“No one is dead until the ripples they caused in the world die away.”

When Daniella was a child, hitting that awkward phase that involved frizzy hair and pimples, she went through a tough time with other children her age. Her mother, a beautiful woman with talents that were not understood by Daniella at the time, would sit with her each day and go over what had happened, who had said what and how she had responded. Daniella could remember vividly the patience that her mother had with her, how petty the problems had truly been but how major they had seemed to her at that age. And each night, before putting her to sleep, her mother would say the same thing to her: “A tiger does not lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.”

It was only a short time later, during a rather fragile age, that her mother had been gunned down. Old enough to be on her own but not old enough to know what to do with herself, Daniella had used the money her mother left her to travel for a time. She’d grown from the awkward, frizzy haired child into a beautiful young woman and she used that to her advantage, to get what she wanted in whatever situation she was in. Until one day she’d found an old family friend and been drawn into this world, the world of crime, one she’d known when she was little but hadn’t really understood or given much thought to after it led to the death of her mother.

What she didn’t realize, when she’d started this journey, was the amount of death she would encounter along the way. From her mother’s oldest friends to some of the people she’d become closest to herself, Daniella had visited far too many funerals, especially in recent weeks.

But with these deaths had come other things too. Blame, rumors, the kin of hurt people coming back to find answers. People needed someone to lash out to and mud was being thrown in the streets. People were angry, that was to be expected. But through it all, Daniella kept her head raised high. She knew what choices she had made and she stood by them all. Her mother had raised her to be a tiger and when the time came for her to step into a family of her own, Daniella knew just it would be called.

As she arrived in South Side, having been sent there earlier in the day by her boss, she came upon the building that would be her future headquarters. It needed some work, sure. Fortifications would need to be built and some time would be spent making the place truly feel like a home for all of those who entered, but it was a good sturdy building. She realized that this was simply another fork in the road in the journey of life. She could fail or she could succeed and she knew which one she planned to do.

Walking to the front, she hung a sign on the door before making her way inside. It was a little crooked, but it would do the job for now. Closing the door behind her, the sign swung a bit before stopping, and one would be able to make out the words:

The Tiger's Lair