Max Payne
"Something goes clank in the night, and the sound is close enough to a gunshot to take me back to the beginning."It was back in 1998 that Max Payne, a New York police office, came home to his own personal hell. Three insane attackers killed his wife and baby daughter. At the end of the firefight, the three men lay dead, but the damage was done.
"It started three years ago in my bedroom. And I haven't left that room since. The killer dead at my feet on the floor. Michelle lying on the bed. Bullet holes like rubies on her chest. Our baby's cry cut short, the absence of it heavy in the air. That gunshot, like an exclamation mark to end it all, the answer to all my questions, had already rung out a long time ago, even its echoes gone. The gun was fused to my hand from that moment on. That room inside me, everywhere I go."
After the funeral Payne transfers to the DEA and goes deep undercover with the Lupino crime family looking for the source of the new designer drug that has emerged on the streets called Valkyr.
In a secret meeting that went south Max witnesses the murder of his best friend and only link to the outside: Alex Balder.
"There was nothing I could do. He was dead. I could tell by the empty accusing stare of his eyes."
Max goes back to Jack Lupino to find answers, but instead he just finds more trouble. The mob knows Max is a cop, and the cops think Max is a murderer; with no one left to trust, Max is forced to find the answers on his own while also trying to clear his name and stay alive.
"Lupino wasn't in his cheap hotel. Instead, I ran into the Finito brothers. My cover had been blown. The doors slammed shut behind me. And then I was dodging bullets like raindrops."
While hunting down Jack Lupino, Max meets Mona Sax at Ragnarok, the twin sister of the Don’s wife, Lisa. She has her own reasons for wanting to kill the Don.
"This one's mine. I hate the guts of that sadistic wife-beater."
Max tries to stop her, but shes a step ahead of him. Having drugged his whiskey, he passes out and she leaves him alone with his thoughts.
"The nightmare was always the same. Violent shapes moving in darkness, old and ugly. The killer's mad laughter was a riddle filled with wicked innuendo. Somewhere the baby was crying."
With no one left to trust and the worst winter storm in recorded history bearing down on the city, Max finds a friend in Vladimir Lem — a Russian arms dealer.
"Vladamir was one of those old-time bad guys with honor and morals, which made him almost one of the good guys. None of us was a Saint."
With Vlad’s guns, Max confronts the Don, but he is too late; the Don is killed by agents of Nicole Horne the CEO of the Aesir Corporation. Horne injects Max with an overdose of Valkyr and leaves him for dead. Max survives, but not before being thrown into the deepest, darkest parts of his mind once more, where he is forced to relive his family’s tragic deaths, this time in exaggerated drug-laced detail.
"Slowly, the green nightmare faded, leaving dark stains on my soul that would never come off. I felt like flat-lining. I was all shook up. I woke up in a cold sweat, sick and tired to the bone, lying in a puddle of my own puke. The hag had said 'Take me to Cold Steel' before it had all gone crazy. It was a clue. The only one I had."
"The drop-off point was my old address in New Jersey. The file dated three years ago. Just when you thought you had reached the deepest depths of horror, it suddenly got worse."
Max meets with Alfred Wooden, a super rich member of “The Inner Circle." They need Max to dispatch Horne and in return will clear his name. With a plan, a gun, and a healthy dose of revenge coursing through his veins, Max takes out the people responsible for killing his family.
"They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to everything that had led up to this point. I released my finger from the trigger. And then it was all over. The storm seemed to lose its frenzy. The ragged clouds gave way to the stars above."
