Detective Lieutenant Kay Boyd, head of Boston's Organized Crime Task Force, saw her husband and children butchered by Boston's rising crime crew "The Family." Gambler junkie Joseph X. Null, a former low-level bagman for "The Family," was tortured by their chief enforcer until he lost his mind.

Due to an experimental therapy to bring him back from a mutilated, catatonic state, Null recovered everything but his humanity, remaining in effect a chemically reconstructed psychopath. A one-man killing machine now, his single-minded mission is to whack out "The Family" down to its last man. A conflicted Boyd is out to stop him, even though the Boston Police Department unofficially couldn't care less about "who takes out the trash."

Believing he's owed a debt, and having once been her CI, Null wants to recruit Boyd to help him destroy "The Family."

When Boyd lost her family, she became a functional alcoholic, unable to deal with her guilt and grief. Like Null, she too is maimed. Null and Boyd may be different from each other, but they're also exactly the same. "Dead survivors." And "The Family's ace hitman Theron "Thing" LeCoeur is out to remove the "survivor" part from their mutual equation permanently.