Mayor Tom Kane sits like a spider at the center of Chicago's web of power; a web built on a covenant with the prople. They want to be led, they want disputes settled, jobs dispensed, and loyalties rewarded. If he achieves through deception and troubling morality, so be it. As long as he gets the job done, they look the other way. Yet despite being the most effective mayor in recent history, a degenerative brain disorder is ripping everything away from him. He can't trust his memory, his closest allies, or even himself. Kane's wife Meredith knows nothing. Theirs is a marriage of convenience. Kitty O'Neil, Kane's advisor, has her suspicions but stays silent. And Kane's political advisor Ezra Stone, a Yale graduate with a rough edge, remains questionless. Only Emma, Kane's estranged daughter, has a chance of learning his secret. This is going to be the toughest term yet for the Boss.