ANYONE IN NEW ORLEANS CAN TELL YOU WHAT MARDI GRAS IS ALL ABOUT: It's about letting your hair down, about catching beads during the parades, about laughter and crazy costumes. But they'll also tell you it's not just those things. It's also about glittering formal balls and parties, and is the social season for the elite. But after this year, Mardi Gras will never be the same. The Big Easy will be the setting for daring burglaries in the Garden District that net thieves millions of dollars in jewels, and for a scandal and tragedy that irrevocably changes the lives of many: Don Trahan, the young executive on a fast rise. Don will use anyone, any means, and stop at nothing to get what he wants. Right now, he wants in on a luxury condo development near the casinos in Biloxi, Mississippi. But money is a problem, until his wife, Trish, unwittingly drops the solution in his lap. He's always used his charm and sexual prowess to get what he wants from women, and now he begins a concerted effort to get Trish to do his bidding. He's showering her with love, and the smoldering sex she craves. He knows she'll eventually agree, and then he'll have everything, including Natalie, his French Quarter madam, to himself. Trish Trahan, whose mounting insecurities and depression make it all too easy for Don to manipulate her and convince her to steal information from Brenner Mortgage Company's files. There are thousands of lists of fabulous jewelry in those files, much of it owned by residents in the Garden District. After Don's concerted effort of showering her with love and the sex he has kicked up notch to sizzling, she agrees to give him the information. She gives him everything, the lists of jewelry, her love, her soul, and her neurotic need to keep him at her side. Gina Brandon, is Trish's best friend. While roommates, Gina's focused on her career as marketing director for a large New Orleans agency that insures many Garden District homes and jewelry. She's working on her MBA while Trish only wants a husband and children. They're total opposites, but closer than sisters. Gina sees Trish struggle with depression for years, but now that she's married to Don, she can do nothing to stop the emotional roller coaster that's spinning Trish out of control. Roger Dalcour, born and bred in a rough area of south Louisiana, but who is now the internationally known jewel thief that Don hires to carry out the Mardi Gras night burglaries. Graham Winstead, president of the company that insures much of the stolen jewelry, and who seems to have it all. But he's lived for years in a Garden District mansion with a wife who never loved him. Then he meets Sandra Ben...