Ben Archer (Jean-Claude Van Damme), club owner and gangster from Marseille, returns to L.A. after yet another job for the mob. But, he is tired and wants to get out. He wants to live a normal life with his son Nicholas and wife Cynthia.

Cynthia is a social worker for the INS working to prevent the organized flow of illegal Chinese immigrants into the USA. In a raid on a shipping vessel one night she finds a little girl, Kim, amongst the distraught immigrants and takes pity on her. She convinces her boss, detective Mac Hoggins, to take her home with her for the night and to her Chinese adoptive parents Tommy and Mamma Li, what she doesn't know is that Kim holds a danger to Cynthia and her family. She is the daughter of sun Quan (Simon Yam). Feared leader of the Chinese Triad. The man Kim saw murder her mother and the man she is running away from. Upon his arrival in L.A. Sun Quan finds out from Hoggins that kim is with Cynthia. Hoggins sis not who he appears to be. He helps Sun Qquan smuggle heroin into the country using the Chinese immigrants on the ships as mules. 

The next day while Ben is at work, his family is brutally murdered at the Li's restaurant by Sun Quan and his men. Only Kim and Nicholas, who were in the other room, manage to escape and run away. When Ben arrives at the restaurant he sees the men with guns leaving the restaurant and Andy Wang, a drug dealer partner of Sun Quan. After an exchange of bullets Ben runs into the restaurant to find his murdered wife he is inconsolable over her death.