Bio
Maxim Zelnick is a compulsive problem solver. If he wakes up facing Doomsday, he has it in a vice by breakfast and turning a profit by lunch. In the chaos of prohibition Chicago, he’s the eye of the storm. An accountant for organized crime, there’s no room in his head for a hot temper, that just overcomplicates things. He deals only in two currencies: money and violence. It’s all business. It didn’t matter to Zelnick that he was born poor, success was always going to be the outcome. As a butcher’s son, he got used to blood and bones from a young age and saw the direct relationship they had with earning a living. His was a head better suited for what he calls ‘real-world numbers’ and he dropped out of school young to hustle a floating dice game around the streets of Brooklyn. By sixteen, his enterprise had him earning more than his father, though he was just as reliant on the butcher’s knife. He began bookkeeping for the family business after noticing his father’s accountant was skimming their already meager profits. When the accountant disappeared Maxim drew the attention of a local criminal gang. Seemingly the Zelnicks were not the accountant’s only clients. With his handiwork leaving no trace of a body, and his obvious intellect talking around the local heavies, Maxim was offered a new job as an accountant for Murder Inc. The instructions were straightforward, cook the books and trim the fat from the organization. Zelnick excelled at both. Within a year his sharp eye had doubled their profits and sniffed out the dead weight, leaving no sign of a paper trail. Now, Zelnick’s at the top of his game, but for all his success, he remains tight-lipped about his business and values discretion. Still, he knows what he wants and Chicago is next on the chopping block. As far as he’s concerned, his new venture in this city is just another opportunity with ‘blank cheque’ written all over it.
