Lea witnesses her mother's rape and murder by her father as a child and because of it speaks very little and writes poems to her mother. Lea then grows up with foster parents in a different part of Slovakia. Strehlow buys Lea, now aged 21, from her foster father and imprisons her in a castle in Germany, using the same tools Lea's father used to control Lea as a child and to kill Lea's mother. As Strehlow learns more of Lea's past, he permits her to continue writing to her mother. Lea dies of a stroke within a year of living with Strehlow.