Chapter 2: Izzah Keres Maude Eisenthurn
The company office was alive with the usual hum of productivity—employees smiling and chatting amongst themselves as they shuffled papers, answered calls, and tapped away at keyboards.
There was an ease in the air, a comfortable chattering that came from colleagues who genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. Laughter bubbled up from one corner. A friendly argument broke out near the water cooler. For a brief, fleeting moment, the office felt almost like a second home.
Then someone came running.
A young man burst through the main doors, his face pale and slick with sweat, his eyes wide with a panic that spread faster than any spoken word. He raised his index finger to his lips in a frantic gesture for silence, and the effect was immediate and terrifying.
Conversations died mid-sentence. Grins evaporated. Every single employee straightened their posture as if pulled by invisible strings, their spines snapping into perfect alignment.
They moved quickly, wordlessly, forming a line that stretched across the floor like soldiers awaiting inspection by a major military officer. Not a single person dared to make a sound. Even breathing seemed to become a calculated risk.
The first thing that everyone noticed was the shoes. Since looking at the person’s eyes who’s entering is not ideal.
Expensive leather, polished to a mirror shine, each step clicking against the marble floor with a sound less like walking and more like a countdown.
At first glance, any new observer would assume this person was the handsomest man in the building—tall, broad-shouldered, radiating an aura of power and wealth so dense it felt like a physical weight. The kind of presence that made people step aside without being asked.
The kind of face that belonged on magazine covers and wanted posters in equal measure. Even the shoes alone seemed to command the room, and make people tremble just by existing in their general direction.
But no. This person was not a man.
This was a woman dressed in the finest men’s fashion money could buy. Gray trousers pressed to a razor’s edge. A matching gray vest hugged her torso, tailored perfectly to her frame. Beneath it, a black long-sleeved polo shirt, neatly ironed, crisp and severe. A Rolex watch glinted at her wrist—not for show, but because she could afford to wear a small fortune without thinking twice.
Her long, silky black hair fell past her shoulders, soft and feminine in a way that contrasted violently with everything else about her. And her eyes—those eyes were sharp, cold, calculating, and utterly fearless.
They swept across the line of trembling employees, the way a predator surveys its prey, not hungrily, but with the bored certainty of something that had already eaten and was merely deciding whether to play with its food.
Her name alone screamed fear, wealth, power, and influence so absolute that even people who had never met her learned to whisper it like a prayer for safety.
Izzah Keres Maude Eisenthurn.
She was the well-known, powerful lesbian heir of the Eisenthurn family—a fact that made her a target of gossip in high society and a nightmare to anyone foolish enough to underestimate her. Rumors spread like wildfire that her family was involved in shady sidelines and businesses, whispers of deals made in backrooms and bodies buried in unmarked locations.
None of it had ever been confirmed. No journalist had ever been brave or stupid enough to dig too deep. And because of that, no one dared to go against them. The Eisenthurn name was not a challenge. It was a sentence.
Keres did not stop walking as she entered. Her voice cut through the silence like a blade, cold and precise.
"Make sure my meeting happens by 1:30 PM. By then, do not let anyone disturb me."
Her secretary—a young woman who had only been working there for three weeks—trembled from head to toe. She nodded frantically, her chin bobbing up and down like a
Keres stopped mid-stride.
The entire office held its breath. You could have heard a pin drop from three floors away. Slowly, with the deliberate grace of someone who enjoyed making people wait, Keres turned her head and looked at the secretary. As if the woman standing before her was made of glass, and Keres was already imagining the sound of it shattering.
"You’re fired." The words landed like gunshots. "I don’t like people stuttering and acting like a scared animal. You work in my office. You represent my name. And I do not let any weakness like you tarnish my reputation."
She turned and continued walking without another word.
The secretary’s face crumpled. Tears spilled down her cheeks before she could stop them. "N-No! Ma’am! Please!" Her voice rose into a desperate wail, her hands reaching out as if she could grab hold of mercy itself. "No! I need this job! Please!"
Keres did not look back.
Two bodyguards stepped forward, massive men in dark suits who moved like shadows given flesh. They intercepted the secretary before she could take three steps, blocking her path to the boss’s retreating figure with the casual ease of long practice.
The woman sobbed openly now, her cries echoing through the cavernous office, but no one moved to help her. No one even looked at her for longer than a second. Everyone who was watching felt the same cold dread settle into their stomachs—the constant, creeping awareness that in this building, at this moment, they were all just one stutter away from being thrown out onto the street.
Keres entered her luxurious office, a sprawling space of dark wood, floor-to-ceiling windows, and furniture that cost more than most people’s annual salaries. The air smelled of leather and expensive cologne.
But the moment she stepped inside, her eyes landed on another woman—a young assistant, clearly chosen for her looks, standing by the desk in a skirt that was too short and a smile that was too rehearsed. She was supposed to serve, to pour coffee, to look pretty and stay quiet.
The sight pissed Izzah off immediately.
"Get out." Keres’s voice was flat, emotionless, and more terrifying than any scream. "Before I shoot you in the head."
She didn’t wait for a response. She hung her black long coat on the rack by the door, then reached beneath her jacket and pulled out a matte black gun. She placed it on her desk with a heavy, unmistakable thunk.
The assistant’s face drained of color. Her perfectly applied lipstick suddenly looked like blood on a corpse. She scrambled to dress herself properly—her jacket had been unbuttoned, her blouse untucked—and rushed out of the office so fast she nearly tripped over her own heels. The door clicked shut behind her, and for a moment, there was silence.
Then Sandro walked in.
He was Keres’s head henchman, a man built like a refrigerator and twice as hard to move. His face was all sharp angles and old scars, but his eyes were calm, professional, utterly loyal. He carried a manila folder in one thick hand and held it out to her without a word.
Keres took it and flipped it open. Photographs. Addresses. Names. A small-time gang operating out of a rundown building on the edge of the city.
"That’s all the information you asked me to get, boss." Sandro’s voice was low, rumbling, the kind of voice that belonged in a dimly lit bar at two in the morning. "Crocodile gang. New and small. Trying to get to the top of the hierarchy."
Keres scanned the pages, her sharp eyes moving quickly, absorbing every detail. "Are these the men trying to blackmail me from a week ago?"
"Yes, boss."
She slammed the folder shut. "What the fuck?" Her voice rose, not with fear—never with fear—but with pure, incandescent rage. "How dare they even threaten me and my empire when all they have is a small, cramped apartment to stay in? They have the guts to call it themselves a headquarters?"
Keres was not shaken. She had not been shaken when the Crocodile gang sent her that letter of blackmail, with its sloppy handwriting and its absurd demands. She was not worried, not anxious, not even slightly concerned for her safety.
She was mad. Furious beyond words. Because the sheer audacity of this small, pathetic group, daring to threaten her while she sat at the very top of the underworld, was not just an insult. It was a joke in poor taste, and Izzah Keres Maude Eisenthurn did not find jokes funny.
"Fucking shit," she muttered, tossing the folder onto her desk.
"Boss." Sandro stood at attention, waiting. "What should we do? Clearly, this is an insult."
"Yeah." Keres turned away from him, walking toward the small bar cart in the corner of her office. Crystal decanters glittered under the warm light.
She grabbed a bottle of whiskey—expensive, aged, the kind of thing normal people saved for weddings and funerals—and poured herself a generous glass.
"Call your men. Ambush them. Leave no one behind." She paused, her back still to him, and took a long drink. The whiskey burned going down, a familiar fire in her chest. "Make sure no one survives."
Sandro nodded once, a sharp, efficient movement. "You got it, boss. We’ll take care of it."
He excused himself and left the office, the door closing softly behind him. The moment he was gone, Keres let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her hand tightened around the crystal glass. Then, with a sudden, violent motion, she hurled it against the wall. It shattered on impact, shards of crystal raining down onto the hardwood floor like expensive confetti, whiskey dripping down the wallpaper in golden streaks.
She stood tall amidst the destruction, her chest heaving, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She was trying to calm herself down—counting breaths, rolling her shoulders, forcing her heartbeat to slow. But the anger was still there, hot and restless, coiled in her stomach like a snake waiting to strike.
"Fucking bitch," she muttered under her breath. "How dare they insult me like this."
She pressed her palms flat against her desk, leaning forward, her head bowed. Her black hair curtained around her face. Heavy breaths filled the silence.
Then her phone rang.
She didn’t bother to read the caller ID. She snatched it from the desk, pressed it to her ear, and snarled, "What the fuck do you want?!"
A pause. Then a voice—familiar, furious, and terrifying in an entirely different way—roared through the receiver.
"WHAT?! HOW DARE YOU CURSE YOUR MOTHER?!"
Keres’s entire body went rigid. Her eyes widened for a fraction, just for a second—and she pulled the phone away from her ear as if it had burned her.
"Mom," she said, her voice suddenly smaller, almost sheepish. "It’s you."
"YEAH! IT’S ME, YOUR MOTHER, YOU STUPID BRAT!" The yelling continued, undiminished by distance or technology. "HOW DARE YOU CURSE AT THE WOMAN WHO CARRIED YOU FOR NINE MONTHS AND GAVE BIRTH TO YOU?!"
Keres held the phone at arm’s length, and even from there, she could still hear every word perfectly. Her mother had not yelled this loudly into the microphone—she had simply yelled this loudly, period. The chilling part was that Keres had not even pressed the speaker button yet. That was just the raw, unfiltered power of maternal rage traveling through the air like a shockwave.
"Mom." Keres pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes squeezing shut. "Calm down. You’re going to break my eardrum."
There was a huff on the other end of the line. A pause. Then, slightly quieter but no less sharp: "You’re lucky I love you, you stupid brat."
Keres did not smile. Her face remained perfectly composed, her usual resting bitch face firmly in place. But something in her shoulders loosened, just a little.
"Yeah," she said flatly, as if admitting to a minor inconvenience. "I love you too."
"Good." Her mother’s voice had finally calmed down to something approaching normal volume, though there was still an edge to it—the kind of edge that came from raising a daughter like Keres and surviving to tell the tale.
"I called because we’re going to have an important family dinner tonight. Don’t miss it."
Keres sighed. She already had a dozen things she would rather do than sit through a formal dinner with her parents. But she knew better than to argue.
"Yeah, I’ll be there. I’ll just finish some of my work first, then I’ll be on my way."
"Okay." A warmth crept into her mother’s voice, unexpected and soft. "Love you, Izzy."
Only her mother could call her that. Anyone else who tried would regret it—permanently. Keres shifted her weight, uncomfortable with the sudden tenderness. "Yeah, stop it, Mom. I’m not a child anymore."
"Shut up." Her mother’s affection was immediately chased by another dose of irritation. "You just turned twenty-three. That doesn’t mean you’re old enough to talk back to me."
Keres opened her mouth to retort, then closed it again. She could feel the argument slipping away from her, defeated not by logic but by the sheer, immovable force of a mother who had been winning this particular war for over two decades.
She massaged her temples and felt utterly and completely defeated.
She could order men to their deaths without flinching. She could terrify entire offices into silence. She could build an empire from blood and ambition and stand at the top of the underworld with a glass of whiskey in her hand and a gun on her desk.
But she could not win against her mother.
Not even her dad.
