She couldn't hear anything, and she was thankful for it. The bass booming with the beat of the hip-hop song that trailed slow and low in the background so loud it took all but yelling right next to someone to hear them. Her mood was dark, her mind distant from the shadowy room around her alive with neon and laser light glowing from the dance floor, not but dim mood lighting in the opposite of the room as the dance floor. The part of the room that was private booths that were kept dark for various reasons. 

Helena's only reason was the desire for a few moments alone to think. To ponder, to allow her mind to drift in ways she barely got the chance for. She wasn't fool enough to think that she was completely safe in the private wing of a strip club; even a very nice strip club, even with killers around her just waiting for someone to come too close in her direction before stopping them with a quick, authoritative, "Hold up." Guiseppe Bertinelli, her last remaining cousin, sat across from her in the booth. A few years older than she, raised in Gotham City, well liked but unable to out run his last name.

Geppe, they called him, and so now did she: when she first approached Geppe she wasn't able to finish speaking before he was signing up for it. His dream was to bring the Bertinelli name back in an "old school" approach to the Mob; the mafia with at least the pretense of honor. A community first approach that brought the Don back into the streets and into the lives of the people struggling to get by on those streets. To be the type of family that Ciro Bertinelli, her father, had set the standard for. It was a beautiful thought. Ciro Bertinelli was respected, he was feared, and he was loved by the people in his neighborhoods.

And he was dead.

Nearly that entire honorable family had been slaughtered in cold blood, betrayed to enemies by friends and even members of their own family. But the crime family endured, going underground for decades to protect wives and children. Juliano Bello, known as Bells (or some derivitive thereof), was the son of a former Bertinelli Capo. Geppe's bestfriend since birth, a young man that had a street education that could put many academics to shame. Someone that endeared himself to Helena the moment he insisted she be Don Bertinelli--fuck what the old men say about it. (Old men Helena still had to court, anyway.)

It was an inner circle smaller than a period, the only one not with them was Lupo. Lupo was new to Geppe and Bells, someone Helena had known since she was a girl new to the old country. And the only soul in her world that knew what Helena really did when the moon came out. Where Geppe and Bells were relatively new to the dangerous life, she and Lupo had been brought up in it, raised for it, by the Damned. The other two had been brought in as much as Helena could allow; Bells a consigliere of sorts, Geppe her second in command.

Lupo's position in the organization was less formal, but had been summed up nicely by a new nickname for him circulating through the soldiers and associates: Vader. As in, the Darth Vader to her Emperor. She liked it, even if she could tell it irritated Lupo for some reason. A thought Helena took more joy out of it than she'd ever let on to Lupo, himself, her precious mental wanderings disturbed by the light of a smartphone screen that disturbed her like a pissant demanding her attention--Geppe's phone that he slid across the booth's table for her to read.

[i]Alphonse Sisca assassinated. Witnesses say "with regards from the Bertinelli family."[/i]

Helena frowned, and slid the phone back across the table to Geppe with ease, her brown eyes firing over the private area of the strip club like one of the laser lights; darting here, there, then over there, then back across, and all the way back again, putting eyes on everything and everyone. They were all Bertinelli people. Joe Tisci, a soldier one day worth promoting to Capo, was having a birthday party. He wanted Helena there, so long as strippers and strip clubs didn't offend her. It had made Geppe laugh out loud; Helena was a bigger womanizer than anyone in the Family, he said through laughter, leaving Helena no way to duck the invitation.

But that might have been Geppe's plan all along, and so Helena found herself fitting the bill for the strip club's private wing, it's best strippers, and cases of champagne. The inner circle didn't allow groupies, except for bodyguards, yet Helena still had Bells get the name and number of a buxom red haired stripper--just to have fun and play along. And, maybe, a little bit for later. The woman did have pretty, pretty, eyes...

"Get everyone out of here once we leave, Bells," she shouted, Bells' confused look making Helena unsure whether or not he even heard her. Until he answered her, at least. 

"What's wrong?" Geppe showed him the text, but it didn't seem to be enough for him. "You really think that's gonna send bullets in a birthday party? Even the Vitis didn't even like Sisca. And half the guys here are on some mix of Tfour and Addy."

Sisca was a member of the Viti Crime Family, all that remained of the once overpowering Falcone Crime Family. The Vitis weren't the same domineering presence as the Falcones had been, but they were the largest Italian mafia family left in Gotham City because of the Batman, and more importantly, his rogues. It wasn't Batman that killed the mob in Gotham, it was his rogues. It was Two-Face, and Penguin, and Black Mask, and on and on. What was left was taken over by them, except for beach heads of tradition such as the Vitis. 

She didn't want to destroy the Vitis, because then she'd have a much smaller foothold against the other crime lords in the city. Open war between Viti and Bertinelli was bad for all the organized crime not belonging to rogues in Gotham City--not just Italians. It meant the only option was finding out who framed her family, and finding out before a full scale war could truly break out.

In the end, after her silence, Helena just shrugged and took another shot of vodka. "We can't afford to be wrong with this many Bertinelli men in one location. Right bomb in the right place...or a few men with body armor and LMGs...or--"

Bells put his hand up, palm out, and yelled back at her. Fear in his eyes as they started to dart around the room, too. "I'm convinced. I'll make it happen, Don, don't worry about it. You two just be safe." 

Without even being told, Bells knew Geppe and she needed to leave. And they did; down stairs and out a back door with the armored Cadillac Escalade ESV. Geppe got in, Helena did not. "You can handle the angry phone calls?"

Geppe stared, knowing what the question meant: that she wasn't getting into the car. That she was heading to the house. Finally he smiled at her, confident, if subdued. "I got you, Lena. I'll set up a meeting, we'll work this out. Say hi to the House for me." It made her feel a little better as she closed the door and watched him roll off--Helena Bertinelli could turn on the charm whenever, whereever, needed. But it didn't come naturally to her like it did to Geppe. People liked Geppe; he kept the remnants of their family in Gotham City together until she moved back for good. At first the city, and her own family, didn't like it. Some openly wondered if she could handle it, let alone being a woman in a man's game. 

Then it got around (thanks to Bells) that Helena Bertinelli was groomed by Giovanni the Damned, the maker of more beautiful cadavers than any other member of the Sicilian cosa nostra in it's history, if stories were to be believed. And in Sicily, she enjoyed overwhelming support from the family in the old country, something Geppe made known to everyone who came asking. But success and wealth won Helena Bertinelli any respect in Gotham, and in America, she currently had. Geppe was the frontman, the figurehead. 

But everyone in the city who knew anything knew who the boss was. The steel gray Ferrari F12 was brought up to the curb for her, a car fast enough to let her get over the bridge and out of the city quickly. She mostly did the speed limit in the city, until she got past the bridge and into Bristol--then once into Gotham Heights she let her speed go unchecked. It's not like a speeding half a million dollar car in the same neighborhood as Wayne Manor would stand out, but Helena even sped past the Bertinelli estate she was rebuilding, and kept going up the hill, up and up until she was the gate to Wayne Manor itself. 

A quick park, a quicker dash into it, the door unlocked for her following verification from the Batsystem. She stepped into the cave wearing a light blue sleeveless silk blouse that loose, and black paneled lambskin trousers that fit to her legs tight as the blouse was loose. Her boots were heeled, black, Italian leather with a royal purple outersole and heel, dark hair long with the occasional curl down just past her shoulders. Still probably smelling like a strip club.

Helena took a few minutes with the Batcomputer, a few custom keystrokes and password overrides, then a minute of reading, before the side screens she occupied went dark. She saw Dick come in, silently nodded a greeting to Alfred, and managed to do no more than smirk at Damian's disappearance--a smirk that made her lean into Alfred, and whisper, "Twenty says he's going to see Talia, instead of dealing with the little bird."

[i]Little bird[/i], Helena said, referring to this new "Robin." 

When Dick shouted out, Helena answered, "He's up here at the computer," before turning back to Alfred, "Apparently I ordered a hit on Alphonse Sisca. The system had a few leads on the killer, so I'll have Don Bertinelli's folks bring the killer him and question him--I can't tell if this is Two-Face or Black Mask looking to frame the Bertinellis for killing a Viti to start a mob war, or if it's some other yet unknown faction. I don't think it's tied to Bruce, unlike that."

Helena said, nodding her head upwards, motioning to the map of Gotham City on one of the many screens looming before the Butler. To the island titled [i]Nykawa Center[/i]. "Bruce goes dark and suddenly the League shows up?...what the absolute fuck? They're making organized crime folk real nervous. More nervous than the idea of this Cave makes them." She said 'idea of this cave' because no Mafioso really thought it existed, let alone had seen it.......except for her.

"Speaking of which," the next part she threw out carefully, or as carefully as she could, "I called Barry, who talked to both Kal and Di, and the Justice League doesn't know where Bruce is. They haven't heard from or seen him since the Grodd incident a month ago. I had to remind Barry how much Batman dislikes metahumans in this city to keep the League from showing up to help us find him. And nothing from the Mafia world--there was one guy who belongs to what remains of the Maroni clan that was talking up a storm about killing Batman, but unless Bruce suddenly got slow, stupid, and clumsy than this guy is lying. Nobody else even claiming to know anything. A lot of people that know people that know people that heard things, maybe, but that's it. Fair to say the underworld has no idea where he is, or what happened to him, either."

In her tone, one thing became apparent: Helena wasn't worried. In her mind this was the Batman, and Helena knew he'd show back up eventually. He always did.