As her Christmas Eve wedding draws near, Jennifer is visited by an angel and shown what could have been if she hadn't denied her true feelings for her childhood best friend.
The story of Santo Bastucci, a local banker with a rare gift for memorizing numbers; he is unwittingly cast into the forefront of an aging wiseguy's bid for power, Manny "The Hand" Mistera. Santo is caught between the loyalty he has for his cagey father-in-law, Benny, his childhood friend, Basta, and his streetwise uncle, Matteo, the pastor of their Brooklyn church.
With his gangster boss on trial for murder, a mob thug known as "the Teacher" tells Annie Laird she must talk her fellow jurors into a not-guilty verdict, implying that he'll kill her son Oliver if she fails. She manages to do this, but, when it becomes clear that the mobsters might want to silence her for good, she sends Oliver abroad and tries to gather evidence of the plot against her, setting up a final showdown.