Angelica Cassidy knows all about survival. Since running away at seventeen, she's danced on poles, been sawn in half on the magician's stage, and done some things that are better left unsaid. But her most brazen act by far was marrying Big Joey Vicetti, the head enforcer for the Scarpone crime syndicate. When her husband died in a car accident, Angelica took their son and fled Las Vegas, one step ahead of the Scarpones.Eleven years later, her nightmare past long behind her, Angelica is an upstanding citizen of Poplar Bluffs, with a thriving business and high hopes for her son, who seems destined for a major university baseball scholarship; until a name from her distant past sends a shock of foreboding and fear travelling down her spine.Antonio Scarpone—her husband's former boss—is facing federal trial for multiple racketeering indictments. As the aging Scarpone's world crumbles around him, he falls into mindless obsession, focusing on one failure, and the one person who alone knows about that failure: the beautiful, young Angelica that slipped out of his control all those years ago. With senility and prison looming, Scarpone is willing to sacrifice himself and his entire organization to ensure Angelica's death.