Dawn arrives in New York to study singing at the Bernhard School of Performing Arts - fulfilling her most treasured dream. However, escape from her past unhappiness at Cutler's Cove is not so simple: when the students' house supervisor, encouraged by the vindictive Grandmother Cutler, makes her life a misery, Dawn turns to her tutor, Michael - who seduces her, then disappears.

Once again Dawn finds herself in the power of Grandmother Cutler, a virtual slave and prisoner in the nightmare world she thought she had left behind - until an unexpected inheritance transforms her life.