There’s a boat on the river that don’t float by daylight. No records, no license, no name—just a trail of bodies and broken dreams drifting in its wake.
 
When a retired alderman is found drowned in the Illinois River with poker chips stuffed in his mouth and a winning hand stapled to his chest, the police call it suicide. The locals call it bad luck. But a grieving niece calls Black Love.
 
Pulled into a mystery that snakes from muddy riverbanks to backroom casinos lit by flickering floodlights, Black uncovers the truth behind the Queen of Hearts—a notorious illegal gambling boat that disappears before dawn and reappears when the stakes are steepest. The game? Rigged. The players? Ruthless. The pot? More than money.
 
At the table sit:
Rocco Viceñó Jr., heir to the Viceñó crime family and dealer of dirty chips and dirtier secrets.
Ezra Calloway, a crooked Illinois Gaming Board agent who calls himself a “consultant” and signs death warrants in red ink.
Alderwoman Nina Scales, dressed in legitimacy but backed by blood money—clean enough to shake hands at fundraisers, cold enough to bury bodies in landfill dirt.
 
But none of them run the boat. That title belongs to Kaliyah King V, better known in certain circles as The Queen of Spades.
 
She ain’t just another operator—she’s the legacy. Her great-grandfather and his brother ran street-corner craps games out of fried chicken shacks on the South Side back in the ‘50s. In the ‘70s, her mother pushed numbers and poker behind storefront churches with a Colt in her corset. By the ‘90s, her older sister had turned the family empire into a full-blown brothel, until a razor in a prison riot left her throat open and the throne vacant.
 
Kaliyah didn’t just inherit the empire—she turned it into a Fortune 500 criminal enterprise.
An illegal gambling app that runs smoother than anything out of Silicon Valley.
Politicians laundering campaign cash through phantom jackpots.
A handshake deal with the U.S. Coast Guard that keeps The Queen of Hearts floating safe in federal blind spots.
 
She’s carved her name into Chicago’s underworld with platinum nails and a pearl-handled pistol—and now, she’s cleaning house.
 
As the bodies stack up and secrets start leaking like bilge water, Black knows this ain’t just another job. It’s a war disguised as a game. A citywide scam built on loss, luck, and legacy. And he’s the only player dumb—or desperate—enough to sit at the table with nothing but his instincts and a short list of people left to trust.
 
But he’s been outnumbered before. Outgunned. Outlawed.
 
And he’s still here.
 
You don’t ever bet against the house. Unless you’re Black.
Always bet on Black.