Katya’s family ends up in an earthquake in Armenia. In the city of Leninakan, her home—where she lives with three children and an alcoholic husband—is completely destroyed. Katya flees south to the city of Mikhailovsk. She falls into a debt trap. Bandits demand Katya repay her husband’s debts, threatening to harm the children. They don’t know that in Katya’s past, her father was the one in charge of the city of Rostov—he’s killed, but before dying he manages to give Katya a ring that says she is the daughter of an authority.