Washington D.C. A woman is found murdered in her own home; her throat slit, her corpse brutalised, subjected to the most appalling torture before she died. A piece of incriminating evidence leads to the swift arrest of a local drug dealer. Case closed. But local cop Jack Cassian has questions. The victim came from one of the city's wealthiest families. So why was she living in such a rough part of town? Why is her mother, the icily formidable Lydia Chapin, so hostile and unhelpful? Teaming up with the dead woman's sister, Sydney, to find the answers, Cassian's investigation leads him from the crack dens of the inner city to the country clubs and gilded offices of the nation's political elite. The answers lead only to further questions - and, before they know it, Sydney and Cassian are slipping deep into a labyrinth of money, power and deceit to uncover a decades-old conspiracy and could rock the nation. Can they survive long enough to learn the secrets of ...the Betrayed?