For the past year, Nelly Sawyer has worked undercover as an investigative journalist. Her latest assignment thrusts her into the den of a dangerous vice lord: the so-called Mayor of Maxwell Street. Born in rural Alabama, Jay Shorey washed up on Chicago's storied shores and forged his own way to the top of the city's underworld, running Chicago's swankiest speakeasy. When Nelly's and Jay's paths cross, she recruits him to help expose the mayor. Trapped between the monolith of Jim Crow, the inflexible world of the Black upper class, and the violence of Prohibition- era Chicago, Jay and Nelly work together and stoke the flames of a love worth fighting for.