Nadya wandered the lower districts aimlessly, dressed in a dark cloak with a shawl thrown over her head, trying to forget her past. She hated remembering. Hated feeling so weak and vulnerable when she was meant to be strong. She was no longer Hatice, daughter of the noble Altaris family, but Dona Nadya, the most feared crime boss on Axxila. “You don’t actually believe that, do you?” she could hear her mother’s voice say in the back of her mind. “Things always end, Hatice, even people. But memories? They last forever.”
Shut up, she thought, a hand pressed to temple as if she could dispel the memory like a bad migraine. It rarely worked. Only the noise of the city could drown out her mother’s words, the roar of speeder engines or market gossip enough to make her forget, even if just for a moment.
Sometimes the flashes came suddenly, when she least expected, in tastes and smells and pictures. Rose bouquets in porcelain vases. Orange cakes wrapped in white paper. Spicy kebabs, heavily marinated and drenched in pepper. She could distinctly remember her mother’s laughter in the kitchens as she helped the servants cook for dinner, along with one of her nosy aunts who insisted on adding parsley to every dish. Or that time she accidentally punched her older brother so hard his nose started bleeding.
Those memories always came with a wave of nostalgia, followed by a painful tug in her chest that Nadya could only best describe as a knife slowly plunging into her heart. Some nights she wished she could forget. She was not that girl anymore. That past had died along with her and the rest of her family.
She sighed. Nadya decided against returning back to her office. Although she lived a life of relative luxury since taking over Don Salvara’s business—doubling his profits and expanding the House of Glass into the underworld’s most popular club—a bed made of silk didn’t help stop the nightmares and it sure wouldn’t now. She was just in no mood to sleep. And while it was not safe for her to wander alone, not when she’d made so many new enemies in the last month, she didn’t care.
So, instead, Nadya turned down one of the nearby alleys and headed to the one spot that might help clear her mind. A spot she and her brother Jaikus had visited so often in their secret visits to the lower city levels. A spot only she knew now.
@Altaris