Chicago criminal attorney Michael Prescott is in Rome, visiting his best friend, Monsignor Robert Cavalieri, a Special Diplomat to the Vatican. He is informed that Giovanni Cardinal Masellis, the "Mafia Cardinal", who was once the evilest cardinal in his day, has made a deathbed confession regarding the details of the poisoning murder of Pope John Paul I. His confession is secretly recorded by the Italian newspaper "La Repubblica" and their ambitious editor, Max Gianforte, who is desperately trying to confirm the Cardinal's deathbed revelations.
The dying Cardinal also reveals specific details regarding the circumstances of the Pope's death and the missing "Coins of Gregorio," which was a priceless gift donated by the influential Italian mobster Don Giancarlo Cesario on the night before his murder. This gift was an attempt to bribe and influence His Holiness in the Vatican investigation of the Banco Ambrosiano scandal that his family was involved. Meanwhile, wine master Marco DiVito, the former Vatican Head of Security in 1978, now oversees his vineyard near the foothills of Rome. He meets his long-lost daughter, Sienna, an investigative journalist with the Washington Post, whom he abandoned as a little girl in Boston. The Post has asked her to investigate "one of the biggest stories to come out of the Vatican in decades."
Michael Prescott meets Sienna at a local café and originally tries to temper her investigative efforts before falling in love. As rumors swirl around Rome after the death of Cardinal Masellis, Italian crime boss Calogero "Don Charlie," Cesario believes that DiVito, who may be the actual murderer, also possesses these missing, priceless coins. He is unhappy with the implication of his family in this Vatican Confession Scandal, revealing total corruption and instability of the Vatican Church. His search will only end with the return of these rare coins or DiVito's slow, painful death
