St. Petersburg, 1860. After a member of the imperial family is assassinated, Fyodor Dostoevsky meets one of the conspirators, who reveals that his comrades are planning another attack to the Tsar's life. Plagued by debts and struggling to finish his latest novel, Dostoevsky must act fast to call off the plot.

Pietro is a revered teacher, Teresa his brilliant and precocious student. Their affair is both illicit and tempestuous. After one fight, Teresa suggests that each tell the other a secret, one so shameful or shocking that were it to be made public, it would destroy that person’s life. Time passes, Pietro’s stature as a writer grows and his family settles into the comfort of a bourgeois life. But he is haunted by the possibility that Teresa may one day reappear and tear apart his world with the secret she knows.