Living in 1931 Shanghai, Rosalind is a young Chinese woman who was injected with a chemical compound that renders her impervious to injury, keeps her from aging, and eliminates her need for sleep. The only substance that can kill her is poison. She’ll always appear to be 19. As a result of her special abilities, Rosalind has been recruited by the country’s Nationalist party as an assassin. In this role, she uses the name Lady Fortune. Rosalind agrees to this arrangement because she’s racked with guilt for her part in betraying her family and getting many of them killed.

She was originally part of the feared Scarlet Gang that ruled Shanghai and battled for supremacy against the White Flowers, a powerful Russian gang that coveted the same turf. Rosalind’s disastrous romance with White Flowers’ Dimitri Voronin left the city in flames and most members of both gangs dead. As the novel opens, Rosalind is trying to make amends by killing the remaining White Flowers and serving the Nationalist cause to save China from outside influence. Although the need to atone for past wrongs drives her behavior, Rosalind can never completely even the score and feels perpetually inadequate.