The Fund
The debut novel from Ugo Nwasike, a corporate attorney turned novelist, delivers an in-depth look into the rarefied world of private equity. Set at the explosive crossroads of high finance, organized crime, and politics, The Fund is a propulsive saga that shatters the illusion of clean money and asks just how far a man is willing to go to protect what he’s built.
Wall Street made him a beast.
The streets made him a man.
Now both want him dead.
Adrian Channing was never supposed to make it out. But he always had a talent for doing things he wasn’t supposed to do. From a blue-collar Pennsylvania town in long decline, he clawed his way into the rarefied world of global private equity. By forty, he was poised to become chairman of the world’s most powerful investment firm. It was a legacy he was building for his daughter as much as himself.
But when his largest portfolio company becomes entangled in a high-profile criminal scandal, Adrian is quickly cast as the villain. Blackballed, radioactive, and broke, he’s forced to return to the place he once fought to escape.
With nothing left to lose, Adrian launches a new kind of fund—one that promises outsized returns by rebuilding the neighborhoods he grew up in. It’s a bold idea. Maybe even a noble one. But when the only money willing to back him comes with conditions you can’t put in a contract, Adrian finds himself entangled with political fixers, violent operators, and power brokers who don’t operate under regulatory oversight and don’t forgive failure.
To rise again, Adrian must shed the mask, break the rules, and embrace the version of himself he’s tried to bury for decades—the side corporate America was never meant to see. But sometimes, survival means becoming the man they always feared you were.
about the Author
As a Black corporate attorney who has advised some of the world’s largest investment firms on multi-billion-dollar fundraises, distressed acquisitions, and high-stakes power struggles, Ugo has spent years at the intersection of money, ambition, and consequence. That experience shaped The Fund, his debut novel, which pulls from the realities he’s seen behind closed doors.
Ugo wrote this story to strip away the myth of effortless success in America and to highlight the pressure placed on underrepresented people who fight to build something lasting. Inspired by real events, The Fund follows what happens when big money collides with human flaws, and explores the thin line between wealth, poverty, and the ways private enterprise can empower or destroy communities.