Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer... The Old Man is dead. Langdon Elerbee-the chairman and founder of Elerbee Engineering-has been struck down by cancer, and the multi-million dollar company that bears his name has devolved into clandestine corporate infighting. The company president, Jeff Wylie, has kept the old man's illness a secret, so no one but Wylie is prepared to exploit the power vacuum created by Elerbee's death. Now, Wylie is quietly pulling strings and making backdoor deals to consolidate his own position at the top of the pyramid. Dave Paige is a young gun. A regional vice president at age forty-two, he's one of the company's rising stars. He believes in playing the game the way that Elerbee himself had played it: with loyalty, integrity, and a personal devotion to excellence. He suddenly finds himself going head-to-head with corporate backstabbers who will pull every dirty trick in the book to achieve their own short-sighted goals. Dave isn't just fighting for his job, or the millions of dollars at stake, or even for the company he has grown to love. He's fighting for the soul of corporate America, and no one is guarding his back.