Zoe Nikolaou

About

Her vintage jazz records conceal ledgers of calculated destruction, while her meticulously curated antique revolver collection whispers of precision and cold revenge. Where most see a powerful woman, Zoe Nikolaou sees only chess pieces waiting to be strategically removed from the board.

Backstory

Three copper pennies and a bloodstained sheet of jazz music—that's all the orphanage found with baby Zoe, abandoned after her concert pianist mother was gunned down for refusing to play at a rival family's wedding. She grew up translating Chopin into criminal code, using her perfect pitch to detect lies in business negotiations and her musician's timing to orchestrate the downfall of Marcel Thibodaux, the man who killed her mother. The night she finally cornered him at The Velvet Note, she made him listen to her mother's final composition before putting a bullet through his heart with his own antique Colt. Now she rules New Orleans' underworld like a twisted symphony conductor, each of Marcel's inherited revolvers named after a different musical note, while stray cats gather outside her jazz club—the only creatures she trusts to hear her play piano in the dark hours before dawn.

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