When Nick de Carteret meets Tselmeg Yusupov he doesn't know whether to love or hate the Oligarch (soon-to-be President) from Kuikbakhistan. All Nick does know, with the visceral certainty of an abused child desperate for validation, is that he needs to be the best - and rich.
Born in the gutter and driven to succeed, Nick left home as a teenager and began the single-minded,
uncompromising pursuit of anything and everything which could prove his worth, falling into the world of high finance and low politics.
Yusupov had chosen Nick, as an unscrupulous but successful financier, to manage his money profitably, unhindered by moral or legal trivia.
The two men are mirror images. Both suffered traumatic childhoods, and so have an irresistible urge to conquer the world, whatever the cost. But as their relationship develops into the most violent extremes, they begin to realise how high that cost could be, and the eternal truth that there is only ever room for one at the top.
