Luke Selmord, a young disgraced and heart-broken history professor, is sitting in his car on the California coast, contemplating suicide when he sees a woman being manhandled by a tough-looking guy. Luke intervenes and unintentionally kills the man. He discovers that he's entangled himself with sex-trafficking gangsters and blackmailers. He and Monika, the lovely Polish woman he rescued, join in a quest to save both their lives-his from despair, hers from Russian mafiosos-and they find something "more better than love.
Their story is entwined with that of Arthur Takemori, a retired military intelligence officer, whose loveless marriage drives him down dark passages in search of real love and the more meaningful-and exciting-life of his earlier years. They all meet up in an undeclared war in the gray area between justice and the rule of law.