Leonard Mears is a powerful and successful businessman with a hard heart. Ruthlessly presiding over his wife and children, he shuts them away from the outside world and brutally punishes them for any disoberdience. He is also a man with a dark secret; many years ago he forced his sister and her husband to bring up his illegitimate daughter as their own. And now that girl is a young woman; she has discovered the truth and is determined to seek out the father who abandoned her.