August 6th, 2026
Meanwhile, in an almost dark room. Its location is unknown in Cremont City.
12:13 AM
The room sat three levels beneath an old monastery, a circular chamber lit only by guttering candles and a fractured crystal chandelier, its black-marble floor swallowing the light. A ring of leather chairs faced a raised velvet throne; rifles and holsters glinted in the candlelight, crates stamped with faded shipping marks lined the walls, and a mural of a bleeding black cross dominated one side. On a long table lay the tools of ritualized violence, knives, stencils for burning marks, coils of rope and iron crosses, all arranged with the calm of liturgy. At its centre, silence was law.
A great crystal chandelier hung low, its prisms fractured and uneven; it caught the candlelight and spat a thousand thin stars across the black-marble floor. Between the glitter and the smoke, the ceiling and the far corners dissolved into a velvet of shadows.
Under the chandelier's fractured light the cellar looked like a chapel built for the condemned.
Candles pooled in iron braziers, their flames trembling as if afraid to speak. Smoke threaded the room in slow ribbons; each exhalation of tobacco and cheap vodka tasted faintly metallic, like coins dropped into a grave. Men in long black coats stood in a loose ring, shoulders squared, fingers warm on triggers. On the backs of their coats, stitched in a crude, defiant white, was the mark that had become a rumor in every back alley and dive in Cremont: a simple black cross. Chyornyy Krest - the Black Cross.
The Black Cross. A post-soviet crime organisation that had arrived in Cremont one year ago. The Black Cross was born in the dying embers of the Soviet Union - a brotherhood of ex–Spetsnaz soldiers, black-market priests, and war orphans. Their creed began as a warped interpretation of divine justice. They believed that "God abandoned the world, so men must become His punishment."
They marked their victims, corrupt officials, traitors, rivals , with a black cross carved into the flesh before execution. Over time, their faith twisted into something ritualistic and pseudo-religious. Their murders are conducted like sermons, complete with incense, candles, and hymns.
They see themselves not as criminals but as divine executioners, purging sin from the world through violence.
At the exact center of that circle, as if gravity bent toward her, sat a woman in a chair so ridiculous in its opulence it could only have been stolen from a palace: a high-backed velvet throne with carved lions on the arms. She did not look like a leader who needed to shout. She looked like a verdict.
Vera Morozova, also known as "The Silent Saint", the leader of The Black Cross, reclined with the sort of ease rich people reserve for dinner guests. Silver-white hair fell around her shoulders like frost. Her skin was the pallor of harvest moonlight; her cheekbones were sharp, precise as chisels. And her eyes… her eyes were not the dull gray of men who had seen too much; they were violet, and in them sorrow and a crazed brightness warred like two moons. They fixed on the room with calm, absolute attention, and everyone who met that gaze felt the sensation of being inventoried.
Her mouth that should have spoken commands was a terrible map of violence: crudely sewn with black thread, the pale seam a black smile, and a jagged slash from cheek to cheek like a wound reopened. Whoever had tried to silence Vera had only carved her legend into the world.
She did not need to speak. Words left her mouth in small gestures, in the tilt of a shoulder and the way she allowed a fingertip to rest against the arm of her chair. Where her voice might have been, there was only the slow, steady hum of devotion, or fanaticism, from the men gathered around her.
Beside her stood the only man who could translate that silence into action: Yuri Antonov, broad-shouldered, with a shaved head and a face like a quarry. He was more than interpreter; he was translator of intent. When he moved, the room obeyed.
A man with hair greased back, knuckles white from too many fights, let the impatience he'd nursed for hours spill out. "We wait too long," he spat in Russian, bitterness like a whetstone in his words. "We should leave. If she would not bother appearing, we go back to blood and the street. Breath wasted here is breath not used."
Vera's violet eyes flicked to him. The rest of the room stilled, the way a forest falls silent when a predator is near. The man's bravado crumpled as if the stitches across her lips were a live wire. He took two steps forward, face reddening with the need to argue, to insist he was right.
Vera moved with a speed that betrayed her porcelain posture. In a single motion, a hand like a blade, she had him by the throat. No flourish, no theatrics. The chair didn't creak. The man's protest choked into a crumb of sound as her fingers tightened. The room's air thickened.
Yuri knelt slightly, face open like a ledger. "A patient crime organization is a successful crime organization," he said in the language everyone still knew, English, except for the low Russian that kept the men between themselves. His voice was oddly jocular, like someone commenting on the weather.
Vera held the man's throat until his eyes rolled white with panic. Her violet gaze threaded into him like a needle. He tapped her wrist, shaking, words stuttering out of him in conviction and fear. "Sorry. Sorry, Mat' Vera. Sorry for being impatient." He whispered it like a prayer.
Yuri's lips moved in soft translation, then he chuckled. He looked at Vera, a smile without mirth. "He begs forgiveness. He is small and loud and stupid. Enough, Mat' Vera?"
Vera released him in the same still move she had used to take him. The man sagged to the floor, breath ragged, fingers clawing at his own neck. The men around them exhaled as if a held-in wind had been released. No man in the room laughed. None spoke.
"You were forgiven," Yuri intoned to the kneeling man, his voice steady, a priest who could deliver absolution or sentence. His eyes flicked to the chain of men. "Now, we wait for her."
The first seconds after release were an ache of air. Men shifted on their boots. In the quiet, Vera's fingers found the edge of the armrest and brushed it as if rediscovering a seam in a favorite garment. She leaned forward a degree, just enough.
A sound, the far door groaned. Footsteps passed through a corridor. Someone entered. A slice of light washed the far wall. Instantly, hands went to weapons. The Russians were quickly alerted. They quickly drew their weapons, as if they were ready to fire upon a rain of bullets.
Yuri lifted his left hand, palm out. A small, lower, practical gesture, and his voice no longer lightly jocular but tight with command: "Now. Keep your weapons lowered. We do not start a war in the Castellan house. We are not fools. If they come seeking aid, we weigh them as we would weigh anything - in silence and calculation."
Three men at the door advanced with measured steps. White suits cut the dimness like knives. Ivory cuffs showed at wrists, and each man wore white lilies, a pale, sickly bloom folded into cloth, like a funeral pressed into fashion.
At their head walked a man who looked like sin in evening wear. He moved as if the room had been carved for him. Snow-white hair, slicked back; a beard, neat as a promise; eyes like a northern sea in late winter, blue, hard, and cold. He wore a black coat unbuttoned, and a thin line of red at his throat spoke of blood kept close. His men flanked him, statues who could kill and still hold a glass.
The Italian mafia..
La Morte Bianca emerged from the ashes of an old Sicilian syndicate that collapsed in the late 20th century. They resurfaced under a new banner, reborn not as common gangsters, but as purifiers. They believe death, when executed elegantly, is an art form. They've arrived shortly in Cremont after the arrival of the Russians.
Their name, The White Death, symbolizes their obsession with purity, silence, and perfection in killing. They see bloodshed not as chaos, but as cleansing. Their executions are quiet, ritualistic, and free of spectacle. They leave behind a single white lily at every murder scene, a symbol of purity through death.
As the man with white hair entered, the temperature of the room altered. The Russians' hands tightened. The Italians' hands hovered half in leather and half in silk, accustomed to both the blade and the handshake.
Yuri shifted, calculating the posture of both groups like a man examining chess pieces. He smiled a grim smile. "Don Salvatore," he began, and his voice was courteous but kindling. "We were wondering if the rumors of the White Death were true. Did you come here for the same reason as ours?"
Don Salvatore Vescari, or the "White Wolf" is the leader of the La Morte Bianca.
An old, handsome man with snow-white hair and ice-blue eyes, he carries himself with calm nobility and cold cunning. His voice is deep and persuasive, like an opera sung by a serpent. Beneath his refined manners lies decades of ruthless intelligence and quiet cruelty. He has outlived betrayals, wars, and empires, and now seeks dominion in Cremont.
Don Salvatore's lips curved, but only barely. He scanned the men, then paused where light touched Vera's stitched mouth. It was the moment in which a predator reads another predator. He took the air in slowly and said in Italian-accented English, low and polite: "No offense, but, I don't answer to those who speak for others." He replied but glared at Vera, his eyes like talons.
Yuri let out a breathy chuckle, which was equal parts a challenge and a buffer. "None taken. It seems we're all here for the same reason." He swept his hand like a conductor. "To ask for support from her. To arrange terms. This city has grown teeth. It takes a many-mouthed thing to feed itself."
The Don's expression did not change except for the shadow of a smile."Is she the one who runs this city as the rumors say?" He said.
Yuri's lips twitched. "We hope so. As we came here with a hopeful mind. We need someone stronger than us. Someone that will keep the wolves at bay. Someone that will drive these bastards out of this city."
The Russians tightened their stances. The Italians didn't flinch. Don Salvatore raised an eyebrow and smiled like he'd smelled a good vintage.
Three of Vera's largest men, each the sort of mountain whose silhouette made other men's shoulders curl, drifted between Salvatore and the chair. It was an obvious schoolyard gesture, an unsubtle partition. The Don's steps slowed. He did not like being blocked.
A thick-voiced Russian man, a man whose life of slamming doors and bodies had left his voice with a permanent rasp, stepped forward. "You're intruding, Don. We do this like Slavs. We do not like Italians in our rooms."
Yuri tapped one of the towering men on the shoulder, a soft, almost intimate gesture. "We did not come to fight," he said in Russian, then translated, "We came to see her. Meaning, we come here in peace, my friend."
Salvatore's smile thinned to a blade: "Get out of my way, you Russian dog."
Yuri, unruffled, laughed once, a little too loud, and said, "You keep up the insults to Mat' Vera's men, Don. Or we will force our hand. We don't care what will she say once she arrives."
The air hummed like a string that a blade might pluck. Everyone's senses tightened.
Then suddenly the far wall, the one behind Vera's chair and the lions, moved.
It did not swing like a door; it split. Stone and plaster peeled back as if the room had been a stage set and someone had tugged the back away. Another room, but hidden, vast, ancient and humming, descended and locked in place. Light poured from its mouth, white and clinical, presenting silhouettes so tall they swallowed the candlelight whole.
Every hand that flexed on a trigger stopped. The room seemed to breathe around that doorway.
From the radiant cavity stepped a group of figure, as if they're guarding the entrance. Their outlines cleaner than shadow allowed.
Vera's fingers tightened around her chair's arm. She inclined her head in one almost ceremonial motion, as if acknowledging a high sacrament.
Yuri, who had been all jest and blade up to that moment, turned and bowed his head, a gesture of discipline rarely seen from him. Beside him, the Russians moved like a single organism, stepping back to the suggestion of order. The Italians straightened their ties. Even aggressive men tucking white lilies into buttonholes felt small.
From the light a woman emerged.
Isabela Castellan, the Queenpin of Cremont City, had arrived.
Her beauty struck first , a haunting, ageless grace that felt almost wrong to behold. Her long, dark silver hair flowed behind her in heavy, silky waves, brushing against the curve of her back like a living shadow. Each strand caught the light of the chandelier, glinting faintly between steel and moonlight. Her skin was smooth, porcelain-pale, and almost too perfect, as though the years had never dared to touch her. Only the faintest traces of age remained, like gentle brushstrokes of experience, adding gravity to her impossible allure.
Her storm-gray eyes, glacial and bottomless, swept across the chamber. They were the kind of eyes that stripped away pretense, that made men confess, that made traitors beg. They carried the sharp, unyielding light of authority, the same piercing color that burned in her children, Alessandra and Rio.
She was draped in an immaculate suit of black velvet with faint blood-red seams. The design was distinctly Gothic, elegant but sharp, every line emphasizing her stature as a ruler both feminine and lethal. Around her neck rested a silver inverted cross, gleaming softly, the mark of the Castellan dynasty, the symbol whispered in Cremont's underworld as both curse and creed.
Her heels clicked against the marble floor, one, two, three, and with each step, the air seemed to tighten.
Her movements were measured, regal, but almost serpentine, as though every motion was a calculated act of dominance. When she passed by her armed guards, they lowered their weapons instinctively. Not from loyalty. From fear.
Behind her, six figures followed in perfect silence, masked bodyguards in long black coats, their faces hidden behind porcelain visages of angels, weeping black tears. They flanked her as she reached the center of the room, where an iron throne awaited, forged from twisted metal, etched with the sigil of a black serpent devouring its own tail.
She sat without a word. The chandelier above her flickered, casting shadows that wrapped around her like dark wings.
In that moment, the entire chamber seemed to bow, not in gesture, but in atmosphere. The Silent Saint, Vera Morozova, shifted ever so slightly in her chair. Don Salvatore Vescari, the Italian patriarch, inclined his head just a fraction, the small, respectful nod of an old wolf recognizing another apex predator.
"Welcome, new players of Cremont." Isabela begun, her voice was sounded like a victorious villain.
"I welcome you in the house of Castellan. Forgive me for my late arrival. As I had an important matter that needed to be taken care of." Isabela added, welcoming them.
Isabela's gaze then moved between them.
"Don Vescari," she said, her voice a velvet blade, soft, deadly, and impossibly calm. "La Morte Bianca has crawled far from Sicily. Tell me, does the White Death now come to kiss my hand?"
The Don's smirk was tired, wry. "Not to kiss it, Signora Castellan. Merely to shake it."
Her lips curved slightly, neither smile nor sneer, but something dangerously in between.
"Shake it, then. But remember, every hand I shake ends up stained."
Then her eyes turned to Vera Morozova. The stitched mouth. The violet eyes. The silence that reeked of tragedy and rage.
"The Black Cross," Isabela said softly, her voice almost tender. "I heard you carved a path through my streets. Left a mark on my city."
Vera said nothing, her right-hand man, Yuri translated, his accent heavy and reverent:
"She says the Cross does not carve, Gosudarynya Castellan. It sanctifies."
Isabela chuckled, low and throaty, a sound that seemed both amused and cruel.
"Sanctifies? My dear… you're in Cremont. Here, even God has debts to pay."
She leaned back in her throne, crossing her legs with deliberate grace. One manicured hand traced the rim of her glass, filled not with wine, but something thicker, darker, almost black under the candlelight.
"The Yakuza. The Triads. The Cartels. These wild Slavic mobs. They all bleed the same. They think they own Cremont. But they only rent it."
She lifted the glass slightly. "From me."
Her words hung in the room like smoke, slow, suffocating, and absolute.
Every man there, Russian, Italian, Castellan loyalists, could feel the weight of what she represented. Isabela Castellan wasn't just a Queenpin. She was the pulse of Cremont itself. Its poison and its heartbeat. Its saint and its devil.
Her beauty was mesmerizing, but it wasn't meant to seduce, it was meant to command. It was the kind of beauty that turned into terror when she smiled. And when she did, just barely, her stormy eyes glinted with something ancient, something maternal, monstrous, and unmerciful.
"Now," she said, softly, her voice carrying to every corner of the room. "You've both come crawling for aid. From the same woman your men fear to whisper about after midnight."
She tilted her head slightly, her tone becoming almost motherly. "So tell me, my wayward children of the underworld… what will you offer me, in return for your miserable survival?"
Silence.
Even Vera's right-hand man hesitated. Even Don Salvatore looked away.
For in that moment, everyone in the room understood, Cremont didn't have a Queenpin.
It had a throne, and Isabela Castellan was the darkness that sat upon it.
"So," she began, her voice soft, musical, yet heavy with power. "What would you offer me for my protection… and my favor."
Her words slithered across the room, and though the chandelier light flickered, no one dared move.
No one spoke...
Yuri then cleared his throat and bowed his head. "Gosudarynya Castellan," he began cautiously, "on behalf of the Chyornyy Krest, we..."
"The Black Cross," Isabela interrupted, her tone velvet yet venomous. "You call yourselves that because you mark your victims with a symbol of faith before they die, yes? How poetic."
Yuri froze.
Don Salvatore allowed himself a small smirk.
But before he could speak, Isabela's gray eyes turned to him, sharp, gleaming with unspoken power. "And you, La Morte Bianca," she said, her accent curling around the syllables. "The White Death… so pure. So elegant. You kill with silence, you poison with grace."
She smiled wider, the kind of smile that made strong men doubt their worth. "But let us not pretend to be equals. You come here because your little wars have cost you too much blood and not enough territory. You need my shadow to survive."
The old Don tilted his chin. "And what would that shadow cost us, Signora Castellan?"
At that, the room darkened. Or perhaps it only felt that way because Isabela leaned forward. Her eyes glittered like sharpened silver beneath the dim chandelier.
She spoke slowly, relishing each word.
"Anything that would piqued my interest, Don Salvatore. "
Neither answered.
Don Salvatore's throat tightened. He dared to respond, voice trembling. "We can offer your family… financial partnership. We control..."
Isabela's hand rose. The gesture silenced him instantly.
Her tone turned mocking, cold as a blade.
"Money?" she asked. "My dear man, my wealth is worth more than a nation's treasury. I own cities, not bank accounts."
Vera's violet eyes flickered faintly.
Isabela continued, her tone rising like the slow build of a storm.
"Drugs? My laboratories produce substances purer than your blood. My scientists create pleasures that burn through the veins like ecstasy and death combined."
She rose from her chair. Her presence filled the room like a cathedral shadow swallowing candlelight.
"Women?" she whispered, stepping closer to the table. "My women are priceless, trained, loyal, and desired by kings and killers alike."
Her hand touched the polished wood, and her storm-gray eyes blazed as her voice deepened, laced with venomous pride.
"Weapons? My forges make death itself. I can buy nations, erase them, or make them kneel with a single order."
Silence.
Her boasting was not arrogance, it was truth.
Everyone in the room knew it based on the rumors.
Isabela Castellan didn't just rule Cremont.
She was Cremont.
She smiled faintly, breaking the silence with a sigh that carried both satisfaction and boredom.
"So tell me, gentlemen, what can you possibly offer me that I do not already possess?"
No one spoke.
Yuri's lips parted but no sound came.
Don Salvatore's cold eyes met hers, then drifted to Vera, who remained motionless, a pale statue of obedience and madness.
Isabela chuckled softly, like a queen amused by her jesters.
"Nothing," she said, as if answering her own question. "You all have nothing. You have nothing I want. Except....
...one thing you can do for me."
That sentence froze the air.
Even Don Salvatore tilted his head, curiosity flickering in his steely gaze.
Yuri leaned forward. "If you wish something done, we will listen."
Isabela smiled, and for the first time, it wasn't the smile of a queen, but of a mother. A mother warped by obsession and longing.
She turned her back to them and walked to her desk. The sharp click of her heels echoed like gunshots in the silence. Slowly, she reached into her coat, and when her hand emerged, it held many copy of old photographs.
A simple, innocent photograph.
She held it up by the corner, letting the candlelight kiss its surface.
A young man smiled in the picture, radiant, alive, eyes filled with warmth.
Rio Castellan.
Her son.
But no one else in that room knew.
Isabela then handed the men each copy of Rio's picture.
Don Salvatore squinted. "Who is this?" he asked.
Isabela's expression softened, though her eyes gleamed dangerously. "That," she said slowly, "is not your concern to know him, Don Vescari."
Vera's violet eyes narrowed, studying the photograph carefully.
Yuri hesitated. "Gosudarynya Castellan… forgive my boldness, but what do you intend us to.."
"Kidnap him," Isabela interrupted. Her tone was cold, commanding. "Bring this man to me. Alive. Unharmed."
The words slashed through the air like a guillotine.
Don Salvatore raised an eyebrow. "You are asking both of our families to hunt a single man?"
"Not asking," Isabela corrected with a faint smirk. "Offering."
She moved closer to them, the photographs still between her fingers. Her perfume, jasmine and smoke, filled the air as she leaned in. "Whoever brings him to me first will be under my protection. You will no longer fear the Yakuzas, the Triads, or the Cartels. You will have me, my network, my money, my soldiers, my power."
Her smile widened, dark and regal. "You will not be rivals anymore. You will be part of the Castellan Order."
A low murmur rippled among the Russians and Italians.
Opportunity, power, security.
Don Salvatore's eyes glinted like a wolf catching scent of blood. "And this young man," he asked softly, "what is he to you, Signora Castellan?"
Isabela looked down at the photo. Her thumb brushed over Rio's smiling face.
Her lips curved into something tender, then sharp.
"Something I've lost," she said quietly. Then her tone turned sinister, venom dripping with obsession. "And something that will be mine again."
Yuri swallowed. "Gosudarynya, you wish us to kidnap a man. He could be innocent or not. But that is against our morality."
Isabela's eyes snapped to him. Her voice turned to iron.
"Morality? From you? You are not being paid to think, boy."
Yuri's breath hitched. He bowed his head instantly. "Apologies, Gosudarynya Castellan."
"Do not apologize," she said coldly. "Act."
Don Salvatore broke the silence again, his tone deceptively mild. "At least tell us where to begin."
Isabela turned toward the grand window at the end of the room. Rain lashed against the glass, lightning cutting through the night sky.
She spoke without looking back.
"He's an army man, stationed in Vortania, the country of cold steel and dying suns."
Her tone dropped into something softer, almost intimate.
"He thinks he can hide there forever. He thinks he can run from me."
Her fingers tightened around the photograph until its edges bent.
"But even the military cannot protect him from a mother's love. It's time for me to make my move." She whispered to herself.
Yuri bowed once more. "We understand, Gosudarynya Castellan."
Don Salvatore inclined his head as well, though his voice held a hint of caution. "And if we fail?"
Isabela turned slowly, her smile returning, but this time, it was venom wrapped in silk.
"Failure," she said, "isn't something I tolerate. I will consider it… betrayal."
No one spoke after that.
Isabela approached her throne once again, sitting gracefully, crossing her legs. She placed the photograph beside her glass of wine, and her fingers traced its edges one final time.
Then she looked up, at the Russians, at the Italians, at her subjects, and smiled a smile that could both seduce and destroy.
"Now go," she whispered. "And bring him home to me."
As they turned to leave, the chandelier above them flickered, and for a moment, it seemed the shadows on the walls twisted into wings.
When the doors closed and silence reclaimed the chamber, Isabela lifted the photograph again.
Her thumb traced Rio's face lovingly. Her gray eyes softened, and her voice, barely a whisper, trembled with emotion.
"My son…" she breathed, her tone laced with madness and yearning. "You can run to the ends of the earth, but you'll never escape your mother's embrace."
Then, slowly, she pressed her lips to the photograph.
And smiled, a smile only a queen and a monster could share.