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.

But when his largest portfolio company becomes entangled in a high-profile criminal scandal, Adrian is quickly cast as the villain. Blackballed, radioactive, and broke, he’s forced to return to the place he once fought to escape.

With nothing left to lose, Adrian launches a new kind of fund, one that promises outsized returns by rebuilding the neighborhoods he grew up in. It’s a bold idea. Maybe even a noble one. But when the only money willing to back him comes with conditions you can’t put in a contract, Adrian finds himself entangled with political fixers, violent operators, and power brokers who don’t operate under regulatory oversight and don’t forgive failure.

To rise again, Adrian must shed the mask, break the rules, and embrace the version of himself he’s tried to bury for decades, the side corporate America was never meant to see. But sometimes, survival means becoming the man they always feared you were.

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 fundraises, acquisitions, and partnerships, 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.