When the family of Micky Polletti, a top television executive, goes missing, Leone Scamarcio is called to investigate. Everyone, it seems - from premier league footballers to jilted starlets and cabinet ministers - has an axe to grind with Micky Polletti. What starts out as an investigation into Polletti’s countless affairs soon becomes an inquiry into how Polletti did business and the people he discarded along the way. Finally, Polletti’s finances attract Scamarcio’s attention, and he discovers that the drama commissioner has been granting favours to some very shadowy sponsors.

Like a swimmer trying to escape a riptide, Scamarcio comes to realise that this new inquiry threatens to bring him head to head with his father’s old lieutenant, Piero Piocosta. If he’s to survive in the police force, Scamarcio knows that he must find a way to get Piocosta off his back, once and for all. And find it quickly.

Reluctantly, he travels home to Calabria in an attempt to understand how powerful Piocosta has really become and whether he might ever be silenced. It’s a perilous journey, but one Scamarcio has to make if he’s to finally banish the ghosts of his past.