The Basement smelled of rust, mildew, and old blood. A single lightbulb dangled from the ceiling, it's weak glow slicing the darkness into jagged pieces shadows trembled across the cracked concrete walls like restless ghosts.
A man sat bound to steal chair at the center of the room. His wrists were raw rope biting deep into flesh. Blood had crusted at his temple from an earlier strike, his head sagging as though it were too heavy to hold up.
She circled him. Black silk gloves clung to her hands, her heels clicking softly against the floor. The sound was unremarkable in itself, but to him, it felt like the tone of the devil singing.
"Do you know why you're here?" Her voice was soft, almost tender, like a lullaby spoken to a child.
The man groaned, his split lip trembling P-Please.... I don't"
She silenced him with a finger pressed against his mouth. "Don't waste your breath with lies. cheapens what little life you have left".
On a steel tray beside her lay a collection of tools: a knife, pliers, a bone saw, a syringe half-filled with clear liquid. She did not reach for them immediately. Instead, she allowed him to look. To understand. Torture was not in the tools it was in the waiting.
Finally, she picked up the knife, flicking it open with a soft click. The sound cleaved the silence.
"Loyalty", she murmured, pressing the flat of the blade against his jaw, tilting his head back, "is the spine of this world. without it men collapse. Families fall. Kingdoms burn"
"You know" she said, "My parents believed they could give me a better life, a life outside all of this they planned to leave everything behind." She looked at him and asked "Do yo what we call that"
The man licked his lips, his voice a hoarse whisper. "Th-that's betrayal"
The word twisted inside her. Betrayal
She hadn't known. Not then, To her they had simply been her mother and father warm, tired and loving. She hadn't known about the guns hidden in walls, the coded messages whispered in midnight phone calls, the debts of blood and power, She hadn't known they belonged to a world ruled by shadows.
Not until the night they died.
Not until the fire, the gunshots, the screams that ripped through their home.
Not until her uncle dragged her from the wreckage.
For two days after, Isabella lived in silence. Her uncle gave her a room in his estate, cleaned and fed her. She refused to eat, to talk, she just stared blankly at the wall till her eyes burned.
On the third night, she whispered to herself over and over again: They're coming back.
But they didn't.
It wasn't until her fifth day, her uncle told her the truth, they wanted out of the mafia life, although he was furious, he could understand them.
The words carved through her like knives. Her childhood shattered with them. Her parents had died because they loved her too much to let her inherit their sins.
And yet here she was blade in hand wearing the very crown they tried to save her from.
Isabella leaned closer, letting the sharp edge kiss the man's throat. A bead of crimson welled beneath the steel.
"They wanted to give me life," She murmured. "Instead, I learnt death. Funny how the apple does," She murmured. "Instead, I learnt death. Funny how the apple doesn't fall far from the tree".
The man whimpered, his words tumbling in frantic pleas as he tried to get away. "Please, P-Please..., I beg you."
But mercy had no place here. Mercy was weakness, and weakness was death.
With one smooth motion, Isabella drew the blade across his throat. The sound was wet, final. His body convulsed once, then slumped in the chair, lifeless. The floor drank greedily as his blood spread in a dark pool at her feet.
Isabella wiped the blade clean with a white cloth, her expression untouched by what she had just done
They whispered about her now in the underworld. The girl who survived. The girl who rose. The girl who ruled
They called her The Black Rose.
And her thorns were sharp enough to tear enemies apart.