Dr. Hardwicke Zeus is a successful physician without a conscience. He cheats on his wife, degrades his mistress, stiffs his medical partners and defrauds insurance companies. Most problematic of all is his deep-seated misogyny, which he takes out on his female patients.

The medical board knows he drugged and raped Katherine two years before but is helpless to do anything about it. His current victim is sixteen-year-old Diane. Diane is intelligent and strong-willed, but she is also an unwed mother who at fourteen has given her baby away for adoption, has lost faith in her church, and is having trouble reconnecting with her only two friends.

Even as she cherishes her relationship with Dr. Zeus, Diane resists some of his sexual demands and finds it necessary as a matter of survival to lie to him about taking the drugs he prescribes for her. With a little help from a new friend, she gradually figures out that she is being used, and what to do about it.

New medical board investigator David Green is perpetually angry at the power of the rich to escape justice again and again. His frustration grows so strong it endangers not only the investigation of Zeus but also his future life with his fiancée. The real cause of his lifelong resentment, however, is hidden even from him.