As a newly minted Assistant U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., Anna Curtis has already developed thick skin to help her deal with the unsettling brutality she encounters in her overflowing stack of domestic violence cases. Yet when Laprea Johnson walks into Anna's life, battered by her boyfriend, the case reminds Anna of her own troubled past. Then Laprea lies on the witness stand to free her boyfriend, and winds up dead on a trash heap.