Dance Of Devils

Two - Nadia

  "Money is money," came Lorenzo's non-committal response. She breathed out a laugh, didn't she know it.

  It was then her sight caught on the desk, a stack of photos spread out amongst what looked to be floor plans and accounting details. Dates circled in red pen seemed to have some meaning written in a notebook left open.

  "Leo," she murmured, attention still on the page in front of her trying to decipher what it meant. "You getting this?"

  "What is all that?" He rumbled in response.

  "No clue, but it looks important," Nadia responded, flicking through the notebook to find more dates, more red pen.

  "Grab it and bring it back with you," Lorenzo ordered, voice just as baffled and confused as hers. "we'll have a proper look at it later."

  "Rodger that," she confirmed, grabbing it and tucking it into her pocket only to be stopped short at the images she found hidden under it.

  The image that caught her sight first was a photo of Jade when she was a child, smiling and gap-toothed, triumphantly holding what Nadia assumed was the tooth that had just fallen out for the camera to see. So innocent and joyful, Nadia couldn't help the smile that tugged her cheeks up at the young golden girl. Next to it was images of Jade when she was older, each picture going up in age, one after the other. One, in particular, snagged at Nadia's heart and stopped her dead. Jade was lying in a hospital bed, her face nearly unrecognisable, covered black and blue in bruises and swelling. this one, unlike the rest had a description on the back. Finn Richardson, five-foot-eleven-inches, male, twenty-seven, last seen with Victor Crawley. The assassin swallowed back the emotion that threatened to drown her clinging onto the rage and disappointment that she couldn't kill Finn Richardson all over again and the anger at her old boss that grew yet again. She should have killed him when she had the chance.

  Quickly, she scanned through the rest of the images, suddenly taken aback to find several of herself within them. Her heart began to pound loudly in her ears. Photos of her she didn't even recognise, pictures she didn't know existed of her. She thought she had destroyed all images of herself but there before her was evidence she hadn't.

  The assassin found one of herself at the institute in training, taken from one of the first missions Victor had taken Nadia, Theo and the gang on. Her face was stony and unmoving, half in shadow from the hood pulled over her head, but unmistakably her. Her brows drew together as she tried to remember the image being taken but she drew a complete blank.

  She continued to shift through the images until she found another of herself, taken when she was a child, no more than five, arms slung around a woman's neck who held her close a gentle smile on her face. Her mother. Suddenly she marked how similar they looked. Nadia grazed a finger over the two images, tracing the lines of her mother's face to memory. The way their noses looked the same, the almond shape of her eyes, the dimple on her right cheek and the tight ringlets of dark hair escaping the bun on top of her head.

  Nadia's thoughts began to race in her mind once more as she stared at the woman who she knew loved her. The person taking the photo had to have been her father, the way her mother's face was alight, the way her own younger face looked so carefree and loved.

  "Am I clear to move on yet?" Nadia asked, done with the room and the images it held. The memories she didn't have anymore.

  "All set," responded Angelo. That was all she needed. Without looking back, Nadia raced out of the room, darting in and out of factory equipment with such vicious and graceful ease, each pump of her legs pushing every emotion out of her head until the only thing that was left was the blueprint of the building. The room she headed towards was the only thing on her mind, everything that happened around her was simply background-noise, irrelevant, by the time she reached the door she was looking for.