The Don sat calmly in his leather seat, his hard eyes resting on the face of his lieutenants as they filed into the meeting room. Set at the very top of a huge office complex, no one would guess that the popular game company, Lothar, doubled as a mafia organization’s main front. The room wasn’t overly lavish, with the typical office furnishings that one would expect a meeting room to possess. A polished dark brown oval table, typical black office chairs with metallic armrests and a few flowers and paintings here and there, The Don didn’t really care either way.

Today was a very important day, as his reign over the world’s youth would be decided from the information he gleaned from his men. On that note, he motioned for his niece, Claire, to close the room’s double doors so that they would have full privacy. She nodded and started to close the door, but was pushed back when one late member suddenly burst into the room.

“Sorry for my tardiness, Boss. I had to…” He started, but was abruptly cut of when a 9mm round spread his grey matter all over the wall behind him. Minus Claire, no one reacted to the sudden display of violence. To rise this far in the mafia, they had seen and done things that would make Satan have nightmares.

“Never do that to my niece.”

He holstered his weapon and nodded to his shaken niece to close the door once more. Calming herself, she carried out his orders. Claire was still soft in his opinion, but she was quickly coming round.

“Report.”

The man closest to him on the table, his lieutenant and second in command Dimo, took up the directive and started filling The Don in on what he needed to know.

“We’re ready to launch worldwide. Closed beta has been successful with a 100% retention rate. With this, we will own 75% of the gamer market, with the 25% containing those without the means or those who will be naturally averse to our project.”

The Don tapped the table with his pinky finger lightly, thinking to himself. His men knew what that meant intimately. The Don wasn’t happy.

“How can we increase that percentage?”

Dimo shuffled for a bit before looking The Don right in the eye and saying words that would doom even the most influential man in this part of the world.

“We can’t. This is the highest we can go at this time.”

There were audible gasps around the table and even Claire put her hands to her ears, closing her senses to what was coming next. The Don looked at his second in command with a piercing gaze, his pinky still tapping the table absentmindedly. To his credit, Dimo kept his eyes locked with his Boss, not wavering in the least.

Then, The Don snorted and switched from his pinky to his index finger. Around the table, everyone relaxed and then tension bled out. The Don was pleased. Dimo didn’t let the tension fade, because for him, there was never any tension. He was The Don’s best man. Dimo had done great things for the organization and his burning loyalty to The Don was not missed on anyone. The Don would be a fool to waste an asset like that on something like this, since the results were already above average.

“When can we launch?”

“Today if you wanted it. We however set the release date to a week from now. The whole gaming community is riled up already, so we need to do very little in advertisement at this point. To be honest, all we need to do is wait for release to come and rise to the top,” Dimo stated while ruffling his wavy dark brown hair. His two piece suit was of the same Design as the Don’s, where Dimo’s was green and the Don’s was red. Every other man had something similar, but with a uniform color of blue. The Don preferred to denote rank by colors while keeping a sense of uniformity.

Claire was the only one dressed informally, but that was okay. She was his sister’s daughter and was family. He would not impose any rules on her that she didn’t want or her mother wouldn’t like. Still the resemblance was striking, as if his baby sister had been copied onto her daughter. They both had the same wild auburn hair that reached their waist, intelligent green eyes and slightly diminutive shape.

The Don couldn’t remember how many of her exes he had shot since she came into his care. Any guy who dated the niece of a mafia boss and broke her heart was destined for a bullet in between the eyes. It was The Don’s bill for having to comfort her when she was sobbing at night, which should’ve been their job.

“See it done. I expect the best results. Dismissed.”

He wasn’t one for long meetings and they knew that. The moment he dismissed them, they filed out immediately and in proper order. When the last man had left, The Don nodded to Claire and she left him alone after fussing over him for a bit.

On his own, he loosened his tie and moved to stand before the window, looking down on the city before him. The mass of humanity and traffic touched something in him, something deep. Despite being a criminal he thought himself a philanthropist.

That was why he was doing this. This whole project. This game. He was creating something that would last forever. Though the cost had been great. Too great. But he had paid it.

After all, what was one man’s soul for the world?