The New York City underworld in the boomtown 1980s: land values are skyrocketing; new buildings are going up on every block; fortunes are being made overnight and extorted in the morning.

On the streets of Hell's Kitchen, both the Mafia and the feds are moving in on the construction rackets, for now in Irish hands. In the Irish mob's intensifying power struggle, an internecine war ignites in the back rooms and broad daylight of the neighborhood. At the center of the struggle are the Adare brothers: Paddy, a failed boxer turned mob henchman who never left the streets he grew up on; and Billy, a college graduate briefly working in the tunnels as a sandhog before entering law school to pursue the American dream brothers divided by everything but their powerful blood-tie.

Now, as their paths converge on familiar streets in a crossfire of greed, treachery, and violence, their loyalties to family, friends, neighborhood, and, most important, each other will be put to a brutal test.