Clean hands don't build empires.

Adrian Channing was never supposed to make it out. But he always had a talent for doing things he wasn’t supposed to do. From a blue-collar Pennsylvania town in long decline, he clawed his way into the rarefied world of global private equity. By forty, he was poised to become chairman of the world’s most powerful investment firm. It was a legacy he was building for his daughter as much as himself.

Then his biggest investment explodes in a criminal scandal. Blamed for the fallout and blackballed from the industry, Adrian returns home broke and radioactive. To rebuild his career, he launches a new kind of fund focused on rebuilding the neighborhoods he grew up in. Unfortunately, the only investors willing to back him are the same criminals who ruined his career in the first place.

Set at the explosive crossroads of high finance, organized crime, and politics, and told through multiple first-person perspectives, The Fund is a propulsive saga about the choices that shape us and the impact they make on the people we love and the communities we claim to serve.

Ugo Nwasike is a Nigerian-American corporate attorney and entrepreneur who has spent years advising global private equity firms on multibillion-dollar transactions, as well as the quiet mechanics of corporate scandal. Inspired by real dynamics he helped navigate, The Fund is his debut novel.

*Please note: this novel contains strong language and depictions of violence consistent with the crime thriller genre.