Christmas is coming and the Mantelli family is ready to spend it together but Alice, mother and wife, is afraid her marriage could end because the spouses are too deep into their routines so she decides they should go on a vacation.
Hoping to entrap Maria von Gall, who runs a courageous underground railroad for Jews in France, the Nazis kidnap her son Thomas, a brilliant 11-year-old chess master. An exchange arrangement goes awry and he sees her die in a hail of bullets; but he is rescued by his American father, whom he has never met before, and who plans to flee with him to Spain. However, Queen Maria had solemnly entrusted her little pawn Thomas with a precious secret and a terrifying mission, and it was time for him to move. A pawn may become an important piece by slowly, quietly advancing all the way through the enemy's ranks. Or a pawn may die trying. Retreat is what a pawn can never do.
Carlo breaks up with his girlfriend and takes refuge in the house of Gigi and Alice Fumagalli, who has just left her job to be a homewife without telling her husband.
Gigi and Alice are married when they rear-end a young couple: she's about to give birth so Gigi and Alice take them to the hospital and then find out the young couple don't have a lot of money so they decide to help them financially.
