Francesca Felizzi, former mistress to the Duke of Ferrara, is now an aspiring courtesan in Naples.  Astonishingly beautiful and ambitious, she revels in the power she knows she wields over men.  But when she is visited by an inexperienced young man, it becomes horribly clear to Francesca that despite her many admiring patrons, she has never been truly loved. 
Suddenly, her glittering and sumptuous life becomes little more than a gaudy facade. 
And then another unexpected encounter brings with it devastating consequences that plunge Francesca and her two young daughters into the sort of  danger she has dreaded ever since she began to work the streets all those years ago.