Sal Benedict has become one of the most powerful mob bosses of all time. He's an understated man who lives frugally with his wife. But he's also highly temperamental, and he's about to confront an issue that'll make him go through the roof.
Someone has kidnapped his son Johnny, a gifted young student at Harvard Medical School. The Irish mob has been taking family members of Italian gangsters for some time, but no one has been dumb enough before to sign their own death warrant like this. How will Sal get Johnny back, and fend off Thorson Kincaid of the FBI - with whom he's been playing a 'cat and mouse' game - at the same time? The feds want to put Sal behind bars, and they've chosen the worst time possible - for Sal, that is - to do it.