Little is known about Fisk's personal life and early years other than her maiden name "Marianna". After the Kingpin has a near-death experience, Vanessa threatens to leave him within twenty-four hours. Kingpin is about to kill Spider-Man when the deadline passes, and Vanessa forces him to choose between Spider-Man's life or their life together. He chooses Vanessa and spares Spider-Man as a result. Kingpin prepares to settle his remaining business with his fellow mobsters by cooperating with the authorities and leaving the world of crime forever. This infuriates one of Kingpin's closest advisors, Lynch, who believed that Vanessa was a liability to him. When Kingpin's former lieutenants in New York learn of his plans to sell them out in exchange for immunity, they kidnap Vanessa. Lynch fires an explosive at Vanessa in an attempt to kill her. Vanessa is buried alive, leaving her amnesiac and mentally unstable. Daredevil uses Vanessa as leverage to force Kingpin to order Randolph Cherryh, newly elected to the office of mayor, to resign and to confirm to the media that he was working with Kingpin. Vanessa, now-
catatonic, is sent to a sanitarium in Europe for treatment. Vanessa recovers from her injuries and remains in Europe. After Kingpin survives an assassination attempt, Vanessa arranges for him to be shipped out of the country to recover and makes a deal with his fellow mob bosses to divide up his recently rebuilt crime syndicate in exchange for a truce. Vanessa then murders her son Richard, who admitted to Vanessa that his motivation was to rid the family of his father. Murdering her son had a physical toll on Vanessa, causing her to lose the will to live, which along with the injuries she sustained when she was buried alive, causes her to sustain terminal organ failure. Before dying, Vanessa fakes the death of
Foggy Nelson in an attempt to provoke Matt Murdock into killing Kingpin. When that fails, Vanessa manipulated the superhero
Iron Fist into posing as Daredevil, which drives Murdock to break out of prison to find Foggy's murderer. ==Other versions==