 Alice Mancini, the young German wife of the Italian ambassador in Berlin, Mario Mancini, unexpectedly meets her husband s younger brother Vittorio who is presumed dead. Vittorio makes several mysterious references to the fate of Mario s first wife Alma, who apparently committed suicide ten years previously. Her curiosity aroused, Alice starts doing some research - but gets no answers either from her husband or his family. Several warnings later, when Alice still won t stop digging up the past , she suddenly finds herself the subject of an evil and complex intrigue: she is suspected of murder, and is forced to flee. Her only chance is to uncover the whole truth. Her exciting and adventure-filled flight into the past takes her from Berlin to Hamburg, Ireland and finally Florence, straight into the powerful Mancini family. There, with Vittorio s help, she discovers what Alma was concealing from her: her husband had an incestuous relationship with his mother, and his youngest brother Alessandro was the child resulting from the relationship. The influential family decided to hide this secret at all costs for fear of scandal. Shortly before the Mancinis manage to dispatch Alice to an institution in the same way they did with Alma, Alice begins to collect information that proves her innocence and heralds the fall of the House of Mancini. Alice and Vittorio are free from the shades of the past, and free to begin a new life.