Dinner at the head table is miserable. Tyler sits near Richard, Stella’s parents, the other company executives, and a cold and evasive Blake, who seems hostile toward his sister. His thoughts spiral toward his mother—a young, inexperienced woman who came to the city full of ambition, only to be swept into a relationship with Richard and then discarded. He grips his dinner knife watching Richard charm the table. His mother believed money corrupted everyone; Tyler disagrees, blaming the people themselves, not the wealth.

After dinner, Stella introduces him to further contacts, and Tyler slips off briefly to approach other targets on his own. They exchange a silent look and leave together.

Outside, Stella questions whether he is sober enough to drive. He snaps back, and a clumsy remark about not being a rich idiot makes her flinch. He registers, too late, that she carries her own guilt about a prior DUI. Rain begins falling. Stella mentions a party the following night that AJ invited her to, which Tyler declines to attend. The argument escalates: Stella lists the damage Tyler has caused—the debt, her health flare, missed work income, the Maddie confrontation. She accuses him of being indistinguishable from the people he despises. Their shouting match is cut short when another driver runs a stoplight, forcing Tyler to swerve violently to avoid a collision.

Shaken and reliving the crash, Stella gets out of the car into the rain. Tyler parks and follows, draping his jacket over her. A poorly timed joke about financial losses falls flat. When she presses him on why he is the way he is, he admits it stems from watching his mother be used and discarded by everyone around her, including his father. Stella points out the irony: He became the very kind of person who mistreated her.

Stella catches her dress hem and stumbles. Tyler lifts her and carries her the few blocks to her building. He tells her their arrangement is over, certain that his next party alone will be enough to clear her debt. Internally, he admits the money was never the real goal; revenge was. He also acknowledges internally that he has grown attached to her and will miss her. He apologizes—both for what Maddie put her through seven years ago and for the near-crash—and defends his business methods as less brutal than his reputation suggests. He reaches her building and refuses to set her down.

Tyler carries Stella up to her apartment, where her talking parrot, Amos, startles him. Tyler gets the shower running, retrieves a trash bag from the kitchen, and helps Stella discard her ruined dress.

He climbs in behind her on the shower floor and holds her against his chest to warm her up. During a bickering exchange, she bites his palm and feels him become physically aroused, leading her to conclude that their antagonistic dynamic has been feeding a desire in him.

When she asks what he meant by saying they were done, he confirms there will be no more public events together. She expects to feel relief but instead feels numb. On impulse, she turns and kisses him. He admits he was unable to be the first to show his hand, and begins describing, explicitly, the fantasies he suppressed throughout their time together, including thoughts about repeating their earlier threesome with AJ. Tyler rises, extends a hand, and tells her to get clean and warm before he has sex with her.

After the shower, Tyler asks for a condom. Stella says she is on birth control, and they consent to unprotected sex. Tyler positions her on his lap at the edge of the bed, both facing a wall mirror. He removes her robe and touches her before she intercepts and takes control herself, initiating intercourse. She says he’d better “[m]ake it count” on their last night together (250). When he asks if that is an order and she confirms it is, something in him gives way. He covers her mouth and pulls her down hard onto him.

The sex is rough and intense. When Stella praises him in the moment, calling him a good boy, he reaches orgasm immediately and with an intensity he has never experienced.

Lying in bed afterward, Tyler realizes he does not want this to be the only time they are together. He entertains the thought of restructuring his revenge plan to spare Stella’s parents and go after only Richard, acknowledging that his assumptions about their involvement may have been wrong. He tells Stella not to shower, then manually brings her to orgasm again. He uses his fingers to write a hidden message on her back.

Around three o’clock in the morning, Amos mimics Stella’s voice in the dark, saying Tyler’s name. Tyler, unsettled by the bird, discovers Stella’s sketchpad on the coffee table and finds it filled with drawings of him. He tears out a simple profile sketch—the first one she made—and pockets it, teasing that it marks the moment she fell for him. He kisses her goodbye, tells her to text him when she cannot live without him, and leaves.

Once he is gone, Stella’s curiosity about the message on her back overcomes her. Using a blacklight in her tattoo shop, she reads what he wrote: “FUCK YOU,” written in semen (258). She texts him “FUCK ME?” in outrage, and he responds by teasing her about begging for a second round (258). Recognizing she has walked into his game, she refuses to lose by engaging. Later, she laughs uncontrollably, conceding internally that it might be the best prank she has ever experienced.

On Monday, Stella visits Runa, who is recovering at home after surgery, and brings her groceries and a cake. She tells Runa about the confrontation with Maddie. Runa correctly guesses that Stella slept with Tyler. Stella confirms, including the prior threesome with AJ and the “FUCK YOU” prank. Runa laughs hysterically and insists Stella find a reason to see him again. Midway through the visit, Stella realizes someone else is in Runa’s apartment—the nurse from the hospital. Runa admits she genuinely likes him and didn’t want to discuss it for fear of jinxing things. As Stella leaves, Runa suggests that continuing to supply Tyler with names would give Stella a natural excuse to stay in contact.

On Tuesday night, while finishing a tattoo session with a client, Stella receives a text from Blake telling her to dress up for a party where he will prove she is not as free from Tyler as she believes. She rushes upstairs to change into a corseted black cocktail dress and meets him nearby.

Blake arrives in a tuxedo, slick-haired and resolute. He accuses Stella of flirting with Tyler while he was watching and reveals he took someone else’s invitation. He is vague about his intentions, saying only that Tyler will not realize they are there until it is too late. They walk to what appears to be an ordinary construction site, where two men in city-worker uniforms stand guard. Blake gives the password—“Rhoticity,” a word Tyler picked up from Stella—and they pass into a lit alleyway. A guard waves a security wand over them both, and Stella surrenders her phone and receives a masquerade mask, since all attendees keep their faces covered.

A guard directs them to an open manhole. Blake descends without hesitation. After a moment of dread, Stella follows. In the tunnel below, Blake accuses her of sleeping with Tyler and helping him harm their family. The accusation stings, partly because she knows it will have appeared exactly that way to outside observers. She follows the sound of laughter and jazz through a maze of tunnels until the passage opens into a vast underground room, lavishly appointed with chandeliers, a champagne tower, and dressed-up guests. Standing in the crowd is Keith Shattuck, a mid-level accountant who has worked at her parents’ company for nearly 15 years—not the kind of person who would normally have access to an event like this.

Keith tells Stella that Tyler invited him along with a large group of their parents’ colleagues. Stella urgently warns him the event is an illegal gambling operation, but he brushes her off and wanders away. She finds Blake, who admits he has not fully pieced together Tyler’s motive, but explains that he had observed Tyler quietly cultivating relationships with their parents’ staff at every event—always when Stella’s back was turned. After talking with one of those employees at the museum, Blake went directly to the police.

The realization hits Stella: Tyler has been using her to get to her parents and their company all along. She begins forming theories—using the employees to harvest sensitive information, manufacture leverage, or destabilize the company—without being able to pinpoint exactly what he intends.

Before she can act, Tyler appears in the crowd and orders two men to seize Blake. Stella pulls mace from her clutch and sprays both guards directly, taking them down. Tyler grabs her as she tries to follow Blake. She turns the mace on Tyler, but he strikes her wrist hard enough to knock it to the ground. She screams for Blake to run—knowing he ran Division 1 track and has a chance—and he flees with the recovering guards behind him. She shouts a warning to the wider crowd. Police whistles and shouted orders begin echoing through the tunnels as the raid commences.

Tyler drags her through the stampede, shielding her from the crushing crowd, then pulls her into a narrow side passage. When she screams for help, he draws a gun and orders her forward. They navigate in near-total darkness until Stella’s hand finds a concealed grate, which Tyler opens. He shoves her into a filthier adjoining tunnel. When she demands to know why her parents’ employees were invited, he offers nothing. She accuses him of lying to her throughout their entire arrangement. He smiles and says that the name Theo Strickland is not even his real one. Stella realizes she is trapped underground with a dangerous stranger whose true identity—and true purpose—she does not know.