The Hoodlum

In a visceral plummet from gilded privilege, capricious heiress Angela Vanning witnesses her opulent universe evaporate overnight when her financier father's empire collapses into bankruptcy. Cast adrift in the unforgiving concrete wilderness of New York's Lower East Side tenements, the debutante's silk gloves fray against the grime of survival. Her reluctant metamorphosis begins in flophouses reeking of desperation, evolves through perilous encounters with lecherous pawnbrokers and razor-wielding gangsters, and crystallizes in a rat-infested garment factory where exploitation stains the very air. Each squalid alleyway and broken windowpane becomes a brutal instructor in humanity's raw underbelly, forging Angela's transformation from porcelain ornament into steel-nerved survivor—until a chance entanglement with Ralph Lewis' charismatic but morally ambiguous racketeer forces her to confront whether salvation requires becoming the very predator she once feared.