Cris Armstrong has seen the atrocities of the world for as long as he can remember. With his innocence lost at such an early age growing up in the slums of Chicago's Black Belt, he is reminded of life's harshness daily. Learning to pickpocket at eight, coping with his mother's murder, and burying his first-born behind a whorehouse are all things he endures before his eighteenth birthday. With this chaos compounded by the arrival of his estranged father, the head of a Sicilian crime family Cris finds his place-in the Mafia. Under his father's guidance, he learns the ins and outs of the family business. He also gains the power to take on the culprit who ordered his mother's murder-his father's wife. For the Black Sicilian who was raised in a tenement, there's only one way to go... UP!