Follows a witness protection officer who finds herself at the center of a breach; compromised by an extramarital romance with a coworker; but resolute in her resolve to fight back and unearth the real cause of corruption within her unit.

Maria Silvestri desperately tries to escape a man who is chasing her. The man is faster, he grabs her, drags her to the ground and is on top of her. Then, the darkness. Shortly afterwards two boys discover Maria's body. Leaning over her is a young man with a disturbing appearance: black clothes, disheveled hair, pale, dark-tinted lips. The boy flees but is captured shortly after, his name is Daniel Crawford. He is Maria's American cousin and for some months he had been living with the girl and her father, Bruno Silvestri.

A high-end DC madame enters witness protection with her teenage daughter after a violent incident with her partner.

Underworld boss Bernie 'Tenderness' Mellick is certainly paying a heavy price for maiming Ivor Wright in a firebombing. For Wright's men have now kidnapped his eleven-year-old son Graham. Senior Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and his brilliant, amoral superior ACC Desmond Iles must rescue the boy from the kidnappers before Tenderness takes his revenge in this adaptation of Bill James' novel Protection.