Detective Philip Dorian of the 17th Chicago Precinct is called to investigate the killing and mutilation of John Marquardt, an old former priest in the Albany Park neighborhood. After investigating the circumstances, he discovers that the victim was a former pedophile priest within the Archdiocese of Chicago and was accused of child molestation back in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Back in 1983, Cardinal John Brody accepts Fr. Marquardt’s voluntary resignation from the priesthood, on condition that a life insurance policy be taken on the former priest’s life, with the victim’s parish as the beneficiary where the abuse occurred, as ‘Penance to God’ for his life of sexual child abuse. Over the last thirty years, as many of these pedophile priests have been defrocked and lawsuits incurred, it has been discovered that the Archdiocese had taken out life insurance policies on a majority of these defrocked priests. With the accumulation of these numerous lawsuit settlements, the Archdiocese of Chicago is now nearly broke. Monsignor Joseph Kilbane, the Administrative Chief of Staff to the Cardinal, meets with Anthony ‘Little Tony’ DiMatteo, the head of a well known Chicago Mafia family, to find and hire a professional ‘hit man’, to kill and mutilate these former pedophile priests. The life insurance company has been paying the settlements to these parishes who are the beneficiaries of these life insurance policies. It has been later discovered that the parishes in turn, pay the money to the Archdiocese of Chicago, less a 30% fee which is paid to organized crime and a portion donated back to the parish. Monsignor Kilbane orchestrates this scheme and directs DiMatteo on which pedophile priests will be killed next. Olivia Laurent is a beautiful, smart brunette with an accounting and law degree from Northwestern University. She is currently the controller and the head of the accounting department at the New England Life Insurance Company. She puts together the pattern of these continuous parish payments on life insurance policies on these deceased priests, and goes to Detective Dorian for help. As they work together, they develop a romantic relationship as they both share their prior past experiences with pedophile priests and the Roman Catholic Church. Together, they investigate the serial killer’s patterns and begin tying this string of murders to the Mafia, the Archdiocese of Chicago, the Cardinal and later, the Vatican Church in Rome.