Detective Leone Scamarcio, the son of a former leading mafioso, has turned his back on the family business, and has joined the Rome police force. He may be one of the last honest men in Italy.

But when Scamarcio is handed a file of extremely compromising photographs of a high-profile Italian politician, and told to 'deal with it', he knows he's in for trouble. And when a young man is found stabbed to death in Rome, and a young American girl disappears on a beach in Elba, Scamarcio's job gets a whole lot more complicated.

Worst of all, every lead seems to implicate the prime minister - a multi-media baron, and the most powerful man in Italy. As the case spins out of control, and his own past catches up with him, Scamarcio must navigate the darkest currents of Italian society - only to find that nothing is as it seems, and that the price of truth may be higher than he can pay.