Gentleman Caller watches a couple, Tom Hutchinson and Roe Tierney, have sex in a boat. Tom is the captain of Duke University’s football team, and Roe is a socialite.