Chapter 1: White Cloth

After 23 years...

Milan, Italy

The tick-tacking sound echoed throughout the unsounded hall full of abandoned old and broken furniture materials. All the men who were inside that place stopped as soon as a man entered the old gray hall.

A man walked confidently into the hall. He wore a fine bright white tuxedo, a white hat, and white pants with splattered blood all over them. He holds a dark classical walking cane with the shape of an eagle's head on the handle. He is tall and has a well-built body with fair white skin. He is Asian-looking with a vicious and mesmerizing pair of monolid eyes colored in hazelnut brown, perfectly complemented by his quite strong cheekbones and a bit angular sexy jaw. Despite fighting a lot of men from outside, he walks perfectly fine without any evidence of the struggle to see on his face.

He approached the old man named Pacito Tolentino at the end of the room. He is seated in a comfortable gold chair carved in European design that is about 680 years old. From that point, the man in white knew that it was the chair from the art museum that cost 3 trillion dollars. It is a renowned king's throne. The last chair in which a king of Spain was seated.

Pacito is the Don of the infamous Tolentino Family in South America. He wore a velvety polo with maroon lining inside his unbuttoned chest part. The chest hair that came out resembled his coffee brown curly hair. His beard and mustache were all shaved off clean. This man is one of the few who should face punishment according to the laws of the Mafia world.

This secret society, as the world knows it, is a hyperactive mob and fraternal system that holds both the good and the bad faces of human civilization. They are the incorporation of modern bandits that are used both to expel bad and good people in the world. They can be a society of new-age reasons and laws that can be good or bad. They are on a scale of 50-50 in the eyes of others. They are both justice and doom. But, as much as the world thought that this is the reality that is occurring in this era, they are wrong. This world has a deep secret that will blow everyone's mind.

The Mafia World isn't a neutral system of society but only a front face of a much deeper and darker truth. Mafia World is a society that consists of 20 families since it was coined in the 1900s. 10 of them are powerful and well-known in most parts of the world since Sicily, Italy. But these families are not the source of that terror. There is a system older than the oldest Mafia Famiglias. They call it the "Mirage".

Mirage is an underground and the source center system of the Mafia World that holds mostly the ancestral territories and treasures that all famiglias hold, founded by a noble and great man named Marcello D'Angelli I in 1900. They are the law and the reaper of their own society. From 20 famiglias, it came down to 10 as half had already been eradicated due to unresolved mafia feuds and illegal operations.

The Mirage is the reason for the mass eradication of Mafia families in Europe. It has been going on for many decades since the faithful allegiance of the forefounders in Sicily. However, there are 4 more famiglias that arise in normal society, exposing the sacred secrets of the Mafia World once more.

That is why a man named "Saint" came to punish them. The name of which he is known for. A Saint Reaper of Mafias, the reaper of those who try to oppose the sacred law of the Mirage.

The old man smirked at him. "What a surprise, Saint! You've made a grand entrance again. You managed to find me. How marvelous!" he greeted the man with sarcasm.

Saint's face blandly turned to the old man. Afterwards, he bowed his head and removed his hat. As he stood formally in front of him like a cunning soldier of his family, he started to speak. "I'm not going to read you all the notes. I can only do it once. And once should be enough for the front bosses to abide. However, your stubbornness seemed too enjoyable for you, eh? You still exploit artifacts that don't belong to you. For example..." He pointed out Pacito's golden seat. "That chair." He sighed. "You know how I hate doing this for the past few years since I took over the system. This really bores me a lot. It's really taking much of my precious time instead of taking care of important things." He played with the hat as he slowly rolled it on his finger. "You know... I warned you once in Siena, yet you didn't heed my words. What should I do to you, then?"

Pacito laughed. "What will you do? Kill me?" He laughed harder once more. "You're not as powerful as your father anyway..."

He looked at him with his dark expression. And stopped playing with his hat. "Do you know why I hate petty things such as that?"

The old man cackled in a lucrative manner. "Who cares? No one knows you exist! The outside world only sees you as a fictional and dark character. And you know that they like me better. I am their boss! I am their god!" He proudly pointed at himself, smirking, then sat pompously on his looted expensive chair, eyeing Saint in his sarcastic way.

"Should you not care?" Saint asked in the gentlest way possible. His voice is low and charismatic with his sexy thin lips moving with his clever words.

But he only received a very loud cackle again. The old man looked like he was about to spit at him while laughing at any minute. The men surrounding them also started to laugh, being encouraged by the old man's sarcasm.

Saint's lips moved a bit as his index finger touched something on the head of his walking cane. He pushes a tiny button on the eagle's eye where its beak points directly at the old man.

A faint clang came in, followed by a sudden struggle from Pacito's voice. His eyes widened, his irises shrank in size. When everyone's so busy laughing, the old man started to hold his neck. He drowns in his own blood and frantically shakes his body to the ground. Blood oozed out of his neck when a bullet came to hit him. It came from Saint's walking staff. His blood started to spray everywhere. Some had successfully made it to Saint's coat and on his face, and some were dripping on the ground. Everyone watched him as soon as he came down to his last breath.

Saint approaches Pacito on one knee on the ground. "I wish I could laugh whenever I get to win. But I don't feel like winning with this ugly face of yours..." He drove out a sigh from his mouth. He put his hat on top of Pacito's face and finally stood up.

He set out to leave the whole place while the men surrounding him started to hide by the side. They let him leave in peace, walking slowly with confidence in his aura. After getting out, he walked towards his white revolver car and ignited the engine. He drives away from the scene. As soon as he was 2 yards away, he clicked another button on his staff. In just a moment, the whole building was knocked off by a loud blast coming from inside the building.

Sant's jaws moved in pleasure. He has succeeded in eradicating the 1st famiglia of the anti-Mirage system, the Tolentino famiglia.

3 Dons to go.

****

Several sounds of sirens whistled in all the streets near alongside the road via Santa Maria Valle. A fire broke out and the Italian Police department rushed to the main of Milan, near the Basilica of San Lorenzo Maggiore. The fire had already been put out before the CIA's special team called Anti-Mafia Special Force came, led by a very competitive officer and agent named Roque Saavedra, of Italian descent.

The team leader came to the scene along with his four members, and faced an Italian officer, showing his badge to him. "Siamo nella squadra speciale della CIA. Ci occuperemo noi delle indagini. Si prega di collaborare," (We're on the CIA special team. We will take care of the investigations. Please cooperate.) he said to the officer. The officer, upon seeing the familiar badge, nodded at him and gave them a pass to enter the crime scene.

Roque entered with the other four. One of the team members is officer Keira Vince. She wore her N95 face mask with her usual denim blazer and black top. Her pants are also denim. Her long dark brown hair is ponytailed at the back. Her broad shoulders and petite body made other officers look at her in a malicious way. She just walked past them all and gave them her cold stare. She has a diamond-shaped face with fair porcelain skin. Her beauty resembles an Asian doll, emotionless and fierce with her red-pouted lips marvelously proud of their seductive phrase of beauty. She walked like a normal police officer. She walked to the fuming dead-down charcoal remains and ashes of the building.

An officer named Seregei Galgotta walked beside Keira as well. He is an American agent from the same team and on her left was Robert Thompson. They entered the knocked-down building and looked at the remains of the retrieved bodies. Roque was the one to approach the inspectors and they spoke in Italian conversations that Keira practically understood. For almost five years of catching bad guys, Keira was used to speaking and understanding the language.

Their team leader asked for official permission to take over the case since the Tolentino Family, who are a mafia group, were the ones involved in it. This family is one of the hot criminals that the CIA needs to take custody of. However, with the number of burned bodies retrieved, it is likely that the whole Tolentino was killed in one blow.

With the complicated and ruined crime scene, it seemed like the culprit didn't want the Tolentino members to stay alive any further.

For the past 5 years, Keira had suspected a very weird angle that her colleagues wouldn't accept. The fact that there may be a Zorro type of hero. An anti-Mafia person who made justice stand in his hands.

Keira sat on her heel. She covered her hands with surgical gloves and started to dig into a mountain of ashes. As she dug there, she could feel the remaining heat that was incorporated through the remains of the ashes and charcoal bits of wood. She, then, saw an unusual cloth. As she dug again, a corpse's hand appeared.

Her eyes widened. She used a brush to remove excess ashes that covered the burned hand until she uncovered the whole body. What amazed her was the white piece of cloth that covered the corpse's head. She took it.

"A hat?" she asked herself. She can tell it by the intricate design of it. It was an Italian designer's hat that she had never seen before. When she flipped the burned cloth of the hat, she saw the designer's name. She cautiously looked around. Her colleagues seemed to be busy roaming around, asking for some info from the Italian officers. That's her call.

She cleverly pursed a naughty smile and took out a swiss knife from her pocket. She slowly cut out the designer's tag inside the hat. After successfully cutting it, she quickly put it inside a ziplock plastic bag and slipped it inside. Afterwards, she put it inside her pocket, her tongue stuck out in a childish tomboy. She even laughed silently and cleared her throat. Her funny expression faded and became a fake serious face.

"Oy! Guys, I have something here!" Keira purposely shouted. She stood up to her feet and dusted her gloves off of ash particles.

The three men from his team approached her with curious eyes.

Roque smiled at her and patted her head. "Well done, Officer Vince..." he complimented her.

Keira faked a smile and pointed to the corpse. "I think this is our guy. He's the Don," she declared.

"How did you know?" Seregei asked.

"Well, I could tell that based on the gold remains and the watch on the corpse's left wrist. This is the guy that was first killed. I'm sure of it. We'll have to take this body to the lab and have an autopsy report." She looked at the corpse. She moved closer and looked closely at the corpse's head and neck. She, then, pointed at the neck. "See that? There's a small hole in his neck. It seemed like he was shot before the corpse was burned. There are traces of blood on the unburned skin. Someone got here and killed this man before burning this building down," she stated her claim.

Roque nodded in agreement. His hand cupping his chin. "You are right. We'll have this delivered to the laboratory first," he declared. "By the way, do you think the Tolentinos were all killed in the fire?"

"Well, according to the report, this is the main hideout of the mafia family. However, we're not sure if someone survived or had a special mission in some place. If they did, they would probably have fled out of Milan. We'll need to trace them one by one. That would be harder if they're just soldiers and not higher degree members of the family," Robert said.

"You're right. That means, whoever the family of mafias had done this, they had to make sure that the Tolentinos would not get back up again from the ashes of ruins..." Roque uttered.

They all looked at the burned corpse and thought deeply about their hunches.

Who might be the killers? Who is this Zorro guy? Keira asked herself.