Chapter 1: Shadows on the Sava
Belgrade, the city straddling the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, has never been a place of peace. Its history surges like the rivers themselves—turbulent, filthy. In 1456, the Ottoman siege left thousands of corpses piled against the walls of Kalemegdan Fortress. During World War II, Nazi bombs turned the city into a sea of flames, the screams of women and children echoing in the ashes. Even in peacetime, plagues slunk in from the borders of Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbia, devouring countless souls. Today is November 12, 2025. The autumn winds carry a moldy stench through the iron gates of Novo Groblje, the New Cemetery, where forgotten souls lie. At night, the streetlights flicker yellow, and in the cafés, people gossip loudly about the latest scandal—the boiler-room scam centers that swindled millions of euros, leaving the elderly destitute.
In a dilapidated office building by the Sava River, a group of young people are hard at work. Not the inspiring kind of entrepreneurs, but Belgrade’s filthiest parasites: a scam operation called “Belgrade Golden Investments Ltd.” It’s hidden near the Old Fairgrounds (Staro Sajmište), a site that was once a Nazi concentration camp, its soil still holding the bones of thousands of Jews and Serbs. The air reeks of damp rot, as if the dead never truly left.
Leading the gang is Dragan Petrović, a 32-year-old lanky man with eyes like dead fish. Born in Belgrade’s Vračar district to a middle-class family, he was meant to be a respectable architect’s apprentice but chose the easy path. His father is a retired policeman, his mother a housewife—they were proud of their son until he dropped out of school and started peddling fake luxury goods on the black market. Dragan’s evil isn’t petty theft; it’s systematic rot. He runs phone scams targeting elderly Europeans and immigrants, promising “300% returns on gold investments” while draining their life savings. Last year, his crew scammed a German widow, the wife of Hans Müller, 70 years old. When she got the call that her “investment” had failed, she jumped from her Berlin apartment balcony. Dragan laughed in the office: “Old hag deserved it. Saves air.”
At his side is Milica Jovanović, 28, once a beauty, now haggard from drugs and booze. From a poor family in Novi Sad, her father long dead, her mother surviving by scavenging trash, Milica should have been Serbia’s pride—blonde, blue-eyed, stunning. Instead, she chose decay. In university, she traded sex for grades. After graduating, she joined Dragan, playing the “bait”: in video calls, she’d wear revealing clothes, sweet-talking victims into wiring money. Her cruelty is venomous. She doesn’t just scam—she abuses the female staff, forcing them to work until dawn, slapping or docking pay for defiance. Once, a 19-year-old girl named Ana refused to “chat privately” with a client. Milica dragged her into the bathroom and crushed her fingers with a stiletto heel until they bled. Ana’s family—a Serbian couple running a small grocery by the Sava—begged Dragan for mercy. He sneered: “Whore, go find another job.”
Their core team numbers about ten, all Belgrade’s bottom-feeders who clawed their way up: Zoran Nikolić, 26, a programmer who writes scam scripts and hacked an Italian family’s vacation fund, leading to their divorce; Sofija Radović, 24, Milica’s deputy, a master of psychological manipulation who fake-cries about “my last hope” to milk sympathy before vanishing with the cash; Luka Ivanović, 30, the finance chief and money-laundering wizard, whose wife Ivana is the gang’s accountant, forging books to swallow millions. Luka’s evil is hypocritical: he plays the devoted husband but gropes female staff in the office, threatening unemployment for resistance. Their families are tainted too: Dragan’s sister Ana Petrović, 22, fresh out of university, pulled in by her brother as a clerk, witnessing everything but staying silent; Milica’s mother Gordana, 50, at home in Novi Sad, fencing stolen goods without asking questions.
The gang thrives like Belgrade’s nightlife: days spent on calls, nights carousing in Skadarlija’s bars, downing rakija, mocking their victims’ stupidity. They see themselves as kings, Belgrade their playground. Unbeknownst to them, the White Lady of Kalemegdan—the ghost of a Serbian girl raped and murdered during the Ottoman siege, said to haunt the fortress in a white dress—has been watching.
Chapter 2: Cracks in the Gold
By late summer 2024, “Belgrade Golden Investments” peaks. Dragan rents a bigger office by the Sava, decked out in gaudy gold, fake “Best Investment Firm” plaques on the walls. The team swells to twenty. New recruits include Vuk, a 19-year-old whose miner father lost his job in the Kolubara coal mine corruption scandal, joining to spite society; and Una, 21, from an immigrant family, translating scams into English and German.
Their crimes flood like the Danube in spring. A major operation targets Bulgarian retired teachers: Milica, in a low-cut top on Zoom, sobs, “Dear uncle, my husband is sick—this investment is our only hope.” Fifty elderly victims wire two million euros. Money in hand, Dragan throws a party—rakija bottles smash, girls forced to dance. Sofija, drunk, slurs to Una: “You little bitch, learn to show more skin for more cash.” Una’s mother, an Albanian seamstress in Belgrade, hears of her daughter’s “job” and begs at the office. Milica shoves her out: “Get lost, old beggar. Don’t ruin our vibe.”
Families are complicit. Luka’s wife Ivana forges invoices at home, their five-year-old son Milan dumped with a nanny while they hit clubs. Dragan’s father, old Petrović, lives off his son’s “gifts,” unaware they came from a French cancer patient’s legacy for his granddaughter. Milica’s mother Gordana hoards loot in her Novi Sad flat, occasionally confessing in church but shrugging at her daughter’s “success.”
Belgrade’s summer is hell-hot; the Sava’s low waters expose rusted shipwrecks like floating corpses. In September, the first crack appears. Zoran, working late, hears a whisper: “Why… why take my house?” He turns—nothing but Kalemegdan’s lights outside. Blaming cocaine, he ignores it. That night, he dreams of a skeletal old woman pointing: “You’ll pay… bit by bit.” He wakes in warm urine, not sweat. He says nothing, showers, and works on. It’s only the beginning.
Chapter 3: Whispers of the White Lady
October: leaves fall by the Danube, crows swarm Novo Groblje. Business booms, but the uncanny mounts. Sofija collapses first. Mid-call, she screams: “Don’t come near! Don’t touch me!” The British pensioner on the line hangs up. She claims a white-dressed woman, hair dripping like river weed, stood by her desk. Sofija’s face goes ashen; her pants flood—not water, but shit and piss. She bolts to the bathroom, sobbing as she scrubs, but the filth clings. Milica slaps her: “Bitch, stop faking! Work!” Sofija glares, defiant: “You don’t get it. She said we’ll all pay! She’s… the German widow’s ghost!” She can’t argue with herself, only repeat the curse, throat choked.
Dragan scoffs at ghosts: “Serbian Lady in White nonsense? Fuck superstition!” But that night, alone in his Vračar flat—wife away—he hears kitchen footsteps. He opens the door: a blurry girl in a tattered WWII skirt, eyes hollow. “Ana… Ana…” Dragan recognizes Ana, the girl Milica abused, who killed herself by the Sava last year, body swept downstream. His legs buckle; hot filth pours down—shit and piss soaking the carpet. He scrubs in the shower, cursing: “Get out, you whore!” But his voice shakes, denying nothing. Next day, he roars at the team: “Anyone speaks of this, I’ll kill you!” His bravado is a cornered beast’s, eyes betraying panic.
Ghosts multiply like plague. Luka, driving home, sees an Italian man in the rearview—the victim whose bankruptcy he engineered. “My daughter… she begs on streets now.” Luka swerves, crashing. Ivana finds him slumped, reeking of excrement. Little Milan wails: “Daddy peed his pants!” Ivana hisses: “Shut up, kid! It’s coffee.” But she dreams of a Bulgarian teacher’s ghost by Milan’s crib.
Families suffer too. Dragan’s sister Ana, printing files, screams: a victim’s relative—old Petrović’s “friend”—points: “Your brother’s money is my blood!” Ana wets herself, filth splattering the keyboard. She flees home; old Petrović rages: “Lies! Dragan’s a good boy!” But he wets the bed that night, dreaming of Kolubara’s ghosts—miners ruined by corruption—dragging him to hell.
Milica’s mother Gordana gets an anonymous letter in Novi Sad: proof of her daughter’s scams, a photo of the White Lady dancing by the Sava. She burns it, but flames show a ghostly face. At church, the priest sighs: “Belgrade’s ghosts spare no greed.” That night, Gordana soils her nightgown, defiant: “My daughter’s right! Those people were fools!”
Chapter 4: The Vanishing Numbers
November: biting winds strip Jajinci Memorial Park bare, exposing WWII execution pits. The gang crumbles like dead leaves. Vuk, 19, dies first. After a bar binge, ghosts—victims’ families—dance the Serbian Lady’s eerie steps around him, faces worm-eaten. “Give back… lives…” He screams, runs into the Sava, drowns. His miner father, at the morgue: “Retribution… Kolubara’s curse.” Team down to eighteen.
Una collapses next, pants soaked, roaring at Milica: “You old hag! The ghosts say you’ll suffer worse!” She can’t retract, only parrot the spirits. That night, she leaps from Novo Groblje’s wall, pulped on impact. Her Albanian mother goes mad, muttering in streets: “My Una… why not listen?”
Sofija tries fleeing to Novi Sad but sees the White Lady block the road. Crash: guts ruptured, dying in blood and filth. Her ghost, they say, haunts Staro Sajmište, warning youths: “Don’t trust gold—it’s poison.”
Zoran suicides in his flat, coding a note: “Ghosts in my computer… they know all.” Found in a pool of shit and piss, his teacher wife—quiet, proper—starts wetting herself, snarling: “He deserved it! For touching dirty money!” Her eyes are hollow.
Luka and Ivana hold longer. They try moving assets, but accounts freeze—as if ghostly hands intervene. In a meeting, Luka cackles: “We won! Those old fools…” He collapses, soiled, muttering victims’ names. Ivana drags him home; Milan sobs: “Mommy, Daddy stinks!” That night, they confess terror in bed, unable to deny: “We’re rotten… retribution.” Next day, Luka drives into the Danube; Ivana and Milan drown with him. News calls it “accident,” but neighbors whisper: “Ghosts pulled them.”
Down to ten, eight, five… Dragan and Milica are the last pillars. The firm collapses: lawsuits, police raids—boiler-room fallout. The office is a ghost town, screens flickering with spectral faces. Dragan’s father, old Petrović, strokes out, bedridden and incontinent, mumbling: “Son… you ruined us.” Sister Ana is institutionalized, raving of “white women who aren’t there.”
Gordana comes to Belgrade, begging Milica’s forgiveness. On Sava Bridge, ghosts swarm—victims dancing. She falls, body netted later, face twisted in a defiant grin: “I was right…”
Chapter 5: Eternal Filth
December: snow falls on Belgrade, the White Lady clearer in Kalemegdan’s drifts. Dragan and Milica hole up in a cheap hotel—rumored haunted Garni Hotel Jugoslavija. Their sins replay: Dragan recalls their first victim, a Serbian WWII vet scammed of prosthetic-leg money; Milica hears Ana’s screams, her suicide a knife in the heart.
But the curse is merciless. Dragan clings to bravado: “We’re the victims! Ghosts are hallucinations!” Yet his body betrays: daily incontinence, filth soaking sheets, stench like a corpse. He can’t shower—taps spew black blood. Milica’s worse: skin ulcerates as if clawed. She screams at Dragan: “Shut up, you panty-pisser coward!” But can’t deny: “We’re Belgrade’s scum… forever.”
Final day: December 31, 2025, New Year’s Eve. The office is sealed, shutdown official. Dragan and Milica stand by the Sava, snow swirling. Ghosts appear: White Lady leading, Ana, Una, Sofija, victims, families behind. The Lady’s dance begins, river boiling. Dragan soils himself one last time, kneeling: “Sorry… we were wrong.” His voice drowns.
Milica laughs, mad-defiant: “Fuck your ghosts! We won!” She plunges next. Dragan follows, filthy bodies sinking.
Belgrade hums on. Tourists at Kalemegdan see white shapes dancing by the river. The ghosts never leave. Retribution is eternal, like the city’s dark history: war, plague, corruption—all fused into undying filth.
❄🌸Snow Cherry Blossom🌸❄ 