Mona Sax

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"Max. We gotta stop meeting like this."

―Mona Sax

Mona Sax is a contract killer who operates in New York City.

Background

Mona Sax is the twin sister of Lisa Punchinello and sister-in-law of Angelo Punchinello. She strongly dislikes her sister's Mafia boss husband. Almost nothing is known about Mona's early life and combat training. The only clue to her past is a picture of Mona with her twin sister at Mona's hideout.

The two sisters' names, Mona and Lisa, is an allusion to "Mona Lisa", the most famous Renaissance painting created by Leonardo Da Vinci.

Involvement

Mona is one of the playable protagonists of Max Payne 2. She briefly appears in the original Max Payne and the Max Payne film.

Aesir Corporation

"Mona Sax, Lisa's evil twin."

―Mona introducing herself.

Mona meets Max Payne for the first time after he kills Jack Lupino at Ragna Rock night club. Pointing their guns at each other at close range, Mona reveals Don Punchinello's involvement in the valkyr trade and suggests she and Max cooperate to taking down the mafia boss. This, however, proves to be a ruse, as she drugs Max to make him lose consciousness, stating she does not want to risk her sister becoming a collateral damage of Max's reckless quest for revenge.

Later in the game, Max meets Mona in an elevator during his assault on the Aesir HQ, pointing a gun in his face. Instead of killing Max, for which she is hired, Mona saves him from an ambush by Aesir Corporation's elite guards and is shot in the forehead and is assumed dead. While Max returns fire, Mona's elevator departs. Once recalled, however, Mona's body is missing.

Inner Circle

Mona Sax, having survived, reappears in 2003 and is the prime suspect in the murder of Senator Gates. The case is assigned to detective Valerie Winterson while Max is investigating The Cleaners Case. Unbeknownst to the police, however, Mona was assigned to protect Senator Gates but was overwhelmed by Vladimir Lem and his Russian Mob. She fails to kill Lem, who is only shot in the arm.

Mona visits Max at his apartment to alert him of contract killers hired to kill him. Their meeting, however, is cut short when the Cleaners storm the apartment building.

The next day, Mona invites Max to meet her at her hideout, the abandoned Address Unknown funhouse, somewhere on Coney Island. This meeting breaks the previously established form of mutually pointing a pistol in each other's face, to which Max comments that she "switched tactics." Mona explains that she is hired by Alfred Woden to protect the Inner Circle and the she was at the scene to protect Senator Gates, not to kill him. Max and Mona depart to meet a potential witness but they arrive too late: The Cleaners have arrived. While Max engages the Cleaners in combat, the NYPD arrives and arrests Mona.

At the police headquarters, the corrupt Valerie Winterson does her best to incriminate Mona. Shortly afterwards, heavily armed Cleaners storm the headquarters to kill Mona in the detention cell block. While Max eradicates the attackers, Mona escapes custody. She meets Max again that night at Mona's hideout where they have an affair cut prematurely short by the invasion of the Cleaners. Mona assists Max in fending off the attackers and counter-attacking them in their base of operation. There, she narrowly escapes death at the hand of Winterson, thanks to Max's intervention.

After disappearing from the scene, Mona seeks to kill Lem, but to no avail. She briefly stops to save Max from a burning funhouse but tracking Lem to Woden's manor.

At the Woden's manor firefight, Mona is confronted by Max about her true purpose but too late: She has Max disarmed and at gunpoint. Yet Mona cannot bring herself to pull the trigger. Dramatically, in that fateful moment, she is shot in the back by Lem. Slowly, in absence of medical attention, Mona dies. A message from Mona can be found on Woden's answering machine confessing to be in love with Max and therefore unable to fulfill her end of the hit contract.

The game, played at highest difficulty level, presents an alternative ending during which Mona survives.

Character

Mona Sax is an efficient stone-cold contract killer; who when in doubt, kills. The sexy femme fatale's lack of remorse has led to a body count second to only that of Max himself. The only exception to this is Max Payne, towards whom she points her gun but does not fire. From the very first game, it is apparent that Mona has strong feelings for Max. (The second game often hints that "Max" is short for "Mona Sax".)

When Mona first meets Max, she proclaims "Lisa's the damsel in distress, I'm the professional..." Her last words before death are "God...I turned out to be such a damsel in distress."