Genoa, 1910. The Berillis are a wealthy and powerful upper-class family in love with their social status. Trouble begins when Giuseppe Berilli, the head of the family and the city’s most prominent lawyer, receives two threatening letters, is hit by a horse, and decides to ask the police for help. As Antonio Sobrero, Chief of police, digs into the Berillis’ past, their secrets begin to surface: A dead daughter is not dead, certain birth certificates are false. The tormented love story between Caterina Berilli, the daughter everyone thinks dead, and Ivano Bo, the son of a baker with a gift for music, is one of the catalysts for the events. The other is the greed of a respected citizen who sells children and kills in order to keep climbing the social ladder of the town. In the end, as one by one the Berillis violently or gently disappear, what survives them and stem from their ruins is the music Ivano  continues to play on his mandolin under the windows of Caterina's house. As he refuses to give up the woman he loves, she refuses to see him, convinced that he is responsible for the destruction of her family and that nothing can possibly restore her love for him. She underestimates, however, the power of music. One night, dazed by the notes of the mandolin and by Ivano’s beautiful voice, she walks up to him. The moment he sees her, he sings his secret song, a piece he composed especially for her and no one ever heard before.