As a newly minted assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Anna Curtis has already developed a thick skin to help her deal with the unsettling brutality she encounters daily with her overflowing stack of domestic violence cases. Yet when Laprea Johnson walks into Anna's life, battered by her boyfriend on the morning after Valentine's Day, there's something about this particular case that Anna can't quite shake, something that reminds the prosecutor of her own troubled past.