Adora returns to her office at the Lockwood Library, half-expecting a romantic message from Digby. An old rotary phone on the wall rings, startling her. Assuming the caller is Digby, she answers flirtatiously. The voice on the other end, however, is Celine Montfort’s. Celine asks Adora to come to her guest suite for a private conversation.

Adora heads to the Lockwood residence to meet Celine, taking the underground tunnel that connects the library and the house. Through a large window, she sees into “the Laundry,” the art storage facility. It is unusually dark and empty except for four large wooden crates, which she assumes contain the Boy With Apple statue. Suddenly, the lights come on, revealing the curator, Ravi Bhardwaj, with two men and an unknown woman. They are moving a large, covered machine.

Adora quickly continues to the residence, noting that flags are being raised for an evening dinner party for guests from France and India. When she arrives at the guest suite, Celine is waiting. She immediately observes Adora’s lovesick state. Adora uses Stoic principles to manage her sudden fear.

Inside the guest suite, Celine Montfort confronts Adora, stating she saw the obvious romantic connection between Adora and “David Beale” when they emerged from the closet. She correctly guesses that Adora knows nothing about him. Celine reveals her theory that Digby seduced Adora to gain access to the Lockwoods.

Celine explains that immediately after her meeting with Digby, Layla Lockwood canceled their art deal. She concludes that Digby must have sabotaged it. Celine then blackmails Adora, threatening to tell the Lockwoods that Adora enabled Digby to act out his plot unless Adora convinces Digby to reverse his actions. She demands Adora tell Digby to back off so her deal with Layla can proceed as planned, adding that Digby will be well-compensated for his trouble.

Adora rushes to the Lowell Hotel and confronts Digby, who has prepared a romantic welcome. She angrily demands to know who he is. He evades her questions with vague statements about a high-stakes negotiation involving “Western civilization.” When Adora mentions Celine Montfort, Digby becomes serious and insists she deliver Celine’s message. Adora refuses, deciding to draw an ethical line.

He mocks her Stoic lifestyle, and she accuses him of despising her. He offers to tell her everything if she will “join” him, but she refuses. He tries to manipulate her by saying she’s afraid of the risks, but she is unmoved. When she reminds him he said he loved her, he dismisses the word’s meaning, confirming her fears that his feelings weren’t real. He grabs her wrist, raises it to her eyes, and references her “Amor Fati” tattoo, declaring himself her fate. For a moment she is tempted, but when his grip loosens, she shoves him and leaves.

Furious with herself, Adora leaves the hotel and uses Stoic principles to calm down. She intends to take a cab to the Lockwood Library, but once Digby’s cab heads uptown toward the Library, she changes her own destination to her apartment building, the Ansonia, successfully losing him. On the way, she resolves to avoid impulsive action. She receives a series of texts from her daughter, Viv, and agrees to meet her at the Fairway market.

While shopping with Viv at Fairway, Adora’s phone repeatedly rings with calls from Digby. Back at the Ansonia, Viv spots a large vase of peonies—Adora’s favorite flower—on the mail desk, addressed to her. Realizing Digby knows where she lives and may be waiting inside, she quickly ushers Viv into a secondary elevator to avoid the main lobby. To escape the situation, Adora impulsively suggests a trip to Connecticut to visit her mother, Phyllis. As they exit the elevator, their grocery bag rips open, and Adora tells a distracted Viv that she must leave her phone at home for the trip.

Adora and her daughter Viv arrive at the Connecticut home of Adora’s mother, Phyllis, who is already in bed. While cooking dinner, Adora sees she has missed a call from Ravi Bhardwaj. She reads the flawed text transcription of his voicemail, which misinterprets his panicked gasps as laughter, making his message about an “ethical dilemma” seem strange but not urgent. After making cookies and saying a brief goodnight to Phyllis, Adora and Viv settle onto air mattresses to watch a movie. Adora gets up to take the cookies from the oven and uses a Stoic exercise to distance herself from her emotional turmoil over Digby. She returns to find Viv asleep and lies down beside her, feeling a deep maternal love.

The next morning, Adora’s narcissistic mother, Phyllis, gives Viv unwanted dating advice, throws out the cookies they baked, and makes it clear she wants to eat lunch alone. To cheer Viv up, Adora takes her to a church parking lot for a driving lesson. There, Viv confronts Adora about her recent strange behavior. She is scared and reveals she knows Adora has been staying at a hotel.

Viv then confesses that she looked through Adora’s purse and read Digby’s letter to Layla Lockwood. She says the note read that Digby know about an arms deal. Adora is shocked, recalling the Lockwood family’s history with weapons manufacturing. When Adora questions if Viv read the cursive correctly, Viv accuses her of gaslighting and reveals she took a photo of the letter. Realizing she needs to see it, Adora decides they will return home immediately.

Back at their apartment, Viv shows Adora the photo of Digby’s note, confirming Viv’s statement. Adora is still in disbelief. Soon after, someone begins banging on their door. A frightened Adora arms herself with a baseball bat but opens the door to find Blanche Falk, a landscape architect, with her contractor, Dorris. Adora asks Blanche if Ravi was at a recent dinner party; Blanche says he was a no-show. After they leave, Adora calls back an unknown number that has been trying to reach her and learns it is a Benjamin Moore paint store.

Adora goes to the Benjamin Moore store, where she discovers an upstairs design studio. A man named Scott greets her by name. Adora notices he is wearing a ruby ring identical to Ravi’s and realizes he must be Ravi’s husband. Scott explains that he has been trying to contact Ravi, who texted that he had been called out of town for work. He asks Adora to pass on a message for Ravi to call their surrogate on her birthday. When Adora asks how he knew who she was, Scott says Ravi complimented her style.

On the street, Adora tries to connect the dots. She wonders if Boy With Apple is code for an arms deal that Ravi discovered in the crates. Recalling his strange voicemail, she realizes she only read the transcript. She plays the audio and hears Ravi’s terrified voice saying he is afraid. She deduces that the laughing sounds the transcript recorded were actually the double rings of the Lockwood Library house phone—Celine calling Ravi as he was leaving the message. She concludes that Ravi has not been heard from since that call.

Adora brings Dante, the doorman from her building, to the Lockwood Library’s security office to review surveillance footage from the previous day. They watch a video of Ravi and an unknown woman in the art storage area. In full protective gear, the woman takes samples from the four open crates. Later, she hands Ravi a piece of paper, and his expression becomes fearful as he reads it. After the woman leaves, the footage shows Ravi on his cell phone, looking terrified. He hangs up and then picks up the house phone mounted at the top of the stairs; the timestamp reads 6:12. He speaks frantically into it while banging the paper against the rail. Dante suggests there is a way to find out what Ravi said.

In a taxi, Adora reviews the facts, trying to remain objective despite her unreliable sources. A breaking news report on the taxi’s TV announces emergency closures of New York City museums due to a credible threat from a terrorist group called QUANDO. She learns the group, which demands the repatriation of stolen art, recently bombed the British Museum. The new threat targets museums with Middle Eastern and Mediterranean artifacts. The news connects the bomb threat with the arms deal, in her mind, and she fears she has been complicit in the Lockwoods’ illegal activities. She runs to a nearby dog run to find help.

Adora finds the dog walker, Ziggy, at a dog run in Central Park. Following Dante’s suggestion, she asks Ziggy, who can read lips, to watch the surveillance video of Ravi’s phone call. Ziggy tells her that Ravi was talking to a woman about her father’s reputation in relation to the Nazis and the Mona Lisa. The conversation then shifted to “arms” and “C-Four.” Ziggy identifies C-4 as a plastic explosive. Adora connects the Nazis, the talk of reputation, apples, arms, and C-4, all pointing to the shipment sitting at the Lockwood Library. She feels it is her purpose to act.

Two days later, on a Monday morning, Adora teaches the Lockwood boys about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, explaining how people can prefer comfortable illusions to painful truths. When she asks the boys if they would rather live in the real world or the metaphorical cave, they choose the cave, leaving her feeling defeated. Her lesson is cut short by a text from someone named FL stating they are there. She has been awaiting this signal. She ends the lesson and gives the boys a heartfelt hug, sensing it may be their last.

Adora walks to the Lockwood Library as police cars arrive. A disheveled Digby intercepts her, begging her to stop, but she confronts him about his arms deal note and enters the building. Inside, she meets FBI agent Faye Lowenstein, whom she had visited the previous day, laying out everything she knew and agreeing on a plan. They rush to the basement to find the crates, but the art storage area is empty. A frantic staff member, Hannah, informs them the crates were moved to the garden for an unveiling and that Ravi was given the day off.

In the garden, they find a chaotic scene of law enforcement surrounding the empty crates. Already standing on the plinth is a marble statue of a boy with tight curls holding an apple. Faye points to the labels on the empty crates: C1, C2, C3, and C4. Celine mockingly clarifies that “Caisse numéro quatre” is French for “Crate number four.” Faye informs a devastated Lionel Lockwood that they acted on a credible tip about C-4 plastic explosives, and she indicates Adora was the informant. Layla confronts Adora, snarling that she betrayed their family.

Adora is fired and given five minutes to clear her office under the watch of a security guard, Tony. Looking at her awards and mementos, she decides to take only a drawing her daughter Viv made for her as a child. As Tony escorts her to a waiting car, she sees Digby across the street. Overwhelmed with the realization that she lost everything for him, she drops Viv’s picture, shattering the glass. She runs across traffic and attacks Digby, screaming and beating his chest until Tony and a bystander pull her away.

In a daze, Adora returns to her apartment building. The doorman, Sam, notes that her hand is bleeding from the broken glass and gives her a manila envelope left by Digby. The unsealed envelope is upside down, and its contents spill onto the floor.

On the floor, Adora sees the yellowed pages of the NDA she signed 30 years ago after being assaulted by her boss, TJ Steele. With it is a letter from Evelyn Steele-Brown, TJ’s daughter, stating that David Beale contacted her and that she is formally releasing Adora from the agreement. A final piece of paper, a 1998 cover letter for the NDA, is signed “David,” and an appendix lists David I. Beale as the legal point of contact. Adora realizes Digby was the lawyer who drafted her NDA. The shock causes her to collapse.