Travelling undercover with the criminal multimillionaire she is spying on, Sam comes face-to-face with Bernard Faroux, the Frenchman she seduced and betrayed in Tangier. He offers to tell her who tried to assassinate her, but only if she gives vital information to him instead of Byzantium.

A mysterious assassin tells Sam that he is trying to protect her from Hourglass, a conspiracy orchestrated by five multinational corporations. Sam's investigation of the conspirators takes her to a country estate where she had been years before - it was where she was taken as a child after her mother was murdered and she was kidnapped.