Cassidy St. Claire has known horror. At the age of five, while attending a secret meeting of weapons manufacturers and governments held beneath the Crystal Palace of London’s 1851 Great Exhibition, she saw her mother murdered by mercenaries. Not more than ten minutes later, her father was taken as well, shielding her from a grenade. Bloodied and broken, he died in her arms.

Now grown, the events of her past have steeled her into a dominating character. Cassidy took control of her father's weapons manufacturing business at the age of twenty-five and developed it into one of the Western world's foremost research organizations. She was at the forefront of transforming San Francisco from a frontier city to the glittering metropolis known as The Paris of the West. She's fraternized with royalty and peasants, warriors and brigands, thinkers and prophets. She has done more than live life; she has dominated it.