After she nearly ruins her family with an awful misstep, Elena Spira is delivered to Venice to flee disgrace and to atone by caring for the ailing Samuel Farber. However the crumbling and decaying Ca’ Basilio palazzo, where Samuel is ensconced, retains tragic secrets, and small does Elena understand how profoundly they will impact her. Soon she starts to sense that she is getting viewed by something. So when Samuel begins to have hallucinations that produce him violent and unpredictable, she can’t refuse she’s in mortal danger.

Then impoverished nobleman Nero Basilio, Samuel’s closest friend and who owns the palazzo, arrives. Elena finds herself entangled with both males in a global where in fact the past seeps into the present and nothing is as it appears. As Elena struggles to discover the haunting truth before it destroys her, a dark push seems to keep Samuel and the Basilio in thrall-is it madness, or something more sinister?