Aldo is a mystery/thriller/love story in which a brilliant and dangerous ideologue attempts to eliminate a university's genetics institute by holding the university's president hostage.

On the same day that Isabel Canto, associate director of Pembrook Atlantic University's Institute for Genome Modification, discovers she is pregnant with IGM post-doc Frank Marks's baby, Pembrook Atlantic University's president Mary Ellen Mackin receives a letter from "Aldo" threatening harm if she does not dissolve the institute and fire its director. Isabel recommends that Mackin refuse and not allow a terrorist to dictate what her faculty and students can research and discover, but this advice unwittingly sets off a chain of events that will change many lives forever—including hers.