Styx. Her name is Styx.The name is the only thing she ever received from her birth mother, murdered before she could give her daughter anything else. At seventeen Styx knows exactly what she desires for her life: to become a member of The Family, the group of assassins by which Styx was raised. The Family consists of Mom and Pops, Styx’s adoptive parents, Popeye, Olive, Townie, and Hyde. The patriarch of The Family and Styx’s only living blood relative is The Grandfather. A ruthless and incomprehensible leader, all members of The Family understand that when The Grandfather “summons” responding to this request is not negotiable.
Styx finds herself summoned to The Grandfather’s home, discovering in his unforeseen absence an envelope left for her. According to the information within the entire Family will be dead in fourteen days.
840 hours. 50,400 minutes. Fourteen days. In fourteen days Styx's entire family will be dead. Mom. Pops. Everyone.
Styx will have killed them.
Propelled by fear and the knowledge that The Grandfather’s reach extends indefinitely, Styx escapes and begins her life on the run. She contacts the only person she believes can help her—Mom. Mom is placed as Styx’s mother by The Grandfather’s will alone; she sends Townie as a placeholder for herself while she chooses her own loyalty. While Mom seeks to find Styx to either help her or kill her, Pops, Styx’s adoptive father, searches for the rest of The Family, determined to protect Styx and keep to his original mission at all costs.
For all of Styx’s life she has been lead to believe her biological father is dead; now she must be certain. The Grandfather is a killer—he relishes it, sends his Family to eliminate without pretense or discrimination. There is no room for innocence in Styx’s Family. Styx desires to become an assassin to right wrongs, to make crooked paths straight—or does she? Without knowing her biological father Styx cannot know for certain whether her chosen profession comes from the desire for the elimination of evil, that which ruins souls, or the braying of the savage beast that drives The Grandfather—and the same savagery that is rumored to have destroyed her father--that flows through her veins.
Styx’s relationship with Townie and ultimately The Family is complicated by a series of missteps and betrayals, beginning with the knowledge that Townie killed her biological mother. Unbeknownst to her, Styx’s father is the long lost Sunday, the member of The Family gone rogue before her birth. Sunday’s desire for acquisition of The Family and revenge against his father drives him to the brink of destruction and out of hiding. Sunday constructs the game that The Family now plays and he intends to use Styx as the ultimate piece with which to barter. As The Family collapses around her and the date of their deaths draws near, Styx alone must decide before the end the distinction between that which makes family and that which makes blood.
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