SYNOPSIS

Danielle Byers, a low-income literary prodigy, grieves the death of her brother and the high cost university tuition he was helping provide. Shawn Heller, heir to a multi-billlion dollar corporation, is hiding on the opposite side of the globe from his family business’ latest merger in Hong Kong. The unlikely pair find common ground at a self-harm support group where his fixation on Danielle is immediate, akin to the sister he lost as a child, and jumps to offer financial help, an offer a little too forthcoming… at first.

Something in Shawn's past gives his family business partners reason to worry, and his two cousins Jordan and Joel, and his lawyer and uncle Aaron keep a close eye, even contriving the support group with a psychologist on the payroll to provide intimate information on Shawn. The womb of protection doesn’t permeate into Shawn’s secret apartment, where he invites prostitutes to roleplay strange fantasies.

With Danielle gone absent from meetings, Shawn’s fixation turns to stalking, checking in on her old residences and using his influence to enroll in her exclusive MFA program, inevitably putting himself in her path. While odd, Shawn understands Danielle in a way few others do, and she comes around to him as an outsider, like herself, as she struggles to access the system meant to celebrate and turn her talents into capital.

It is only Danielle's girlfriend Katie that is suspicious (and jealous) of Shawn's true intentions. Katie is the daughter of an elite California politician, and comes from a wealthy home that won’t approve of her daughter’s relationship, and certainly won’t step in to help. Danielle ignore’s Katie’s concerns as another voice that couldn’t understand, eventually accepting the generosity of Shawn’s wealth as her only option.

Danielle visits Shawn's secret apartment to collect the funds—a visit she does not surface from.

Six months later a missing persons report has been filed, Shawn was questioned, and because of her background it is quickly assumed Danielle took Shawn's money and skipped town. Yet another in a stack of three-hundred-some minority missing persons cases a month that go uninvestigated. The only one left questioning is Katie—a seeming white savior narrative in the making—who keeps a keen eye on Shawn and his family business partners who won’t leave his side.

Katie tries every avenue, expecting help from the world that supports her own privilege. The detective on Danielle’s case, David Geliz, urges her to leave it to the professionals. The University Danielle once idolized has too, turned its back, barring Katie from questioning its administrators. As a last straw Katie pleads with her own parents, who aren't interested in having their daughter involved with Danielle's “type,” needing to stay politically clean.

Shawn’s own cousin Joel begins dropping clues for Katie, which leads her to the self-harm group he met Danielle at, and eventually to his second home no one knew existed. She breaks in and finds a melange of harrowing evidence, including a family photo of Shawn's long-estranged adopted sister, a likeness to Danielle, and a binder of obsessions with similar young women crossing into bloody fantasies. Shawn's unexpected arrival turns into a chase through the streets Katie narrowly escapes.

The next morning the LAPD is released upon Shawns's so-called second home, only to find a squeaky clean empty space and landlord claiming he's never heard of Shawn.

Officer Geliz takes a last sweep of the empty apartment guided by a peculiar piece of evidence. Just as he confirms Katie's testimony true by a sliver of evidence, Shawn’s uncle and lawyer arrives to notify him and his superiors that Shawn has been called to Asia, never to return to Los Angeles again. With everything but winks and nods out in the open, Geliz’s superior pressures him to accept the quick clearance and buries another minority girl in a pile of paperwork.

Geliz is left broken, and disgusted, with himself and the department he can no longer lie to himself about.

Having gone against her kind in the upper echelon, Katie descends to the bottom, broken among the forgotten souls riding the city bus to work each morning.

Upon Shawn’s arrival in Asia, his father humiliates and beats him into submission in front of his top business associates, a reminder of the hell that created the monster, and the monster’s self-hatred.

Across the border in Baja, Mexico, Danielle lives. She roams freely, healing from the wounds left during her presumed escape from Shawn’s grip. She finds her way to a circle of indigenous women, where she puts pen to paper in sacred hills, connected to spirit, free from the systems that promise the world, while taking your life.