Following the suicide of an escaped sex slave who was about to be questioned by the police, Barker and Ellis are plunged into an undercover operation targeting Roman Petrescu, the head of a lucrative prostitution ring and the Harvard-educated son of the Romanian Consul General. As Barker works on the persona he will use to infiltrate the operation, Ellis sets out to endear himself to Salva Dobra, the enforcer Roman employs to oversee his illicit business. And as he poses as a customer at one of Roman's brothels in an effort to find a woman to help with the investigation, Ellis continues to resist pressure to cooperate with the investigation into his partner. Over Barker's objections, Ellis engineers a raid on the brothel that prompts a prostitute named Nadia to seek their help. As Barker and Ellis listen, she lays out not only how Roman transports women to the States to be sex slaves, but also the details of his involvement in selling Romanian babies – including her own – to American couples via black market adoptions. With Ellis offering to reunite Nadia with her son in exchange for her cooperation, Barker approaches Salva with a cash offer to buy into the business. But when Salva catches a small but crucial error in his cover story, Barker is forced to kill him. As Ellis continues to grill Nadia, Barker still cannot persuade Roman to agree to be partners, even after revealing that Salva is dead. To make it clear that he is not going away, Barker hijacks the next shipment of women being flown in from Romania. With the women as his bargaining chip, he then gets Roman to agree to a deal, unaware that the gangster is setting him up to be killed. But before Roman can unleash his thugs, he is caught in an ambush and brought face to face with an angry Nadia. Finally, though given the opportunity to recover her young son, Nadia realizes that the boy’s future lies with his new parents and not her. And though the feds renege on their deal to get Roman’s diplomatic immunity waived so that he can be prosecuted, Barker and Ellis find comfort in the news that he was murdered after returning to his homeland.
