Fifty million dollars is willed to the war child of a wealthy businessman who served in Vietnam—a child that no one in the man's family knew existed until the codicil to his will was read.

Renegade private detective Adam Bruno wonders how he—the street-smart son of a bookie—has come to be chosen by the aristocratic family to find the missing heir. Is the truth that they are counting on him to fail—so that they can keep the inheritance?

Bruno's investigation runs him smack up against the dead man's complex façade of secrets and deception. But as the secrets start to unravel, the witnesses turn up dead—and Bruno must race against time, and an unknown nemesis, to solve the secret and find the missing child, before his hidden enemy finds him.