New York, 1846. The beautiful Mrs Lucy Adams hurtles through the gathering storm on a freezing St Valentine's evening. She stumbles, terrified, into the headquarters of the newly formed NYPD, and copper star Timothy Wilde finds himself drawn into a thorny maze when she reports a horrifying robbery: her family, she says, has been stolen. Timothy is hardened to the injustices of life in the unforgiving city he's grown up in, but that doesn't mean he accepts them. The worst danger on the streets is the blackbirders: slave-catchers whose inhuman trade is not merely legal; it's law enforcement. Now Timothy, along with his wayward brother Valentine, is about to bring the fight right to the heart of the corrupt political machine he was hired to defend...