Dangerous Lies follows the lives of two characters: Jake Stern and Tina Davis. After losing his parents and sister in a fire, Jake is raised by his grandparents. As he goes from being a traumatized boy to exceptional student-athlete and finally to ambitious Assistant DA, Jake learns to hide a crippling fear behind a stony mask. Until she's thirteen, Bettina (Tina) Berenson is a shy bookish girl rejected by both parents. But her life radically changes when her father starts taking her to places that he enjoys frequenting ? racetracks, prizefights, nightclubs ? occasionally in the company of gangsters he admires. Reveling in the attention her striking beauty generates, he's oblivious to the potential danger to his impressionable daughter. Two years later, when he dies, Tina, a distraught lonely fifteen-year-old is easy prey for a charismatic crime-lord. Fate brings Jake and Tina together for the trial of a vicious mobster: Tina, former mob mistress, the key witness, and Jake, the prosecuting attorney, who envies her courage, is repelled by her past and is obsessed with her physical presence. But in order for her to testify, Jake has to keep her alive. Someone wants her dead.