Port Salem is ruled by the mafia, but above the mafia stand the Gifted—and the Moreau family are their kings. Vera Moreau, the family's only daughter, married a genteel neighborhood doctor three years ago and tried to live as an ordinary wife. When her sister-in-law is poisoned and her husband's leg is broken, she calls her semi-retired parents out of the shadows and destroys the upstart Santoro family in a single night. As he recovers, Vera learns her husband is no ordinary man: he is Adrian Valentine, the last survivor of the underworld dynasty that Don Marchetti massacred fifteen years ago—and everything that happened was Marchetti's trap to force him into the open. When Marchetti takes a hostage and sets a deadly banquet, Adrian rises from his wheelchair, awakens his bloodline power, and takes his revenge. In the end, Adrian refuses the Don's throne and returns to his clinic. Vera is expecting a child, and the two families share afternoon tea in the garden. To Port Salem, the Moreaus are gods and nightmares; to Vera, they are home.
