Inspector Çetin Ikmen and forensic pathologist Arto Sarkissian have been friends since childhood, and their work together in Istanbul's criminal justice system has only served to cement their friendship. When they're both called to a flat to investigate the death of a twenty-year-old, there is no reason to think their relationship will alter. The case, however, is a strange one.

Ikmen learns from the neighbours that they have never seen the man enter or leave the flat. The only visitor they're aware of is a solitary, well-dressed Armenian. Stranger still is that the limbs of the body are withered, and the victim seems to have been kept prisoner inside a gilded cage.

What is it that's making Ikmen's old friend Arto, himself an Armenian, especially uncomfortable about the case?