Three minutes earlier.

The armored Maybach rolled silently down the street bordering the Parsons campus. Curtis sat in the cavernous back seat, the battered tablet resting on his paralyzed thighs.

He had come here driven by an intense, unfamiliar curiosity. The design sketch had shocked him. He wanted to hand the tablet back to her himself, to look into her eyes and figure out who the hell he had actually married.

Through the heavily tinted, bulletproof glass, Curtis's eyes locked onto the plaza steps. He spotted Allie immediately.

And he spotted the man walking toward her. Jerald Burke.

Because of the distance and the thick glass, Curtis couldn't hear a single word being spoken. He was entirely dependent on visual input.

He watched Jerald rush up to her. He saw Allie stepping back, but to his paranoid mind, she wasn't running away. She wasn't screaming for help.

Then, the fatal moment occurred.

Jerald lunged forward and yanked Allie hard against his chest.

From Curtis's physical vantage point across the street, Allie's back completely blocked her hands pushing against Jerald's chest. All Curtis saw was his wife melting into the arms of a healthy, able-bodied man. It looked like a desperate, passionate embrace.

The thin thread of rationality in Curtis's brain snapped. He could not reconcile the brilliant, explosive talent he had just witnessed on the tablet with the cheap, cheating woman throwing herself at another man right in front of his eyes. That massive, sickening contradiction twisted his fury into something far darker. Every ounce of trauma, every sneer he had endured since the accident, every deep-seated insecurity about his useless legs erupted into a volcanic, blinding rage. He looked at Jerald's strong, standing legs. The humiliation burned through his veins like acid.

Curtis's hand clamped down on the edge of the tablet. He squeezed.

A sickening crack echoed in the silent cabin. The glass screen of the tablet splintered into a massive spiderweb under the crushing pressure of his thumb.

In the front seat, Vance heard the noise. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Curtis's face. It was the face of a demon. Vance instantly held his breath, terrified to make a sound.

Curtis stared out the window. He watched Allie push Jerald away and fall to the ground. To him, it looked like the tragic parting of two lovers tearing themselves away from each other.

"Bring that suicidal bitch back to the car," Curtis commanded. His voice wasn't loud. It was a dead, hollow whisper that sounded like it came straight from hell. "Now."

The Maybach jerked to a halt across the street.

The doors flew open. Two massive private security guards, built like brick walls, marched across the asphalt.

Allie was still sitting on the ground, staring in absolute horror at the Maybach. She tried to push herself up, her bleeding palms leaving red smears on the stone.

The guards reached her. They didn't speak. They simply grabbed her by the upper arms, one on each side, and hauled her up like a ragdoll.

Allie gasped in pain as their iron grips crushed her already bruised wrists. She didn't dare fight back.

The remaining students watched in shock as the Deleon security team dragged a woman through the street in broad daylight.

Allie's heels dragged across the asphalt. Her dignity was completely shredded, left behind on the pavement.

The rear door of the Maybach was yanked open. The guards shoved her inside with brutal force. Allie tumbled into the dark cabin, slamming hard against the leather seats.

The door slammed shut, sealing her in a tomb.

Allie scrambled to sit up, her chest heaving. She turned her head and met Curtis's eyes.

They were bloodshot, completely devoid of humanity, radiating a pure, murderous intent. Her heart skipped a beat.

"Curtis, please, you have to listen to me," she cried, her voice trembling violently. "It was a setup! Brittanie-"

Curtis didn't let her finish. He picked up the shattered tablet and hurled it violently at her feet. It bounced off her shin with a heavy thud.

Before she could react, his massive hand shot out and clamped around her throat.

He pinned her back against the bulletproof window.

"Do you think I'm a joke?" he roared, the sound vibrating in the small space. "Do you think because I sit in this chair, you can play me for a fool right in front of my face?!"

Allie's face turned a deep shade of red as her oxygen supply was cut off. She clawed weakly at his thick forearm, her lungs burning. Hot tears spilled over her cheeks, landing on his knuckles.

Curtis stared at her tears. They disgusted him. He saw nothing but the fake crying of a cheating whore.

He released her throat with a violent shove. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his fingers, as if touching her skin had contaminated him.

"Cancel all her privileges," Curtis ordered Vance through the intercom, his voice dripping with ice. "Confiscate her phone. We are going back to the penthouse."

The Maybach's engine roared like a beast. The car shot forward, tearing away from the Parsons campus.

Allie slumped into the corner of the seat, clutching her bruised throat and coughing violently. She stared at the floor. The tiny sliver of freedom she had just tasted was gone, replaced by a nightmare far worse than anything she had imagined.

The Maybach slammed on its brakes in the underground garage of the penthouse. The tires shrieked against the polished concrete, the sound echoing like a scream.

The cabin was freezing.

The door was ripped open. The security guards didn't wait for Allie to move. They reached in, grabbed her arms, and dragged her out. Her legs gave out, and she crashed hard onto the concrete floor.

Curtis descended via the hydraulic lift. He sat in his wheelchair, looking down at her scraped knees and bleeding palms with absolute zero empathy. He didn't issue a command to stop.

Allie ignored the stinging pain in her legs. She scrambled to her knees, looking up at him desperately.

"Curtis, please! The hug was forced! He grabbed me!" she pleaded, her voice cracking.

Curtis turned his wheelchair around, presenting his broad back to her.

"Throw her in the top-floor panic room," he ordered the guards. "No one goes in without my explicit command."

The guards hauled Allie up by her armpits. They dragged her toward the private elevator.

"Curtis! No! Please!" Allie screamed, thrashing against the guards.

The elevator doors slid shut, cutting off her cries.

The elevator shot up to the top floor. The guards dragged her down the long corridor to the very end, stopping in front of a heavy steel door designed to withstand a bomb blast.

They shoved her inside. The room was completely empty except for a single cot. The walls were lined with thick, gray acoustic foam. The silence inside was immediate and suffocating.

Vance stepped into the doorway. His face was a mask of cold professionalism.

"Hand over all communication devices," Vance demanded.

Allie clutched her dead phone to her chest. "No, please, Vance. It's dead anyway. I need it. I have to wait for a call from the hospital. My mother's ventilator-"

Vance's eyes flickered with a hint of disdain. He didn't care about her lies. He reached out, grabbed her wrists, and physically pried her fingers apart, snatching the phone away.

"Wait!" Allie lunged for it.

Vance stepped back into the hallway. The massive steel door swung shut.

Clank. Clank. Clank.

The electronic deadbolts locked into place. She was completely sealed off from the world.

Allie threw herself against the steel door, pounding her bloody palms against the metal. "Is anyone there?! Please!"

The acoustic foam swallowed her screams whole.

Suddenly, the lights overhead cut out.

The room plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness. It was a darkness so thick it felt like a physical weight pressing against her eyeballs. Allie's breath hitched. A wave of claustrophobia crashed over her.

She slid down the cold steel door, pulling her knees to her chest. Her stomach cramped violently from hunger and sheer terror. In the dark, her mind began projecting horrific images of Richard pulling the plug on her mother's life support.

Hours bled into one another. The temperature in the unheated panic room began to drop. Allie crawled blindly across the floor until she found the cot. She wrapped herself tightly in the thin blanket, her teeth chattering uncontrollably as she slipped into a shivering semi-consciousness.

Downstairs in the study, Curtis sat by the floor-to-ceiling window, staring out at the glittering Manhattan skyline. His knuckles were white as he gripped a glass of whiskey.

Vance knocked and entered. "Sir, she is secured. Food and water have been withheld. She appears physically weak. Should I arrange for a doctor to standby?"

Curtis's jaw ticked. A brief flash of conflict crossed his eyes, but it was quickly devoured by the memory of her in Jerald's arms.

"Let her learn her lesson," Curtis snarled. "She won't starve to death."

The next day, around noon, the electronic lock on the panic room door finally clicked.

The heavy door swung open. The harsh hallway light flooded in, stabbing Allie's dilated pupils. She groaned, throwing an arm over her eyes.

Vance walked in carrying a plastic cup of water and a single slice of plain bread.

Allie didn't look at the food. She scrambled off the cot, her legs shaking so badly she almost fell, and grabbed Vance's sleeve.

"My phone. Please. Just for one minute," she begged, her voice a dry, raspy croak.

Vance set the food on the floor. He pulled a piece of paper from his jacket.

"Mr. Deleon's orders," Vance said coldly. "Sign this confession admitting your infidelity and promising to never see Jerald Burke again. If you sign, you get your phone back."

A wave of absurd, hysterical grief washed over Allie. She had done nothing wrong. But she had no choice. Her mother's life was ticking away.

"Give me the pen," she whispered.

With a violently trembling hand, she signed her name on the dotted line. A tear slipped down her cheek, blurring the ink.

Vance took the paper. He tossed her fully charged phone onto the cot and walked out. The door shut again, but this time, the deadbolts didn't engage.

Allie dove for the phone. She powered it on.

The screen instantly lit up with fifteen missed calls. All from her stepmother, Glendora.

A new text message popped up. It was a photo.

Glendora was standing in the private facility room. Her hand was gripping the power cord of Danae's ventilator, right at the wall socket.

The text below read: Get to the Upper East Side private clinic in thirty minutes. Brittanie had an episode and needs a blood transfusion. If you are one minute late, I pull the plug.

Allie stared at the screen, her blood turning to ice. She had just survived the dark room, only to be thrown into a far deadlier trap.

Allie stared at the photo of Glendora's hand on the ventilator cord. Her heart seized in her chest, completely cutting off her air supply.

She scrambled off the cot. She didn't even look for her coat. She stumbled out of the panic room, her legs feeling like lead.

The top-floor hallway was empty. She knew the main elevators were heavily monitored by Curtis's security. Relying on her memory of the penthouse layout, she sprinted toward the kitchen, pushing through the swinging doors to find the emergency exit stairwell connected to the freight elevator.

She leaned her entire body weight against the heavy fire door, forcing it open, and started stumbling down the narrow, dimly lit concrete stairs. Her cheap heels clacked too loudly and made her already trembling legs dangerously unstable. She kicked them off, leaving them on the landing, and continued descending barefoot, her hands dragging against the rough wall to keep herself from collapsing. The freezing concrete bit into the soles of her feet, but the numbness of her starvation overshadowed the pain.

She bypassed the main lobby, slipping through a ventilation maintenance gate in the underground garage, and dragged her exhausted body out onto the chaotic Manhattan street.

She practically collapsed against the side of a yellow cab that had just pulled over.

"Upper East Side. The private clinic on 82nd," Allie gasped, throwing herself into the backseat. She dug into her pockets, pulled out the few crumpled twenty-dollar bills she had, and shoved them through the partition. "Run the red lights. Please!"

The cab screeched to a halt at the back alley entrance of the notorious private clinic. Allie shoved the door open and staggered inside, ignoring the receptionist as she used the hallway walls to support her failing body, inching her way desperately toward the VVIP wing. Her vision was already beginning to swim with black spots, and she was surviving purely on the adrenaline of her mother's ticking clock.

The moment she stepped off the elevator, a hand shot out, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and slammed her violently against the hallway wall.

"Ah!" Allie cried out, her head bouncing off the drywall with a sickening thud.

Glendora stood over her, her face twisted in an ugly sneer.

"You useless piece of trash," Glendora hissed. "You disappear for a whole day? My Brittanie had to suffer for hours because you wouldn't answer your phone!"

Allie ignored the blinding pain in her scalp. She grabbed Glendora's wrist with both hands, her eyes red and wild.

"Show me the video," Allie demanded, her voice shaking. "Show me the live feed of the ventilator. Now."

Glendora sneered. She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen, holding it up.

The live feed showed Danae lying perfectly still in the hospital bed. The machine was pumping rhythmically. The plug was in the wall.

Allie's tense muscles instantly gave out. She slumped against the wall, cold sweat soaking through the back of her thin dress.

The door to the VVIP suite opened. A man in a white coat with shifty eyes stepped out. He was a black-market doctor, operating completely outside of medical board regulations.

"Is the donor ready? We are losing time," the doctor said impatiently.

Two massive orderlies stepped out behind him. They grabbed Allie by the arms and dragged her into the adjacent blood-draw room, shoving her down into a freezing, stainless-steel medical chair.

Through the glass partition, Allie could see into the next room. Brittanie was sitting up in bed, scrolling on her phone, her cheeks flushed and perfectly healthy.

"She's not sick!" Allie screamed, struggling against the orderlies. "You're lying! You're just selling my blood to the black market!"

Glendora walked up and slapped Allie hard across the face. The sharp crack echoed in the sterile room.

"Watch your mouth," Glendora whispered maliciously. "Remember who holds your crazy mother's life in their hands."

The doctor didn't hesitate. He swabbed Allie's arm and jammed a massive, thick needle directly into her vein.

Dark red blood immediately began flowing through the tube into the collection bag.

Allie hadn't eaten or drank anything in over twenty-four hours. As the blood rapidly drained from her body, the room began to spin violently. Black spots danced at the edges of her vision.

The first 400cc bag filled up quickly. Allie let out a weak breath, thinking it was over. She tried to pull her arm away.

The orderly slammed his hand down on her shoulder, pinning her in place.

The doctor calmly swapped the full bag for a completely empty one.

"What are you doing?" Allie gasped, her eyes widening in pure horror. "You can't... I haven't eaten... it will kill me."

Glendora leaned down, her face inches from Allie's ear.

"I have a buyer who needs 800cc today," Glendora whispered like a demon. "If you die, I'll just send your mother's body to the county morgue."

That sentence shattered the last remaining piece of Allie's will to fight.

She closed her eyes. Tears of absolute despair slid down her pale cheeks. She went completely limp in the chair, allowing them to drain her life away.

As the second bag swelled with her blood, the last trace of color vanished from Allie's lips. Her breathing became incredibly shallow, her chest barely moving.

The heart monitor attached to her finger began to beep frantically as her blood pressure plummeted.

The doctor frowned, looking at the numbers. He quickly pulled the needle out. "That's it. Any more and she goes into hypovolemic shock."

Glendora grabbed the two heavy bags of blood. She looked at Allie's half-dead body with pure disgust, then turned toward the doctor. "Lock this door from the outside. Let her rot in here until we get paid. If she dies, just dump her in the alley," she commanded. walked out with the doctor, the heavy click of the deadbolt echoing ominously as they sealed her inside the freezing room.

Allie was left completely alone in the freezing room. No bandage was applied to her arm. No juice, no glucose was offered.

She slowly raised her trembling right hand and pressed her thumb hard against the bleeding puncture wound on her left arm.

She forced her eyes open, fighting the crushing wave of unconsciousness. She had to get back.

She pushed herself off the chair. The moment her bare feet touched the floor and she stood up, the world tilted sideways.

Her legs buckled instantly. Allie collapsed heavily onto the freezing tile floor, her vision fading to black.