When Olivia's husband Carlos begins having violent nightmares in which he leaps, fighting, from his bed and rampages through the house, her family's idyllic life in Lisbon is shattered. Things escalate when Carlos unwittingly injures Olivia and Leo, their seven-year-old son, and they can no longer hide the purple bruises staining their skin.

But what is causing the warm-hearted, gentle Carlos to have such explosive nightmares? While Leo retreats further into an imaginary world, it's a question that sends Olivia - desperate to protect her son and rescue her floundering family - into the depths of her husband's childhood, where she uncovers a secret so shocking it has held Carlos in its powerful grip for almost thirty years.