Nestled into the green hillside by beautiful Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, there is a dilapidated villa. Even in its current state of disrepair, those who find it know that there is something magnetic about the place. They imagine the villa in its prime surrounded by sculpted topiaries, white peacocks frolicking among sprawling cypress trees, and stone figures standing guard-a more prosperous and mysterious past. Diana Marshall, an American designer traveling in Italy in the hopes of finding inspiration after the death of her husband, is captivated by the structure. In the lines and shadows and secret places of the abandoned relic, she sees a chance to capture her passion again-for life, for art, for beauty. She throws all caution and sense to the wind and commits to breathing life into the grand old home. With the help of a cunning financier with an agenda of his own, she makes plans to give the abandoned structure a complete renovation. As the project progresses, tantalizing hints of the villa's past begin to emerge. Layer by layer, the residue of another lifetime dares Diana to dig deeper for the truth. Visitors to the villa bring morsels of information that, when pieced together, begin to tell a story of its involvement in the darkest part of twentieth-century history. As she learns more about the building's nefarious past and the reality of those former inhabitants, Diana begins to fear the worst.