Left It Behind

※※※ Lissa

The airport was busy; loved ones said hi and bye, and now it’s my turn. My mother, a vision in Chanel, was crumbling. Her sobs were quiet, elegant things that shook her slender shoulders, her hands pressed to her mouth as if to hold the sound in. She kept smoothing my hair and my coat, as if trying to memorize the texture through her gloves.

“You be safe, my girl. Mia cara. I will miss you every second. Call every chance you get. We will see you for Christmas, yes?” Her Italian accent thickened with emotion, each word a fragile bell.

“I will, Mama. I promise.” I squeezed her hands, my own throat tight. “I love you. Take care of this grumpy old man for me.”

My father stood a pace behind her, a monolith in a cashmere overcoat. His face was its usual granite mask, but his eyes, those piercing blue Damingo eyes, were fixed on me with an intensity that stripped away the airport noise. I expected the usual—a gruff nod, maybe a pat on the shoulder, his version of affection.

He surprised me.

Instead of the playful push he’d given me when I left for summer camp a lifetime ago, he stepped forward. His large hands came up, not to push, but to pull. He enveloped me in a hug. It was brief, fierce, and utterly uncharacteristic. I was swallowed by the scent of his cologne and the fine wool of his coat.

“Take care of yourself, baby,” he murmured, his voice a rough vibration against my ear. The endearment, so rarely used, nearly broke my composure. He pulled back, holding me at arm’s length. His gaze was a drill, boring into my soul. “It’s going to be tough. Don’t show weakness. Not to anyone. Make friends where you can, but remember, everyone here is a potential rival. Allies are more valuable than friends. And most of all...” He paused, and for a fleeting second, I saw not the don but the father. “Come back in one piece. Would you?”

He lifted my hand, the one without the now-absent silver bracelet, and pressed a firm, dry kiss to my knuckles. A benediction and a brand.

Then it was over. He released me and put a steadying arm around my weeping mother. A uniformed attendant from the airline gestured discreetly. First class boarding for the Damingo heir.

I turned and walked down the jet bridge without looking back. Not once. Looking back was for people with something to miss. I had buried what I missed in a cardboard box by a door. I carried the lessons, not the longing.

The flight was an eleven-hour purgatory of champagne I didn’t drink and movies I didn’t watch. I stared out the window at the endless blue, feeling the last threads of my old life snap, one by one, with every mile.

Switzerland, when we descended, was a postcard of brutal elegance. Impossibly green valleys cradled by teeth-like granite peaks, everything clean, precise, and cold. The air smelled of pine and money. The car—a silent, black sedan—wound up a private road towards a cluster of severe, modern buildings that seemed to grow from the mountainside. The Union.

From a distance, it could have been the world’s most exclusive university or a cutting-edge sanatorium. Closer, the details betrayed its true nature. The sleek glass and steel were framed by subtle but formidable security gates. Camera housings were everywhere, sleek and black like insect eyes. The “groundskeepers” moved with a crisp, military precision, their eyes constantly scanning. It was a gilded cage with a world-class education as the lock.

Nerves, a cold, fluttering thing, took up residence in my stomach. This was it. The proving ground. I was no one here. Just another last name with a legacy to uphold or disgrace.

The main assembly hall was a vast atrium of glass and pale stone, filled with the quiet hum of a hundred young voices speaking a dozen languages. Everyone was polished, beautiful, and watchful. I stood with my single, expensive suitcase, feeling acutely visible.

That’s when he bumped into me.

Not a shove. A solid, accidental impact from someone not watching where they were going. My suitcase wobbled.

"Bozhe moi! Sorry, so sorry,” a voice said, deep and lightly accented. I turned to see a tall young man with hair the color of wheat and eyes of a startling, pale grey. He had the broad shoulders and easy grace of an athlete and a smile that seemed genuinely apologetic. “I was looking for my friend Yuri and... well, I found you instead. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” I said, my voice cool, automatic. The guard was up.

“Klaus. Klaus Novak,” he said, extending a hand. He was handsome in a classic, princely way—sharp cheekbones, a strong jaw. He looked about nineteen.

“Alissa Damingo.”

His grey eyes flickered with recognition. A slight, respectful nod. “Ah. Welcome. First year?”

“Yes.”

“It is a lot, no? The mountain, the... atmosphere.” He gestured around the room of quietly scheming heirs. “My first day last year, I got lost three times between this hall and my dormitory. Here, let me.” He reached for my suitcase before I could protest. “It is the least I can do for nearly knocking you over. I am in my second year. I can show you to the residence wing. The maps they give are useless.”

He was charming. Effortlessly so. He fell into step beside me, navigating the crowded hall with an easy confidence. He asked polite questions about my flight and pointed out various landmarks—the library, the strategy simulators, and the dining hall, which he warned was “adequate but not worth getting excited about.” He was helpful. Nice.

And every alarm bell my father had installed in me was ringing softly but persistently. Don’t show weakness. Make friends where you can. Everyone is a potential rival.

Klaus Novak. Russian. A “prince” in the network, which meant his family controlled significant interests in energy, minerals, or something equally substantial. His friendliness was a currency. His help was an investment.

As we walked, I studied him from the corner of my eye. His ease had a practiced quality. His smiles reached his eyes, but those pale grey eyes were assessing, taking in my reactions, my poise. This was not Enzo’s raw, burning intensity. This was something cooler, more calculated.

We reached the archway leading to the residence halls. He handed me my suitcase with a slight bow. “Here you are. The lion’s den. Yours will be on the third floor, west wing. The views are spectacular, if you can enjoy them between the study sessions.”

“Thank you for your help, Klaus.”

“Of course. Perhaps I will see you at the orientation mixer tonight? It is a dreadful affair, but it is useful for... taking the temperature of the new class.”

“Perhaps,” I said, non-committal.

He gave another charming smile and melted back into the flow of students.

I turned towards the stairs, the weight of my suitcase—and my name—firmly in my hand again. Klaus was nice. He was also a potential complication. A friendly face that could just as easily be a carefully placed mirror, reflecting back what I wanted to see to lower my guard.

I didn’t need a mother. I had one, weeping at an airport.I didn’t need an Enzo. I’d had one, and the crater he’d left in my life was still smoking.

What I needed was to be Alissa Damingo. Sharp. Unassailable. Alone. I would make alliances where necessary. I would learn everything this place could teach me. I would become the heir my father needed, the leader my family required.

And I would do it without letting anyone, especially not a handsome Russian prince with easy smiles, get close enough to find the cracks in the armor. The girl who could be shattered was gone. She’d been left in a kitchen, staring past a ghost.

I climbed the stairs to my new room, my footsteps echoing in the cold, beautiful silence of the Union. The fight was over. A new one had just begun.

I am now a second year at the union.

The Alps outside my window were a permanent, breathtaking painting, their beauty now as familiar and meaningless as the wallpaper in a prison cell. I’d just returned from the mandated winter holiday—two weeks in Sicily at the family compound. It was all strained smiles, my mother’s anxious eyes searching mine for a daughter who no longer existed, and my father’s silent, approving nods over business reports I could now discuss with cold clarity. I was a model heir. A perfect student. I spoke four languages fluently, could dissect a corporate merger or a territorial dispute with equal precision, and my combat ratings were in the top percentile of my class.

I was also a ghost in a beautifully tailored shell.

Tonight was Fight Night. A monthly ritual at the Union, less about the brawling and more about the theater of controlled violence. It was where alliances were tested, weaknesses exposed, and reputations forged in sweat and blood. The underground gymnasium, nicknamed “The Gauntlet,” was transformed. The mats were rolled out; the tiered observation decks were filled with students, instructors, and tonight... special guests.

“Audience tonight, Damingo,” Klaus murmured, leaning against the locker next to mine as I wrapped my hands. His grey eyes were watchful. “Word is a few families sent observers. Maybe yours.”

I didn’t look up, focusing on the tight, practiced loops of the tape. “Let them watch.”

Klaus had been... useful. Over two years, our initial cautious interaction had solidified into a strategic partnership. He was the closest thing I had to a friend, which meant we exchanged valuable information, covered for each other’s minor transgressions, and presented a united front. He had a preternatural ability to get things—real coffee, decent wine, the occasional banned piece of tech—past the Union’s draconian security. Rumor was half the guards were on his father’s payroll. I didn’t ask. I just accepted the bottles of vodka he’d sneak into my room, the fuel for the few, rare nights I allowed the numbness to thaw into something darker and quieter.

He also let me win. In sparring, in strategy games, sometimes even in these sanctioned fights. He’d come close and make it look good, but there was always a tell—a slight hesitation in his strike, an opening he’d “miss.” He thought I didn’t notice. I did. It was another transaction. He was building my legend, and in return, my success reflected well on our alliance. I let him do it. Pride was a luxury I couldn’t afford.

The first three rounds of the night were mine. Striking, grappling, tactical submission. Clean, efficient victories. The observers in the deck—a mix of severe-looking men and women in sharp suits—watched with impassive faces, taking notes. I could feel my father’s phantom gaze on me, evaluating. Don’t show weakness.

The fourth round was against a hulking Scandinavian heir named Bjorn. It was pure, brutal power versus my speed. I was winning, dancing around him, landing sharp, stinging blows. Then, a mistake. A fraction of a second of misjudgment. His fist, a hammer wrapped in tape, connected with the side of my head.

The world didn’t just go black. It shattered.

A kaleidoscope of blinding white stars exploded behind my eyes, followed by a wave of nauseating dizziness. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears, drowning out the roar of the crowd. And in that disoriented haze, as I stumbled back, my vision swimming, I saw him.

Standing at the very back of the lower observation deck, half in shadow.

Enzo.

Not a memory. A visceral, physical presence. The same height, the same lean, powerful build, the same way of holding himself—a coiled tension even in stillness. He was wearing dark clothes, his face obscured, but I knew. My heart, which had been a cold, dormant stone for two years, gave a single, painful lurch against my ribs.

Why now?

I blinked hard, shaking my head to clear the stars. When my vision swam back into focus, I stared at the spot.

It was empty. Just a shadow, a trick of the flickering arena light and my concussed brain. A cruel hallucination served up by a fist to the temple.

The disappointment that crashed down was so profound it felt like a physical weight. Then, instantly, it was swallowed by a boiling, shameful fury—at myself. For the lapse. For the hope, however brief and insane. Weakness.

Bjorn charged. The fury found a target. I sidestepped, using his momentum, and swept his legs out from under him. He hit the mat with a sound like a sack of cement. I didn’t wait for the count. I was on him, my arm snaking around his throat in a chokehold that was all business. He tapped out thirty seconds later, his face mottled purple.

I stood, breathing hard, the phantom of Enzo burning behind my eyes more vividly than the throbbing in my skull.

The final round was announced: weapons, knives, and so on. Training blades, of course—blunted, but with enough heft and edge to bruise, to cut, to hurt. My opponent was a sleek, deadly girl from a Hong Kong syndicate, Mei Lin. She was all silent grace and razor-sharp precision.

We circled. The world had taken on a slightly tilted, unreal quality since the hit. The dizziness was a persistent whisper in my inner ear. I pushed it down, focusing on Mei’s eyes and the subtle shift of her weight.

We clashed. The clack of polymer training knives was a rapid, violent percussion. She was good. Very good. I was better, or I should have been. But my footwork was off. The world tilted again on a wave of vertigo. I mis stepped, my balance betraying me for a split second.

It was all she needed.

Her blade, driven with perfect, pitiless accuracy, slipped past my guard and jammed into the meat of my left hip, just above the pelvis. A training knife couldn’t pierce deeply, but the blunt force trauma was exquisite. A white-hot lance of pain radiated out, stealing my breath. It wasn’t a killing blow. It was a message. A humiliation. A deliberate shot to a non-vital area meant to hobble, to hurt, and to show dominance.

I heard a gasp from the crowd. Saw Mei’s cold, triumphant eyes.

And something in me snapped.

Not the careful, controlled break of the past two years. This was a primal, tectonic rupture. The girl who had been methodically buried—the one who loved motorcycles and starry cliffs, the one who believed in forever, the one who had her heart broken—didn’t just stir. She died. For real this time. There was no ghost left.

What surged up to take her place was pure, undiluted rage.

A red haze descended over my vision. The pain in my hip was irrelevant. The dizziness vanished, burned away by the inferno. I didn’t see Mei Lin, the skilled opponent. I saw every betrayal, every cold word, every moment of loneliness, every ounce of pressure, the phantom on the observation deck—all of it condensed into the form in front of me.

I dropped my knife.

I didn’t need it.

With a sound that was half roar, half sob, I lunged. No technique. No strategy. Just animal fury. I took the next slash across my forearm without flinching and closed the distance. My fist connected with her jaw. A sickening crack. She staggered. I didn’t let her fall. I grabbed her, driving her back against the chain-link fence of the arena. My hands were on her, not as a fighter, but as a force of destruction. Blows rained down on her ribs, her stomach, and her face. The crowd’s roar became a distant, buzzing thing. All I heard was the wet thud of impact and the ragged sound of my breathing.

She slid down the fence, a broken doll. I stood over her, my fists bloody, my body trembling with an adrenaline crash that felt like the end of the world. An instructor was shouting, pulling me back. Klaus was there, his face uncharacteristically grim, holding my arms. The observers were on their feet, their clinical interest replaced by something closer to alarm.

I looked down at Mei Lin, being helped up, her face a mask of blood and shock. I looked at my hands, the knuckles split and raw.

The anger drained away, leaving a vacuum so absolute it was more terrifying than the fury. In its place was a cold, hollow certainty.

I didn’t know who I was anymore.

But the girl I had been, the one who might have felt remorse, who might have been horrified by her own violence... she was gone. Finally, completely. Beaten to a pulp on the mat alongside my opponent.

What walked out of The Gauntlet that night was something else. Something harder. Something that had looked into the abyss of its own rage and hadn’t flinched. Something that, for a split second, had wished the training blade had been real, if only to feel something other than this consuming, ice-cold nothing.

My father’s observer would have quite the report to send home.

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