The opening episode of "Sara: Woman in the Shadows" unfolds with a gripping scene where Sara Morozzi, a former intelligence officer, accidentally runs over a pedestrian on a rain-slicked night. Just days prior, she is summoned by her former colleague, Di Blasio, to a hospital where she is tasked with the heart-wrenching duty of identifying the body of her estranged son, Giorgio Alberti.
At the hospital, Sara scrutinizes Giorgio's lifeless form and his personal effects, a somber task as she realizes how little she knows about him. Di Blasio then introduces her to Silvani and Fregoli, the officers tasked with solving the mystery. They inform her that Giorgio was struck by a vehicle while walking his dog outside his residence. Ludovico Terzani, the driver who rushed him to the hospital, soon enters the picture.
Sara meets Ludovico, a physician by profession, who recounts the harrowing accident. According to Ludovico, Giorgio was engrossed in his phone and suddenly dashed into the path of his car, presumably distracted by a text message. As Sara journeys to the accident site, haunting flashbacks resurface of the day she abandoned her husband and young Giorgio, painting a picture of a fractured past.
Upon arriving at the scene, Detective Pardo calls Di Blasio, voicing his dissatisfaction with Sara's involvement. However, Di Blasio urges him to cooperate for the sake of the investigation. Pardo assigns Musella to keep a close eye on Sara while he interviews Giorgio's girlfriend. During this tense moment, Sara mentions that Giorgio's phone is missing from his belongings. To her surprise, Musella already has it, having not yet submitted it as evidence. Recognizing an opportunity, Sara respectfully requests to examine the phone, and Musella, swayed by her plight, grants her this small concession.
Sara, with a discreet move, slips the SIM card from its compartment and discreetly returns the phone to Musella. Soon after, she encounters Giorgio's pregnant partner, Viola, accompanied by her mother. Both women harbor resentment towards Sara for leaving Giorgio behind. Sara initiates a conversation with Viola, inquirying about Giorgio and discovers that he was employed at the Naples Biochemical Research Department.
As Sara reconnects with her former colleague, Teresa, she is transported back in time by a vivid flashback to her recruitment by Massimiliano into a clandestine agency dedicated to combating terrorism. She entrusts Teresa with the SIM card, requesting her to extract its contents. Teresa, in turn, enlists the help of a fellow agent to potentially hack into the phone company's database and retrieve every bit of information stored on the cloud, should it be necessary.
The agent expresses dissatisfaction with the magnitude of work involved, but Teresa reassures her, hinting at a colleague who possesses the remarkable ability to decipher conversations merely by reading lips. She reveals that although Sara may think she has severed ties with the agency, Teresa knows otherwise. Later, Teresa Pizza personally delivers the gathered information to Sara's hotel room, accompanied by a text message noting that some details are pending but promised to arrive soon.
The following morning, Sara ventures to Giorgio's workplace. Utilizing her exceptional lip-reading skills, she gleans that Giorgio's supervisor, Andrea, is scheduled to meet with Colonel Prati to discuss assuming Giorgio's role. Though their conversation yields limited information, Sara persists and tails Andrea to his meeting with Colonel Prati. Andrea proceeds to an army base, a location Sara is unable to pursue directly. However, she cleverly locates a vantage point where she can observe and read their lips from afar.
Later, Teresa arrives in Sara's room, armed with fresh intelligence. She reveals that Giorgio had been a daily visitor to an abandoned NATO base, yet notably absent on the day of his demise. They suspect he may have uncovered something fatal, leading to his tragic end. Sara updates Teresa on her ongoing investigation, only to be instructed to step back by Teresa, who warns that entanglements with the military could complicate matters further.
Determined to uncover the truth, Sara seeks out Viola once more and requests access to his work files. In a serene park, as they peruse the documents, they unexpectedly encounter Pardo, who informs them that the official investigation has ruled Giorgio's death a suicide. Viola fiercely disagrees, recounting how Giorgio had asked her to procure a movie for their evening, anticipating his return from their dog's walk.
Elsewhere, Teresa indulges in a intimate encounter with Sergio, an operative tasked with surveillance on government official Tarallo. The following day, Sara embarks on a clandestine mission, infiltrating the military base and Colonel Prati's office. There, she discovers a key eerily reminiscent of one she had previously seen among Giorgio's possessions. Just as Colonel Prati enters the room, Sara narrowly escapes the premises with Teresa's timely assistance.
Confiding in Teresa, Sara unveils all she has uncovered and entreats her to procure the key from the evidence locker. Sergio, loyal to his task, delivers the key to Sara, but his dedication comes at a price—he is ambushed and abducted by masked figures in a white van.
Sara pieces together the puzzle, revealing that the house was, in fact, a clandestine love den for Colonel Prati and Giorgio. Their affair had spanned several months until Prati, diagnosed with an illness and with Giorgio on the brink of fatherhood, decided to end it. Prati confesses to a rebound romance with Ludovico Terzani, her physician, a brief yet suffocating liaison she entered for a sense of security amidst turmoil.
With the truth unveiled, Sara can finally bring the case to a close. Though Giorgio's death was undeniably a homicide, not suicide, it transpires to be a simpler tale of jealousy-fueled murder, devoid of grand conspiracies. That fateful night, driven by a stolen vehicle, Sara intentionally strikes Ludovico, an act captured on some unseen lens.
