The predawn fog of G country clung to the tarmac like a shroud, cold and damp, as Vittoria's private jet touched down on the country. She emerged from the jet dressed in a black hoodie, frayed blue jean shorts, black Jordans, and a black fanny pack strapped to her waist. Beside her, a constant, solid shadow, was her ever-loyal assistant, Martha, the chubby, brown-haired lady, silent like she always was.
Just outside the airport, they were met with Jonathan's right-hand man, Elias, a middle-aged veteran with a face holding a history of hardship. He had one good eye; the other was ruined and sealed under three parallel knife scars. With no special expression, he bowed with old-world formality and brought her knuckles to his lips. "Nice to have you back, Miss," he said, the words heavy with unspoken history.
Vittoria responded with an uninterested hum that scraped the air. She didn't break stride, moving toward the idling car she moved
straight into business. "What do you have about the killer?"
Elias became silent and remained silent for a long time. "Nothing helpful," he finally said, the words tasting like ash.
"How helpful of you," she sneered, the sarcasm so sharp it could draw blood. The Maybach's door was opened by a nervous subordinate whose bow she ignored. "I heard the great Blood Circle has been silent. So silent you lost the Blue Stream district. Why is that, Old Elias?" she asked, her voice as cold as winter.
He opened his mouth, ready with an explanation, but she cut him off. "And don't tell me it's respect for my father. I don't remember my father asking for such useless respect."
Elias's jaw tightened, the scar tissue over his dead eye seeming to pull. Wordlessly, he gestured again for her to enter the car. Vittoria's eyes flicked to his gesturing hand. Then, with a motion so swift it was a blur, she drove her fist straight into his stomach. The impact was a sickening thud. Elias doubled over, a choked gasp escaping him as blood trailed out from the corner of his mouth. He staggered, vision swimming, fighting to stay conscious.
"I so much want to gouge out that useless eye of yours," she said, her voice cold and venomous, "since you are unable to use it for anything profitable." She slid into the Maybach without a backward glance. Martha followed, a silent ghost who closed the door. Elias wheezed and forced himself up, wiping the blood from his lips with a trembling hand. He moved to the other door, intending to get in too, but before his fingers touched the handle, the Maybach's engine purred and it suddenly pulled away, melting into the gray fog. He stood alone, watching it vanish, his expression filled with pain and resignation. He could do nothing. In the brutal norms of their world, he deserved every punishment.
The hour-long drive passed in a silence as deep and impenetrable as a graveyard. The car finally drove through imposing steel gates into the heart of the Blood Circle's main base, a compound of concrete and chill. When Vittoria stepped out, the organized chaos of the courtyard ceased. Men freezing mid-stride, weights dropping in the gym, the clatter of a tool falling silent. All eyes, wide with disbelief and dread, followed her. Her unexpected arrival in Elias's car was a message in itself. She ignored their stiff, immediate bows, walking with lethal purpose toward a secluded corner of the compound.
There a new, lone grave had been erected. Martha halted, granting her space this time. Vittoria stood before the grave filled with contained fury. Her face was a blank, but the air around her crackled with a stormy, violent aura.
"I thought you said you were invincible," she stated, the first words flat and cold, addressed to the dirt. "But you were tortured and killed in just one night. How pathetic." A pause, filled only with the distant echo of the city. "Worst of all, we didn't fight that bloody fight I always wanted before you died. I should have been the one to kill you. Only I deserved to kill you. But you couldn't even wait." She muttered this, her voice still chillingly devoid of emotion. Was it anger, grief, pain, or the bitter, corrosive regret of not being the one to kill her father? Or perhaps it was all of it. The silence stretched, long and heavy, before her final, quiet vow seeped into the earth. "Whoever killed you must be a veteran. But I promise you, Johnathan, I won't die like you." With that, she turned, the storm now given a direction.
One afternoon was all she needed. In the main hall, under the cold gaze of her father's portrait, she stood with a pistol sitting casually on her lap. When two of the old captains, emboldened by the absence of her father, voiced their dissent, she didn't say a word; instead, she shot them down casually. The cold silence that followed after was filled with total submission. She was crowned queen immediately with blood and fear.
She swallowed the paralyzing silence that had shrouded the Blood Circle and spit out frenetic activity. Orders flew; collections, shipments, and enforcers were mobilized on a brutal, full scale. The news tore through the underworld's grapevine like a shockwave: Vittoria is back. The prison couldn't hold her like usual. She's taken the Blood Circle in an afternoon. The queen has returned. The effect was instantaneous. The vultures from rival organizations who had been circling, testing the fences, immediately pulled back. To continue with whatever mission they had planned was not an advantage but suicide. Their retreat, however, cleaned the battlefield, leaving one glaring, arrogant challenge standing in the newly drawn lines: the Crimson Blaze organization, the upstarts who had grown bold during the silence and seized the Blue Stream district. The board was reset, the pieces aligned. The silence was over. A new, far more volatile rule, under a new and ruthless ruler, had just begun.