Hande Özkan

Aunt and last biological family member to care for her nephew Güvenç / Gavin Özkan before her death in 1921 after his parents (her younger brother and his wife) died in 1918 both from the flu.

Even in her home country of Turkiye and the Ottoman Empire as a whole, the Özkan family are well known for their connections to the Sultan and Ottoman family themselves- being involved heavily in the business and financial world, from giving out loans to start up businesses , negotiating ransoms to rescue hostages, oversee and audit banks to helping manage the finances of everyday people to the Ottoman royal family. Hande herself is an already extremely famous name from the Özkan family for her role in the gambling businesses, serving as a croupier and engaging in gambling matches herself with skill and insight into her opponents hands and even their strategies to cheat.

While to many it sounds like the Özkan family are a bunch of loan sharks who cheat people out of their money, according to many of their clients they actually have a rather positive reputation with fair policies and rarely resorting to violence to get money owed, rather they are known for their negotiation and diplomacy skills. Hande's younger brother specifically is known to be very popular with businesses as his loan policies are extremely relaxed and flexible- leading to him and Hande often having conflicts about how her brother is too "cowardly and weak" to force his clients to pay back what they owe him.

Hande moved to the United States around the early 1910's as the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, claiming her reason for leaving was because she was "getting very bored of the scenes" in her hometown of Ankara, Turkiye. She wanted to originally go to San Francisco, California, but some mistakes with her travel plans and routes caused her to end up in the city of Los Angeles. However she became fond of the city and settled in- finding a job quickly with The Herd and joining in as their finance officer and promoted gambling in The Herd as a way to settle disputes- though her mysterious death in 1921 caused The Herd to reject gambling to this day.