Daddy, How Much for a Hug?

On her birthday, Stella tries to buy a small piece of cake with the dollar she earned collecting bottles, but her mother Victoria demands two dollars and calls it part of her training. Hungry, Stella spends the dollar on ten minutes of cartoons on her father Julian's phone, then sees a ten-thousand-dollar top-up for her adopted sister Evelyn. She leaves home alone and is lured away by a man offering free candy, food, and shelter.

The morning after Stella disappears, the family eats breakfast as usual. Julian and Victoria readily fund Evelyn's piano lessons with half a million dollars. Evelyn feigns surprise at Stella's absence, while her parents dismiss it as a tantrum. Only when housekeeper Doris returns with a tablet do they realize Stella is gone.

Victoria refuses to search for Stella, certain she cannot last a day without money. Julian orders Doris to clear out Stella's room and turn it into a dance studio for Evelyn, planning to rent her a basement storage room for five dollars a day. Meanwhile, Stella is blindfolded and taken to an abandoned factory, where trafficker Scar offers her a dog cage and food for free, and she calmly accepts.

Police call Victoria to identify Stella's backpack found outside the city, but she refuses, calling it a waste of time. At the station, Claire reads Stella's water-damaged notebook and, enraged by Victoria's cruelty, orders an immediate child abuse investigation.

Police demand Victoria's cooperation in Stella's disappearance, but she refuses and blames them. Claire orders her detained. Evelyn tearfully informs Julian. Meanwhile, Stella is sold to a stranger named Vera at the factory and asks only if she can eat for free at her new home.

Julian dismisses Stella's ledger entries as jokes and threatens to sue the police. Frank bursts in with news that Stella has been located at an illegal clinic on the west side, where a group was preparing to operate on her for organ removal.

On the operating table, Stella doesn't cry or struggle. She calmly asks organ trafficker Vera how much her eyes are worth, then offers to sell a cornea for $35,200 — the exact amount she needs to repay her parents for years of charges and finally be free of any debt to them.

Frank kicks open the operating room door to find only an empty, blood-stained table. The doctor says Stella woke under anesthesia, bit him, and jumped out the back window. Police find a plastic bag by the river containing a note and a bank card, in which Stella calculates her debt to her parents at $35,200 and leaves the proceeds from selling her cornea to pay it off, severing all ties.