Pam Leighton is a smart, ambitious, and sexy aide to a handsome Washington lobbyist named John Duke. For the last two years, she's also been his lover. It's an open secret that his glamorous and social-climbing wife, Catherine, tolerates—to a point.

After the President nominates Duke for a cabinet post, Catherine sees her opportunity and delivers an ultimatum: either fire Pam or get ready for a very public, very ugly divorce. Duke's sharply honed political instincts tell him exactly what he needs to do. In one abrupt, brutal meeting, Duke ends the relationship and fires her from the job she loves. But Pam is not about to go quietly: A powerful New York publisher is offering her big money for what could be the ultimate Washington tell-all. But when people around her begin dying, Pam realizes that finishing the book may be a matter of life and death—her own.