The Glass Goddess
Excerpt: Prologue + Chapter 1-3
Prologue
FIORA
Thorn stood tall and proud, a magnificent building begging you to enter — to come play with fire. Luxurious, raving, dangerous fire ready to burn each sliver of visible skin to the beating rhythm of intoxicating music.
Goosebumps travelled along my arms — the smell of saltwater mixing with late summer air — as my eyes followed the sleek building all the way to the dark, starless sky above.
"Fio, we shouldn't do this," Becca mumbled while we stood on the sidewalk, watching the nightclub across the street with its blacked-out windows and bright neon sign casting its purple light out like a summoning beacon for those seeking a thrilling night.
"There's lots of things we shouldn't do," I said, seemingly carelessly, without taking my eyes off the door leading inside. A hurt rage burned within me. "But I'm done playing puppet."
Becca grabbed my bare arm with her short fingers decked out in intricate silver rings studded with little gems that spoke of wealth in a subdued way — a classy way. Her beautiful brown eyes looked up at me as I turned to smile at her, determined to get her inside with me even if deep down I knew that this, at the core of it, was a terrible idea. A terrible idea fueled by the bottled anger thrumming and humming in my veins, behind my walls, within them.
As my eyes moved down to Becca, they first latched onto her silky curls, perfectly arranged and styled. She was positively gorgeous; a plump and short jiggling pudding one could squeeze in utmost comfort with the longest black locks of hair and the most beautiful olive skin. My too-pale, long, pear-shaped body made for a stark comparison. I did, however, have black hair courtesy of home dye, unlike Becca’s natural hair which her mom refused to cut short or allow any dye to touch.
Sure, I had legs that went on forever and could match any man when I wore heels — which I did at all times when shoes were necessary — but I could never find any clothes that fit, always being visible wherever I went with my five-foot ten-inch frame usually elevated further by five-inch heels or higher, and someone always threw the "wow, you're so tall" comment my way. After twenty-four years on this earth, eleven of them being this godforsaken height, I'd heard most of those remarks.
"Fio, please," Becca pleaded and tugged at my shimmery mini dress of mossy green velvet, right by my hip, nearly pinching my love handle with her acrylic nails.
"No, I'm doing this."
"But it's Tavares territory. If anyone recognises us—"
"I know that, Becs. That's the fucking point." I want the thrill of fucking over Dad, milling around with the enemy, in secret. Just for me. But I’m dragging you into far more danger than I should. Maybe your dad is right about me being a bad influence… I certainly don’t fit into his polished world. I don’t fit anywhere.
Becca sighed and glanced toward the nightclub, my own eyes followed the motion. I really wanted to get in there, mill around right under their unknowing noses, and take my life into my own two hands. For once have the upper hand, have something they had no idea about, that they couldn’t control.
"Okay, fine, but you're paying." Becca sighed while looking up at me with some form of goading while she crossed her arms beneath her impressive tits. It pulled me out of the encroaching thoughts about my life not being mine, or of any value — even to those who should have loved me unconditionally from birth. Interrupted the hurt that bared its gleaming talons every time I let my guard down for even a second.
"Obviously. When do I not pay?" I scoffed, taking the bait to play along.
"You never pay! Even everything you’re wearing I bought for you!" she laughed and we both beamed at each other, dull green eyes meeting sparkling brown ones for a second.
1
FIORA
We crossed the street and sashayed up to the bouncer at the door, a huge man with nearly black skin and shoulders broader than the entryway's frame. He appeared to be built of brute strength rather than anything defined. He didn’t fit the stencil in my head for bouncers, though. He appeared to be… more. I couldn’t quite put my finger on the intriguing quality but he was too aware, too present, yet seamlessly blended in despite his large form.
"Ladies," he said, greeting us with a strangely soft, nearly humming voice that seriously mismatched his intimidating looks. It caught me off guard for a second, and I couldn’t hide the scrunching of my darkly drawn eyebrows.
He looked at me for a mere blink of time before his eyes landed on Becca, though, far below both of us with her five-foot three-inch height slightly elevated by three-inch heels, and there his eyes stayed, so it didn’t really matter what expression slipped across my face.
"Hi there, big man," Becca said sweetly, blushing beneath his gaze. Even if I couldn't tell in the dim light with her darker skin covered in an artfully drawn mask of makeup, her body language gave her away. "We'd like to get in, please."
"It's invitation only," he hummed shortly — but not dismissively.
"That's not what I heard." Becca beamed sweetly at the brute peering down on her while she spoke in a slightly pitched voice, betraying her in my ears.
"Is that so?"
Becca nodded so that her curly hair bounced around her sweet, rounded face. It made me drag my fingers through my own straight strands, slightly jealous of her volume in all places. She was a big girl, and it seemed like no man on earth was safe from her charm — especially with her publicly bubbly personality.
Becca held out her hand with a wad of cash that could easily have fed a family of four for a week in it, smiling the whole time. "And we promise to be good, super promise!" she continued as if there hadn’t been any pause while I remained quiet with as sweet a smile as I could conjure. Sweetness wasn’t really something that existed naturally within me, it never had. Not even as a child as far as I could remember.
Watching her work her endearing charm on the man whose shoulders had already softened a tad was nothing new. Becca was perfect, with all her self-proclaimed imperfections, and men spared little means to get to her — for good or bad.
"I doubt a politician's daughter can behave," he said, and Becca giggled, a nervous tic of hers everyone took as a sweet behaviour showing shyness.
Of course he'd know who she was. Her face was everywhere, and her father used her rigorously in his campaigns. Is this already over then? No, there has to be something I can—
"If she doesn't, her dad would take her credit card," I intervened while pulling an innocent look, even tilting my head to kick up the innocence an extra notch while I circled my hands around her arm gently.
"Ah, that is quite the incentive," the man hummed and Becca did her thing once more, blubbering something about not surviving without her credit card and that she would die if she couldn't go shopping every day so she would absolutely behave and then, we were in, courtesy of some white lies and me innocuously pushing Becca a little closer to the bouncer with my hands around her arm and my hip pressed into her waist.
"Works every time," I said, giggling by Becca's ear as the door closed behind us, even if guilt had begun to trickle into my blood.
I was seriously putting her in danger here. After shaking off her bodyguard to come and meet me, I had not only gotten her to leave well-paid security behind but to also step into a den of vipers without any antidote on hand.
"I still think this is a bad idea." Becca sighed as she looked ahead while nibbling her plump bottom lip.
We were in a long, maroon-coloured corridor leading to a black door up ahead. The faint thrumming of music came through it. A tingle of excitement skidded along my spine, chasing the guilt away ever so slightly at the utter idiocy of it all.
Even if Becca hadn’t been Senator Alfonso Silvano’s daughter, or I the daughter of a man with nearly half a million in debt to the mob whose establishment we had entered, it was not a good idea to party in a mob club. Many didn’t even know it to be a mob-owned club, though. After all, how many ordinary people were in the loop on that stuff, realistically speaking?
"Let's go. This will be great!" I smirked and grabbed Becca's hand before tugging and pulling her along, our heels clicking and clacking against the tiled flooring — as if they were in cahoots with the club to hurry us on in.
She held onto me tightly. I grabbed the golden handle and looked down at her, determined to make the whole thing worth it at the end of the night.
"Nighttime raving," I said with a raised brow.
"Daylight staging," she finished.
I pushed the door open with a smile. A thumping wave encompassed us completely in one swoop of tingling vibrations as we lingered in the dark hallway that seemed to make the view all the grandeur in contrast.
Wow...
I couldn't keep my eyes from widening, or my lips from parting, as I looked inside the massive club with surprised awe.
"Holy shit," Becca said beside me, barely audible above the pounding music pressing its way through our bodies.
We went inside and the door fell shut behind us. We were in enemy territory and it. was. glorious.
From the three-story high roof over the dance floor, to the stainless-steel bar covering the entire right wall backed by mirrors duplicating the laser lights moving all over the place in deep purples and sharp whites, to the luxuriously edgy feel to every single detail, we were in nightclub heaven.
Becca hooked her arm in mine, and we walked right in, trying to look as if we absolutely belonged there. This night was only for us to know about though. Even if the bouncer had recognised her immediately, a chance remained that we’d get a night of freedom out of it all, in the darkness that hid some of our features until the laser lights hit us for a split second from time to time.
It would be one of many secrets we kept within our hearts. My own pounded. It hammered so hard behind my ribs I worried it was visible even in the dim light.
I had done stupid things, but this? It topped the list of idiotic experiences. Did I go too far? I glanced down at Becca, knowing she was only there because of me. Her father’s words, words not meant for my ears, rang through my head as guilt tied my stomach in a knot. He’d called me a "deadbeat gambler's offspring with a parking garage between her legs" — as if I weren’t a worthy human, or even his daughter’s best friend. It made my teeth grit despite my efforts to control myself.
Becca hadn’t known I’d heard the phone call a year ago between the two. I intended to keep it that way. There was no reason for me to dispute the senator’s claims when both Becca and I knew half to be false. I understood why he thought it, and I had been called all things between princess and whore throughout my life. A parking garage only landed around the middle. The world of men, every man a self-serving judge, but never judging themselves. Fucking hypocrisy.
That wasn’t what got to me, though. The insinuation of me being no good for his daughter had been the hurtful part and fuelled my own worry about what Becca got up to with me, even if nothing bad had ever actually happened when we were together. Is that why I’m pushing it?
"Let's get a drink, and a damn shot," I called over the music and Becca nodded eagerly, clearly in need of some liquid courage while I needed to placate the gnawing of my conscience and the slicing of past memories' rusty blades.
I easily waved down the bartender, a petite blonde looking to be around her late thirties and having barely any clothes on yet looking absolutely stylish. Being so visible with my height made it easy to get her attention.
"Hey girls!" she said with a smile. "What can I get you?"
"Two bone-dry martinis, and two shots of three wise men. Make them Wild Turkey and straight," I said somewhat firmly and the blonde looked at me, a little perplexed for a second, but then she beamed.
"Girl, you know your shots! Comin’ right up!" she called with joy and got to mixing.
My eyes never left the drinks, and neither did Becca's. We knew it only took one second for something to go massively wrong. She’d experienced it when partying with her father’s political friends’ daughters abroad a while ago and it had only made us even more cautious.
I shivered as I remembered her slurred call. I’d been able to do jack-shit to help her. Fortunately, the bodyguard, who she’d shaken the tail of today, had been right there that time — like always if Becca didn’t manage to give him the slip.
"Here you go," the bartender said and slid over the drinks along with a credit card reader. Becca swiped her card and we were good to go.
"First downing!" I laughed while grabbing the whiskey shot and placing my hand flat over the martini to cover it at the packed bar. Becca did the same. We clinked glasses and down it went — with fire and searing heat erupting in my throat. Fuck, that's good and needed. My head spun off in too many directions. It had been going on all day and I honestly wanted to devour another shot right away to just make it shut up.
We slammed down the glasses. The bartender beamed at us while her eyes jumped up and down between our faces.
"Have a great evening, ladies! If you head up three floors the view is spectacular," she said with a wink and handed over two bracelets in neon purple that severely clashed with my green dress and Becca's red one. We slipped them on either way, the words “Top Thorn 11” in white across them.
"Wanna go right away?" Becca asked as we moved toward the edge of the dance floor, where a staircase following the rounded shape of the edge of the dance floor stood, built of stainless steel and glass. I shivered thinking about going up all the way, even worse so when thinking about having to go down.
I looked around, taking in the dancing bodies, the swaying hips and raised hands. I wanted to dance, to squeeze in between bodies and lose myself to the thumping music that already vibrated through my body, but I knew Becca needed at least two more drinks in her before she'd let loose and dared to move that gorgeous body of hers — all luscious curves which she frequently claimed lived their own lives when she moved. I didn’t see it that way, though. She could dance, as could I.
"Up we go," I said as I took her hand and pulled her behind me, squeezing between groups and singles to get to the staircase.
We moved up quickly. It was always better to do things that scared you as fast as possible, and the view was already fantastic like the bartender had said. We could see the entire dance floor being merely one floor up.
"Holy shit, it's big," Becca exhaled and moved closer to the edge, only safe from falling by a thin-looking glass barrier. I held back. Heights were not my thing. Uh-uh, so not my thing.
I sipped my drink as my eyes scanned the surrounding area with a smaller bar and standing tables filled with people chatting, flirting, and laughing. Some swayed to the music, too. I understood why. A sort of sensual techno I’d never heard before permeated the club. It made me want to move, too.
"Come on," I said as I saw the next set of stairs a few feet away, even though I’d rather have remained on the ground floor. Becca wanted to go up, and I did too — for completely different reasons. She wanted the view and I wanted the knowledge of having gone all the way in enemy territory.
A guard stood by the stairs. He glanced at us and as his eyes caught the bands on our wrists, he stepped aside. Did we get lucky with the bartender?
"Ladies," he said with a nod, and we smiled at him.
The whiskey started to do its thing. My gut heated and a sort of gentle calmness clashing with my fear of heights coursed through my veins as we moved up the second set of stairs. I kept to the side, not looking down toward the dance floor, as we climbed ever higher while my legs became less steady beneath me — and not because of the heels or alcohol.
Yet another bar met us — more standing tables and a few couches for lounging with sleek glass tables framed with steel, too. The music remained loud but in a less intrusive way. One could nearly hold a normal conversation. But who would ever want that in a club like Thorn?
"How big is this place?" Becca asked as she pulled me toward the damn edge again. I dug my heels in and she released my hand with a wink.
"Becca, don't!" I called out as she leaned over the damn railing while on her tippy toes, her tits hanging over the edge and her ass nearly on display as her red mini dress rode up. My heart leapt toward my throat, and I took an involuntary step forward that sent invisible goosebumps along my pale legs while my hand hardened around the glass in my hand.
"It's amazing," she said over her shoulder with a smile so wide I had to roll my eyes at her, but I also smiled. She was adorable every time she saw something new she found impressive.
Becca was hard to impress, having seen so much while being charted around in private jets and whatnot, but she still had that weakness for new views that allowed her to get impressed. I, on the other hand, rarely got impressed at all. You’d have to have some sort of joy about the world to get impressed, I think, and I wasn’t sure I’d held that in a very long time.
Sure, I should have felt some kind of continuous awe for the hottest nightclub in Kaine Bay given its reputation and looks. But it was just a club, a place to dance and have alcohol while disappearing into a mass of people rubbing against each other. It was cool, grand, and forbidden, but was I impressed? No. Excited? Hell yeah. Caught off guard when we entered? Absolutely.
I sipped on my martini five steps back while Becca took in the view with her own drink in hand. Her foot tapped a little, and my lips tugged up. She already started to relax. I began to lose the infernal thoughts of my impending loss of freedom that had been gnawing at me all day, too, as the music invaded from outside and the alcohol from within.
"Becs, come on," I said and began to walk toward the third set of stairs partitioned with a purple rope and a guard on each side. She caught up with me, sipping her drink and looking around at the space and people, another habit of hers courtesy of her father and upbringing. To always see who’s around, who to greet, who to smile at or strike up a conversation with. I didn’t think she was even aware she did it at that point.
I, however, was fully aware of my eyes roaming all around. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but it had been too easy to get into the club and even easier to get access to obviously exclusive floors. Life, as I knew it, wasn’t easy or cost free. Everything had a price attached to it, including me.
"She said the third floor, right?" I asked.
Becca nodded and we came to a halt by the rope.
Two sets of blue eyes glared at us until their inspecting gazes came to our wrists. "Number?" the man with snake-like tattoos at the base of his throat asked.
"Number?" I asked, scrunching my eyebrows.
"On your wrist," the other guard said. His bored expression annoyed me, but at least neither of them glared at us any longer. Besides, it was a little nice that they actually had to look up at me — losing some slice of their intimidation game.
"Eleven," I said after glancing down. The first guard jotted something down on a clipboard he’d grabbed from behind him.
"Go ahead," the other one said and unhooked the rope to let us pass.
This feels… odd. Either way, I grabbed Becca and pulled her along with me as her eyes had gotten stuck on the bigger of the men.
"Thank you," she said to them with a wide smile and that nervous giggle in her voice again. I rolled my eyes and pulled her along a bit harder, struggling not to look down or to the side. It was too damn high, but no way in hell was I going to let the irrational fear of plummeting to my death keep me from going all the way up. I was dead either way. Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually the consequences of my dad’s actions would come knocking at our door and I would be the one to answer.
2
FIORA
We got all the way up in a rush — I couldn’t slow down. My heart raced and my pulse roared within my ears. Turns out, it was worth the anxiety.
An exquisite bar dressed in dark wood and golden details sat at the back. Booths of the same wood with seats dressed in purple leather lined the edge with a few standing tables sprinkled about. The light was dim and intimate while the music was muted and perfect for private conversations. I swivelled my head to take it all in.
At the furthest right side was a set of five blacked-out, mirrored doors — matching the wall of the same material — perfectly placed, expanding the floor while piquing one’s interest yet firmly telling everyone they were excluded. Things like that always got the wanting, spoiled, self-proclaimed deservers of higher society to dig out their wallets and do damn near anything to get the feeling of being above others. I was honestly just curious to see if there were poles in there or not, as I hadn’t seen a single pole or pole-like feature in the entire club.
"This is amazing," Becca breathed out while she tugged me forward, pulling me out of my thoughts.
The edge here, on the top floor, had a wood-clad half wall. It appeared far more secure, but my entire body still protested, getting me to halt before I could see all the way down. I stayed a few steps behind as Becca leaned forward with the widest grin while my jaw tensed.
I polished off my martini and sat the glass down on one of the standing tables to my right before rummaging around in my little black purse for my phone.
"Becca," I said, and as she turned I snapped a picture, capturing her genuine smile a second before her trained photography face took over — probably by instinct.
"Gorgeous," I said and showed her the picture I would promptly put in my “Becs” folder. She nodded, but I knew she didn't agree. Her eyes told me everything I needed to know about her thoughts on her appearance.
I knew who was at fault, too, and it wasn’t society to start with. Mrs Isabella Silvano, Becca’s stunning mom, started it all when Becca was a mere fucking baby with restrictive diets and forced exercise. Who even does that to a baby? A little child? I couldn’t understand it. They were wealthy, had food available — even chefs — and still, Becca hadn’t been allowed to eat any tasty treats or hearty meals even if they’d had every damn chance to make them healthy.
At least my mom gave me what I wanted to eat, when we could afford it. Maybe that isn’t ideal either but... The thought made me shiver as I remembered the super thin pancakes she used to make for my birthday breakfast. She’d turn them into a cake, with yam, sugar, and little pieces of grated white chocolate between. A pancake-cake.
But then you left me.
I hadn’t had pancakes ever since.
"I'll get us another drink," I said while shoving down my phone. Becca dug out her card, handing it to me with a sparkle in her eyes from the alcohol.
I sashayed up to the bar, feeling warm and slightly eased as adrenaline pumped through me, flushing my system with alcohol faster than usual. We were at the top of Thorn, effectively having infiltrated enemy territory without anyone ever having to know (already too late for Becca in that regard, though). Knowing one of my dad's enemies had me in their den — without either of the two sides knowing — thrilled me. I almost felt alive.
When one had no rights, no chance at claiming one’s own life and to do with it as one wished, a certain satisfaction lay in rebellion one couldn’t get in any other way. Why I did such things in secret was rather simple, while also being the most infuriatingly complex feeling I wished to carve out of my heart and drown in chlorine.
I loved my dad, and I was nothing to him but a bargaining chip. I loved my mom, and she had abandoned me with the man who nearly killed her with his gambling and drinking. I hated myself for loving them, yet I couldn’t sever the feeling so natural between a child and their parents. Love has no right. No. Fucking. Right.
I smirked to myself, in an effort to wipe out the anger that crept along my features, and flipped away my hair, coloured pitch black to erase any trace of the strawberry blonde my dad sported. My green eyes I could do nothing about, never being brave enough to put contacts in. How people managed to do that every day I couldn’t fathom. If I’d been brave enough, though, I'd chosen the darkest brown possible. Maybe even black for the hell of it.
"Good evening," the bartender, decked out in suit pants and a white shirt, said with a warm smile as I reached my destination. I smiled right back as I leaned against the high bar, for once not having to bend too much despite being almost six-foot-three in my heels.
"Hi there. Could I have a Black Russian? But hold the ice," I quickly added at the end and the bartender nodded, "and a Piña Colada with three lemon slices," I continued. The slender young man, possibly the same age as me, smiled and nodded.
I kept my eyes on him as he made our drinks and paid with Becca's card before grabbing the glasses and heading back to Becca who’d taken a free booth toward the right, closer to the doors that intrigued me than the hellish stairs we’d arrived from.
"Piña Colada for the gorgeous lady," I said with a flair, and she giggled happily before fluttering her eyelashes at me. "And a real drink for the tall one," I joked and winked at her before sliding into the booth, staying on the outer edge, as far away from the half-wall on the other side as humanly possible while still sitting down somewhat comfortably.
We sipped our drinks, and Becca enjoyed the view while I tried to shut off my brain. The alcohol both helped and didn’t. It acted like a liquefier within me, working to dissolve the walls which held the past and the pain at bay from my heart while also suppressing sensations and feelings with its buzz.
"I'm getting married next year," Becca said flatly while I choked on my drink, coughing roughly until my throat cleared while my eyes bulged.
"You— what?!" She turned her face toward me and nodded solemnly, the sparkle in her eyes all but gone.
"Daddy said it's time."
"Who?"
Becca shrugged, stabbing her drink with the black straw. "Dunno, some rich aristocrat's son from Waylaine."
"Bullshit," I said, deflating in my seat. I hadn’t been prepared for that turn of events.
Becca shook her head, her shoulders slumped while my chest grew heavy. "Daddy said he's well educated and running a successful business, owning several estates, too, over there and in Mountain Valley."
Mountain Valley? Wow, that’s expensive.
"Do you get your own credit card?" I asked with humour in my voice while leaning forward. Becca chuckled and looked up at me, her eyes grateful for my attempt at lightening the mood, and nodded. "Well, there you go then. Spend all his money and enjoy it."
"Oh, I will." She smirked, but that nervous giggle of hers came after. My heart ached deeply for my best friend who was a romantic to the core. I knew all she wanted was love in life. She got spoiled and treated like a princess, but her family had no love for her as a person — only as a decoration to boast about with her straight A’s, higher education, and all the charity work one could possibly fit into a life.
"Okay, no, this will not do," I declared as I straightened and promptly chugged my whole drink, slamming the glass down and jutting my chin out toward Becca. She followed my lead and downed her own drink.
"We, my gorgeous friend, are going to dance our asses off. Let's go, we'll turn heads and never let them get close."
"Grinding time?" she asked while wiggling her eyebrows and I laughed freely, throwing my head back on pure instinct as the laughter coursed through me unhindered in the dim, private atmosphere of the top floor.
"Let's do it!" It was our thing, after all. We could go all out with each other on the dance floor as we were safe with each other. Between us, no real hesitation or worry about overstepping boundaries existed. We were, essentially, each other’s havens.
Becca was straight, but I had dabbled with other women and knew I was bisexual, but men held my attention far more than women. Still, my sexuality remained as valid as any other even if it was an eighty-twenty thing. Despite never having loved anyone, apart from Becca on a platonic level, I knew what attracted me — being both feminine as fuck women and men radiating strength.
I seemed to end up with fuckboys mostly, though.
Why? I blamed it on daddy issues and needing physical intimacy that usually never went further than making out on a dance floor in the end anyway. I guess most would call me a flirt or a tease. Some did straight to my face even.
It didn’t help with the self-doubt imparted on me by degrading and cold words my entire life from my dad, from all those belonging to that gambling life of his, and my mom leaving me behind as if I wasn’t worth the struggle. Dad would have gone after her if she took me with her… Wasn’t I worth the fight, even for my own mom?
"Fio?" Becca asked, and I shook my head.
"Sorry, lost in thought," I said and plastered on a wide smile while the alcohol made barriers of stone turn to sand within me.
I knew I'd end up crying into my pillow tonight, but I didn't care. With that came some form of freedom and relief, too — even if what I really wanted at those times was to burn something down.
Becca grabbed my arm and pushed herself into me, my elbow getting squished between her tits. They were barely contained within her tight dress.
"I love you, Fiora," she said with warmth in her voice, and I smiled at her as we both swayed ever so slightly, tipsy and warm.
"I love you, too. Now,” I said while touching her cheek a little roughly, “let's go bump some hips and hit some elbows," I continued brightly to get us out of the slump between her arranged marriage and my… well, my life in general, I suppose.
"Fuck yeah, let's go," Becca declared, and the moment she raised one of her fisted hands in the air, with a little hoot of joy, I knew she was slightly beyond tipsy. I shook my head, and we were off down the damn stairs that were even worse to go down than up.
I moved on shaky legs with a clenched jaw, focusing my eyes on the step before me, while Becca unaffectedly beamed and bounced beside me as we headed toward the packed dance floor, and hopefully some grinding. Lord knows I needed it to quench the thoughts of my own future — or lack thereof.
I'm collateral, a deposit, owned yet fucking abandoned...
3
RAWLER
Exhaustion gripped me. Closing the port project had taken three weeks of nonstop work. Atop my other duties to the family, I was spread thin. Yet, I revelled in it. Sinking deep, barely being able to breathe. It was a rush. Like having a knife against one's throat.
Despite it being years since I experienced that specifically enticing sensation, I could still remember it with vivid clarity. The way my father had pulled my head back by my hair and pressed the shiny blade against my jugular, hissing words about never taking one’s eyes off the opponent, while my heart raced from adrenaline and fear knowing he was not a man that ever left an opponent unscathed. Not even his adolescent son during practice.
In my private room, on the third floor of Thorn, I polished off my second tumbler of whiskey while my finger drummed against the thread-thin scar right beneath my collar. The liquid warmed me up and relaxed my taut muscles as I sank further into the leather seat of the L-shaped sofa — which stretched along two of the walls — while looking out through the mirrored glass toward the dance floor below.
"What do we do with the Vargas?" the slightly chirpy voice of my PA asked.
"Not now, Tillie," I rumbled out, my voice hoarse from the drink. She sighed beside me and nursed her red wine with a sourly relenting expression. I only gave her a quick glance to show I had been serious when I, a few minutes ago, declared work to be done for the evening. That she even dared to bring shit up again had me annoyed.
My phone vibrated on the glass table, cutting the silence provided by the walls around us. I snatched it as my lips thinned. "What?" I growled into it.
"Boss," Nero said on the other end, "we got a problem."
I tensed and sat up straighter before standing from the sofa. Nero, my brother by blood, didn't use the word problem lightly, so when he said it, I knew to listen.
"Go."
"Someone's been stealing. We’re twelve short this month."
"Twelve? What section?" I asked before tipping back the tumbler and setting it on its designated leather coaster atop the gleaming table.
"West wing," Nero said flatly. "They've been coming up short a few months. Smaller sums missing, but now that I looked, it added up to well over a hundred."
Fucking weasels.
"Send Caius, and Theon," I said while I tried to tame the surge of anger flushing my veins with coldness.
"Theon? You sure, Boss?"
"Send him," I hissed. They’ll regret ever having entertained the idea of stealing from me. Theon will release some of that fucking pent-up energy, Caius will get to play, and we’ll all be the better for it.
"Yes, Boss."
I disconnected the call, trusting my right hand to deal with the issue without further instructions.
Nero knew the business as well as I did, some sections better than myself even. But he worked in the shadows, behind the scenes — or more like screens, where he was brilliant but terrifyingly skilled — while I stood at the centre of everything. The head of the table. Trained from birth to take the High Chair after my father, even if that hadn’t been supposed to happen for many more years. A hazard with the life we all led — it would most certainly be cut short by blade, bullet, or bare hands.
I slid the phone into my pocket, feeling a deep-seated need to be left alone for the evening. I turned to tell Tillie to get out. I never made it all around.
Beyond the glass, over by the booths, sat the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes upon. Her raven hair was in sharp contrast to her shimmering pale skin, the wide hips with a thick thigh spilling over the edge of the seat below the hem of a too-short dress led my eyes down along endless legs to golden heels fit for any queen, any goddess.
My entire body stiffened, turned stock-still in every sense. I couldn't look away. She was mesmerising, captivating, air-stealingly striking with her singular appearance.
She talked with someone opposite her while drinking something dark. Rum and coke? I wondered as I slowly moved from the sofa’s edge and took an unprompted step toward the glass separating me from sharing air with the pale goddess beyond.
She laughed, throwing her head back freely, and I was sucker punched right in my chest.
Holy hell.
She positively shined as she laughed, her glistening lips framing a set of straight teeth I wanted to feel sheeted around my cock. Now. Instantly.
My hands fisted with restraint as I forced myself to stand still, to not barge through the door and stalk up to her, drag her away no matter her protests. The feeling was debilitating. New.
I watched as she stood and another woman, a short and thick one with darker skin who looked eerily much like my preferred type of woman, with her full body and squeezable breasts, stood as well. The shorter one clung to the goddess' arm, and my jaw clenched. I wanted to tear them apart. Wanted to own each touch of hers to the point where even the fucking universe would be unable to grace that glowing skin. I wanted her to be mine, mine alone and only. The sudden sensation was illogically powerful.
Her expression changed.
I stepped all the way up to the glass, nearly instinctively reaching for her as something shifted about her in the smallest yet loudest of ways. One second she beamed and laughed like a beacon for the light-starved to reach for, but now — an endless second later — she looked so utterly broken. A minimal hunching of her shoulders, a weight shift from one foot to the other, a lowering of her lips’ corners — such small things, yet it felt like unrelenting talons wrapped themselves around my throat from those little motions screaming out to me.
It lasted a mere second or two before the shorter woman said something and the goddess seemed to snap out of the heavy emotion. But it had been there. Something was hurting her, cutting her as deeply as any knife ever could — and I knew what pain could be derived from a blade.
For whatever unfathomable reason, something within the void of my chest tightened at the screaming of hurt through her body language.
The beaming smile had returned. The light around her shined like a fucking pharos for me to be drawn in by. Then, she just left — with the voluptuous woman pulling her toward the stairs after some strange air fisting that never quite registered with me.
I couldn't unglue my eyes from the stairs where she had disappeared with her wide hips swinging mesmerizingly. Who was she? Where had she been? And, where was she going? That smile... That fucking smile, so bright. How can you smile so bright when such weight lingers behind it?
"Where are you go—" I was out the door the next second, stalking up to the edge of the floor, grabbing the railing to scour the club after her without giving my personal assistant a second more of my time or attention. There was a goddess in my club, within the walls that contained sin and pleasure unfit for any creature like her to be contaminated by. Yet something about her fit right in. Something deliciously dark, or hellish even, hidden from full view.
My eyes scanned the dance floor. She wasn't there. I looked everywhere along the edge of it, toward the centre, back around — she wasn't there. "Fuck," I cursed a second before my eyes found her, stepping down the stairs awkwardly and walking with a sway to her hips — which looked utterly grabbable — while she pulled the other woman behind her.
They squeezed themselves between bodies, slipping and stroking against half-naked women and sweaty men. My knuckles turned whiter with each gracing of her body by another person. Don’t fucking touch her, my mind hissed as my eyes tried to pierce a guy who stroked his dirty palm across the goddess’s lower back. She didn’t even seem to notice the unwelcome touch, but I did. Fuck, I noticed, alright.
I watched, my eyes glued to her neck with force, as she got them both all the way to the centre of the dance floor. She towered over most of them, her pale skin glistened each time one of the white lights swept over her. And, as she turned, she beamed once more. My stomach seemed to do a damn summersault. What the hell is wrong with me?
I tore my eyes away from her. Turning around, I dragged my hand through my dark brown shorter waves, getting slightly sticky from the wax holding them in place. I breathed unusually roughly. My blood rushed, and my cock became hard as stone behind my black slacks. My entire body was ensnared — without a touch, without a look from her, without even having heard her voice. Hell, she was unaware I existed, yet her existence hit me like a fist to the throat, stealing my capability to breathe. It was beyond unnerving, eerily captivating.
I adored women, loved fucking them and taking what I needed in every other way, too. But never had a woman drawn such a reaction from me. Never had I wanted to worship a woman with complete disregard for my own needs or wants.
I wanted to witness her come apart beneath me, wished to hear her moan from the shackles of pleasure through those wide lips. Pleasure created, gifted, and caused by me. All for her.
I was back to looking at her before I even thought of turning around. I couldn't stop my body from gravitating toward her.
She ground against the other woman, sliding their bodies all over each other as if they were the only ones there. My jaw clenched, and my hands turned to fists when hers caressed the woman in a too-tight red dress along her arms. Were they lovers? That idea made my teeth grit against each other because, if that was the case, I was possibly defeated simply by being born a man. I had never thought I’d ever curse at such a thought.
They beamed at each other. Then, as if the universe wished to taunt me further, she threw her head back and laughed. I nearly sagged at the fucking vision she posed while laughing so freely while cursing out the sensual techno music drowning out the sound I couldn’t imagine to be anything less than wondrous.
Who are you?
Tillie appeared beside me, pulling me into a reality that trespassed upon the glow of the goddess.
"What are you glaring at? Someone selling shit?" she asked, curious as ever and ready to deal with things beneath me.
"No," I said through gritted teeth while annoyance rose within me.
"Then what? You look like you've seen someone you want to kill," she continued, and I actually twitched at the words while Tillie looked down toward the dance floor, unaware of the reaction she had managed to pull from me with her words.
I rarely reacted in any fashion to such a thought, but the very idea of anyone — anything — harming the goddess below who seemed so fragile one second and then burst with light the next sent me into a fiery rage with a chilling tension in the very fibres of my muscles. All because of a joy-filled laugh turned broken in a second flat.
"Go home," I said far too coldly, I couldn't stop myself.
"What?"
"Go, the fuck, home."
Tillie raised her eyebrows at me while her lips thinned in what appeared to be disappointment. I glared at her. She wisely kept her little plump mouth shut and scurried off with quick, short steps while her bleached hair swayed in its high ponytail. I watched her disappear down the stairs before I blew out a harsh breath. Get control of yourself, for fuck's sake. It's just a woman.
However, merely thinking it — reducing her to something so many were — felt irredeemably incorrect. Women were amazing creatures, beautiful and strong in ways I would never be able to grasp as a man. But this one, she was something else. Something… more.
How, or why, I thought so I had no logical or even illogical answer for. It was a sensation caused by her and not controlled by me, like when your hair stands on end when lightning is about to display heaven's power with a blinding strike of utter force and there is nothing you can do but take cover.
"Mr Tavares," said the young bartender who swiftly appeared beside me with a tray atop his hand, "may I offer you a drink, sir?"
"What did she have?" I asked without a second of doubt while keeping my eyes glued to the dancing woman, who completely ignored the many touches of her body I would have severed hands from arms for — if my instinct gained free rein.
"I'm sorry, sir?"
"The tall woman, what did she drink?" I asked with a harsher tone, not one for repeating myself yet I’d had to do it twice in less than a minute.
The young man tensed and stood a little straighter as I glanced at him with no patience left to spare.
"A Piña Colada and Black Russian, no ice in it and three slices of lemon in the Piña, sir," the bartender recited quickly. Black Russian? That's… unexpectedly perfect.
I jutted my jaw out toward the bar and the bartender scurried away after a short bow of his head. I turned back toward the dance floor. My heart skipped a beat, and I jolted when I couldn't see her at first. Then she popped right up, laughing hysterically as her friend pulled her up from the floor I knew to be sticky with spilt drinks so late at night. They're too drunk, I thought while my jaw clenched.
I hoisted up my phone, hitting the speed dial for Baynard without taking my eyes off the woman swaying around unsteadily, dancing and laughing so horrendously freely despite what a dangerous place she was in. Again with that gorgeous-looking laughter of yours, little goddess. I grew nearly desperate to hear it. Had she been shorter, the crowd would have swallowed her up despite it being a slower night and I wouldn’t even have been blessed with the view of it.
"Boss," Nero answered, shocking me as I thought I’d called my First Guard.
"Get me Baynard, now." I ended the call without waiting for a reply and a mere twenty seconds later Baynard was by my side — no matter how impossible that felt if he’d been standing guard by the entrance, which he preferred when we were at the club during opening hours, I had never bothered to ask for an explanation.
He was a mountain of undefined muscle with skin black as the night and a voice far too soft to ever match his appearance. It hadn’t always been that way, though. When we first met some twenty years ago, he had sounded more like a growling bear than anything else.
"Mr Tavares," he said as he stood with his hands held clasped in front of him, taking a wide stance — making him look even bigger.
"There's a tall woman here, right—"
"In the middle. I’m aware, sir."
I wasn't surprised he knew. His memory was uncannily good and his way of surveilling areas superior.
"Know her?"
"Afraid not, boss," he replied, and I nodded. "But she didn’t come with an invite. I let both of them in seeing as it’s a slow night and far too many men for the ratio of women, sir." His words made me grit my teeth, not because he had done anything wrong but for what they implied. Words I would have had no problem with if they weren't about the ensnaring woman dancing herself into a sweaty mess, whoever the fuck she was.
"Keep an eye on her," I nearly murmured while I leaned forward, braising my hands on the chilly metal railing rod atop the half wall. My height forced me to bend, to hunch my back while moving my feet backwards to be able to lean against it.
"Boss," he said with a nod. No questions, no hesitation.
"Don't let her know. Get me some photos. I want to know who she is." Had I been speaking to anyone else I would have guarded my tone more, but Baynard was my First Guard and one of too few I trusted. He was, in all sincerity, a friend beyond the duties of the family but I doubted he knew that anymore — since I became head of the family. It had changed many things.
"Yes, boss. Shouldn't be difficult. That’s Rebecca Silvano with her."
"Alfonso Silvano?" I asked, surprise lingering in my tone, I hadn’t even noticed. Baynard nodded, turned without another word, and walked away silently while my eyes stayed glued to the pair dancing, growing ever tenser with each touch her body took from another person.
Eventually, my hands nearly cramped around the top of the railing. However, it wasn't until she began to leave the dance floor that I moved. Almost as if her moving allowed me to move, or perhaps she yanked at some invisible chain around my neck — neither was a good thing, and neither was I able to dispute.
I walked with quick strides toward the stairs and the lower floors to see where she went. She had disappeared from the dance floor on wobbly legs while clinging to the other woman who appeared just as damn unstable.
As I arrived down below, the music vibrated through my body, and the smell of sweat and alcohol filled my nose while I walked along the curved edge of the dance floor. My path cleared without hindrance as I moved through the space, eyes watching my every move with interest, and some fluttered their lashes at me while looking up. I wasn't in the mood. It felt as if I never would be again if it wasn’t her lashes fluttering at me.
Where the hell did you go? I wondered as I cursed under my breath, scanning the area. My eyes landed on Baynard over by the shadows next to the bar. He’d already spotted me, of course, and tilted his head toward the left. I swung my own and there she stood, leaning against the bar. All legs, pale skin, and wide hips hugged by the velvety green dress she was clad in. I wished to tear it off with teeth, nails, or however possible.
I slowed my steps, watching her as she watched the bartender like a damn hawk despite clearly being inebriated. Clever girl, I mused to myself as she accepted another Black Russian from the looks of it while her friend, the politician's daughter, took something pink. They both beamed at Patty, the bartender, and she beamed right back — a sight for sore eyes that gave me pause.
She usually smiled, friendly enough with the customers, but beaming? No, that wasn't Patty. You must have impressed her. A grand feat, little goddess.
I stood in the shadows — right under the floor above at the edge of the dance floor by a support beam — and watched. Like some fucking creep. Why I didn't go right up, I couldn't possibly tell. I never had any trouble with getting women; I didn’t even have to do anything. A look, a slight touch to the small of someone’s back, brushing away a tendril of hair from someone’s shoulder — that was far more than enough.
But, again, she was different, setting my usually icy blood on fire by existing and eliciting rage by merely being graced by another person without any true intentions. My hands fisted at that, seeing as the man next to her bumped into her elbow, not even apologising for the filth of him grazing her flawless skin. Fucker.
And then, I smirked. Baynard had seen it, and he always knew how to handle shit how I wanted it to be handled — hence his First Guard status. The fucker by the bar spluttered an apology to the shocked goddess whose eyes ping-ponged between the drunk and my guard with a worried expression until Baynard smiled at her and, from the looks of it, reassured her in some way after having released the staggering man.
She beamed at him and I growled. I fucking growled as her smile was directed at another man, even a man I specifically ordered to watch over her and stay close. What the hell was wrong with me? They called me heartless for a reason, and it certainly wasn’t for caring or wanting a woman’s undivided attention. There was nothing in my chest, an immovable void darker than ink and thicker than blood. Nothing could touch me.
Yet, when she laughed, something moved in there.
The Glass Goddess
Excerpt: Chapter 4-7
4
FIORA
I stumbled into the ladies' room, Becca hot on my tail giggling like a schoolgirl with some pink monstrosity in her hand I nearly wanted to gag at.
"Will you stop that?" I asked, but I couldn't contain my laughter either. It was infectious, like a disease spreading too easily between us.
"I think he just died!" she squealed and half wrapped her free arm around her stomach as she bent over from laughter. It made her entire body quiver while she pushed her knees together, presumably not to pee herself.
"Stop it, it's not funny," I choked between giggles and chuckles while an eerie sensation I’d had of being watched finally left me in the confinements of the bathroom. Probably the stalking bouncer with eyes all over Becs who’s to blame. I shrugged it off as Becca’s voice filled the entire bathroom.
"It's funny! That mountain scared the drunk out of him for just bumping into your elbow, Fio!"
I gave in, supporting myself on the sink, I laughed with her, remembering the poor guy spluttering consecutive sorrys while the black giant squeezed his upper arm, nearly lifting him off the polished floor.
"We…we should…should come here more!" Becca wheezed as she wiped tears from her eyes without smudging her delicate makeup, and I nodded in an exaggerated way, my straight hair flinging all around my sweaty face that I turned into the stereotypical hair-twirling, bubble gum-blowing bimbo's face.
"Sure, let's put ourselves in mortal danger every Friday." I chuckled and blew a whistling breath out through my teeth in an effort to choke the laughter as I couldn’t even play out the charade.
"Right, right, mob and gambling and politics don't match," she said as if she rambled off a grocery list while she tried her best to straighten up.
I cocked an eyebrow at her. "You think?"
"I think, I think," she said while holding up her hand, palm facing me, and giggling.
A few minutes later we had both downed the remainders of our drinks, used two of the many stalls as, strangely enough, there’d been no line to the ladies' room to the furthest right of the club. I sent a silent thank you to the giant bouncer, who’d introduced himself as Baynard, for directing us over to that end of the place.
"He was big, huh?" Becca said dreamily beside me while she wiped her hands. We both swayed as the alcohol fully snagged our minds and bodies.
"That's an understatement." I smirked and she giggled in a shyly sweet way.
She’d always had a thing for the big and buff. I got it, it was hot. Add the dark skin and the way he seemed to move his big frame with ease and you got some form of jackpot. Especially in Becca’s eyes. I knew all too well what she wanted to tousle sheets with, and it certainly wasn’t some lanky aristocrat’s son with a polo shirt and beige khakis — probably to her father’s utter dismay.
"You gonna go work your sweet pudding magic?" I wiggled my eyebrows at her, and she laughed at me while swatting about with her hand, nearly toppling herself over for a second by the motion.
“That was one time, Fio!” she exclaimed, and we laughed for a moment longer. Until she spoke again with far less joy in her sweet and usually loud voice. "Getting married, remember?" she said, and her whole body sank in on itself the next second. She sagged, and it looked so wrong. Becca was life, bubbly life and happy smiles even when living wasn’t fun.
"Right, well, fuck that. Not your choice so I'd say flirt away and live your best life, Becs."
She only smiled at me half-heartedly. I wanted to choke her dad for forcing this sweet woman to do yet another thing for him and his fucking career.
"Well, I say we dance and drink some more. Come on," I continued with a chirpy slur to my voice and grabbed her hand, pulling her out of the bathroom and into the pounding music. While the clock crept past midnight, alcohol popped some more of our brain cells into oblivion.
We ordered another set of shots by the bar, downed them, and then got another round of drinks into our bodies — while ignoring everything and everyone — before we headed toward the dance floor as a sensual beat with rock undertones filled the space.
We both began to sway and shimmy as the music took over. It felt too easy and too good to let everything else fade away, even if the idea hadn't been to get shitfaced at a mob nightclub. A mob to which my dad owed a hell of a lot of money and hers had been battling with as much as the rest of the underground world, filling the city with poisons of all sorts.
My hands reached toward the ceiling several stories up. As I watched my fingers stretch and bend, occasionally catching the white and purple rays of light, the world slowed and Becca pushed herself against me. We danced together, and my mind went quiet for a blissful moment in the slow thumping rhythm encasing us while numbness crept up along my legs and the eerie feeling of being watched crawled across my skin like cold needles that didn’t quite register any longer.
There was no mom abandoning me, no dad selling me off. No dilapidated house or crumbling will to live. No fear for the future and what secrets it held, nor any pain toward the honest past and all its crippling hurt that cut deeper than any knife could ever reach. Just swaying bodies, pounding music, and blood warmed by alcohol existed. An empty bliss, encased by drunken fog, was cradled within my sweaty body as it rubbed against other sweaty bodies.
"Ladies." We both turned around, and the world spun while the floor waved beneath me. You know you’re drunk when being on dry land feels like you’re on a fucking boat.
"Baynay!" Becca slurred while beaming at the big man with her unfocused eyes. I clung to her while she clung to me, and we managed to stay on our heel-clad feet — by some drunken miracle.
"I believe you've had enough for tonight," Baynard said in that humming voice of his. Becca whined a little while I tried to focus my eyes on the man who wouldn’t stand still, or maybe it was my eyes. He was a black blur lit up by purple and white light in a sporadic pattern that seriously fucked with my brain for a moment.
"You kicking us out?" Becca whined and stumbled toward him, leaving me swaying among the dancing bodies in the middle of the dance floor. I couldn't feel my lips. It made me chuckle as I tapped my short nails painted a deep maroon colour against the bottom one with long-gone gloss.
One moment, I was on the crowded dance floor, pretending my lip was a drum, and the next, chilly night air washed over my sweaty drunken self.
"So nice," I mumbled and leaned my head back, nearly toppling over with my eyes closed.
"Easy now, little goddess," Baynard said in the oddest of voices that damn near vibrated through me, singing my senses with something dark and flaming cold. It shot a shiver along my spine as the strangest, sort of tingling sensation licked at my neck. Tiny needles, my brain hummed from far away.
His hand pressed against my lower back. Steady and strong. His fingers flexed and rubbed the thin fabric of my dress against my sweaty skin. I chuckled, knowing full well getting plastered in enemy territory was the stupidest thing I had ever done. Brilliant, lovely, purrrrfect...
"Fuck you, Dad," I mumbled with a huffed chuckle. "Fuck you and your…your debts," I hiccupped as the wall between me and my emotions crumbled under the heavy pressure of alcohol. My control acted like sand sifting through an hourglass, slipping away through the hole created by the debilitating drinks I’d consumed vigorously, with too much pleasure despite knowing what an emotional drunk I was. Unlike the sweet and cutely whiny Becca.
The hand at my back flexed and hardened when I swayed further as my insides roared and coiled in protest at the overconsumption of alcohol. The hand steadied me with ease, though. I'm going to pass out. I need to puke. I need to pass out puke.
"Here we are, Miss Silvano."
"Oooh, fancy cab!" Becca squealed, and I opened my eyes only to see Baynard put my best friend into a blurry black town car — her ass right up in his face as she clambered inside. I chuckled. Someone‘s flirting. Good for you, sweet pudding.
My body stiffened. Alarm bells rang deafeningly loud in my head. If Baynard had his hands on my crawling best friend over there, then whose hand touched my back?
I spun around so fast the world must have sped up its rotation because the next thing I knew I fell backwards, tripping over my long legs and heels while continuing to spin around and soon enough headed face first toward the concrete.
"Shit!" a dark growl of a voice hissed out. Strong arms took hold around my waist, the pressure against my soft tummy catapulting vomit straight out of my numb mouth. I threw up all over the sidewalk. The vomit burned its way through my throat, my mouth, and splashed all over the concrete. That burn was nothing like the nice burn of alcohol.
My knees folded as I heard Becca call for her Fio. A big hand hastily grabbed at my tousled hair — to get it out of the way, I think — as I expelled a second round of vomit while a sturdy arm held my entire weight up around my waist. Something firm sat against my entire ass and lower back, curving to fit my shape. It was warm and eerily strong, so secure in its position against me.
My mind tried to work out what I felt, what I was doing, and what was happening. But I crumbled before I could spit out the last little bit of vomit from my mouth. Only a sigh of relief came while the world tipped on its axis, and then everything went numb and black. Whoever held me up fooled my body into a comfortingly relaxed state and stole my sanity along with my conscience.
5
FIORA
It took me three days to recover from my hangover. Saturday I’d been buried in bed, thankful my dad had been out of the house the entire day. Sunday I'd shuffled around, watched a few movies on mute, and been absolutely miserable with a headache from the deepest gutters of hell.
Then, I'd spent Monday working with a sluggish head and pissed off my boss by being too slow to serve the customers — he'd taken all my tips away and berated me for being a worthless piece of cheap ass not able to even pour a cup of coffee fast enough while his greasy face got all up in my business. My fists had curled and I’d used all of my damn control to not sucker-punch his stubbly jaw and the double chin beneath.
When Tuesday came, and all remnants of our escapades at Thorn were gone. I'd managed to work my ass off and got to keep all my tip money when the clock struck ten and the low-grade fast-food joint began shutting down.
I was so damn ready to get out of there and sleep off the groping of filthy men, the sneering of my boss, and the constant “how's the air up there” comments as I wore ridiculously high heels for work — part of my contract to attract customers to the sleazy joint on the cheap east side of Kaine Bay.
"I'm outta here!" I called to Robby, who was cleaning up the last dirty plate in the filthy kitchen — home to everything from cockroaches to grease over ten years old. At least he was a decent guy, even if he didn't talk much and never said anything when I had to take shit from customers or my boss. At the very least, he never partook. How insane is it that the bar is below the fucking floor of what a decent guy is? A decent guy should be someone who says something when shit is wrong, who does something when other men are being assholes.
I waved behind my head and didn't spare him another glance as I hurried out into the evening air. The gloom of the night started to creep in between alleys and trash cans. But it never got truly dark during summer, one of the best things about the season — no walking home along narrow streets in pitch black wearing nothing but a scrap of pink fabric supposed to be a suitable work dress, apparently.
My phone shimmed in my purse, cutting through the sound of cars far off in the distance with its cheery tune. I dug it out and slid the green phone icon across the cracked screen, over Becca’s sweetly beaming face and name.
"Off work?" she asked without me even having said hello.
"Yeah, I'm so done for today and Dad's still not home so." I sighed as I walked as fast as my legs could carry me. The northeast side of town, where I worked and lived, wasn't a nice area but was the only place we could afford to live. Or, well, we couldn't even afford that as Dad kept gambling away all our money. I had taken to using my own money to be able to pay for water and electricity. The wage from the dump of a fast-food joint paying far less than needed and not giving me enough overtime to earn more.
The mortgage I could do nothing about with what little money I earned and, honestly, I had a feeling it soon wouldn’t matter. Dad was nearly buried in debt, always raving about the next big hit breaking the dry spell he’d always been in while collectors crept ever closer, tightening the chain, howling in the distance for the money owed. I shivered despite it not being cold outside.
"Why do you still live with him?" Becca asked with one of those deep sighs she always ended a sentence with if she didn’t understand something she found utterly stupid. I hadn't told her, not once, so she had a right to sigh, I supposed.
"He'll die if I don't." I laughed, even if that wasn’t the reason at all. Neither was my fear of him or my love for him. I didn’t stay because I couldn’t afford to leave. Work was easy enough to find if one was willing to dig deep and get dirt under one’s nails. Everything screamed at me to leave, run away, and stay away.
But Dad held all my certificates — and everything left of Mom — hostage in some damn deposit box somewhere I'd never been able to find the location of. If I left, I'd lose all of it. I couldn't lose the last bits of Mom even if she had abandoned me to save herself. Nor could I become some nameless person unable to show proof of birth, unable to get a bank account, unable to take out a mortgage of my own at some point — I didn’t even have any real ID. Good for him, sucky for me…
"Well, whatever." Becca sighed, obviously fully aware I was lying so hard my teeth should have turned blue with the venom of falsity.
"We got an invitation," she continued, and I raised my eyebrows while some junky staggered past me, licking his lips while ogling my bare legs.
"Invitation?" I asked, ignoring the surroundings and hurrying my steps even if I really wanted to turn back and snarl at the man.
"Uh huh, to the nightclub."
"What? Seriously? I don't even remember leaving that place. We must have left quite an impression on them in our drunkenness." I laughed, trying to avoid the eerie sensation of memory loss while digging around my purse for my keys.
"I think Baynard got us in a cab. I think, um, I think I put my butt right in his face..."
I barked out a laugh and shook my head. Sounds like you, Becs.
"So, um, we should go so I can apologise to him, you know?" I could so imagine her twirling her hair between her short fingers with perfectly manicured nails, tilting her head and all.
"Mhm,” I hummed with a smirk. “It's not the fact you loved the place and want to work your magic on him?"
"No!" she almost yelled. "Maybe," came a second later in her sweetly bright voice.
"I love you, Becs."
"Oh, shut up," she muttered, but I heard her suffocate a giggle.
"Coming, Father!" she shouted a second later, she had undoubtedly covered the microphone given how muffled it sounded. My eardrums were ever grateful as her voice could carry quite far and be quite loud.
"Duty calls?" I asked while walking up the stairs to our little rundown bungalow with a broken window surrounded by flaky paint and some missing tiles on the roof where water always leaked in during autumn.
"Yeah, some evening meeting at Palm." She sighed.
A little envious spark grew in me, knowing she’d be at the exclusive restaurant eating perfect cuisine of the highest quality while I would most likely heat up a tiny frozen pizza. If I’m lucky there’s garlic sauce in the fridge to top it with, but my luck wasn’t to be counted on.
"But Saturday, we're on, right?" she asked as my mind drifted while I imagined living like Becca did. Always having good food available, a sparklingly clean house perfectly organised, never having to worry about the heat or water being turned off, the lights not turning on to chase away the dark.
"Saturday at Thorn? Heck yeah, we're on!"
Becca hooted a "whoop-whoop" and I shook my head at her sweetness while my stomach coiled in on itself for some reason. It had nothing to do with Becca’s lavish life but everything to do with not remembering a few hours of my own existence.
"Bye then!" She hung up before I could reply.
I sighed and shoved the door open before locking it behind me and sliding on the three chains that would stop absolutely nobody from getting inside but gave me a false sense of security at least.
I walked right in with my shoes on, even though I hated when people did that. Our floors weren’t clean anyway — no matter how much I tried to mop, scrub, scrape, or vacuum. Almost as if the dirt had been ground into the boards, there to stay forever. Like the pissy shine of old nicotine on every surface, or the torn bathroom floor’s plastic carpet no amount of caulk, tape, or glue could hold together.
I threw my purse on my bed, tugged off my heels, and put my feet into some worn but perfectly decent slippers before grabbing a stiff towel from my closet. I needed to clean the day off and wash away the uncomfortable feeling that still lingered in my gut after having talked with Becca about Thorn.
There was something about that place, that night, I was missing. But I couldn't figure out what. No wonder. You got yourself plastered and don't even remember leaving the place. "Stupid idiot," I grumbled as I got in the shower, shivering until the water turned warm and scalded my skin pink while I rushed through my routine to save on water.
I was rubbing off my body with the tattered but clean green towel when someone pounded on the front door. I stilled. My heart sped up. Goosebumps pricked my skin as another round of pounding rang out, jolting me as adrenaline shot through my veins.
"Open up!" an angry, slightly nasal voice shouted, muffled by the two doors between us.
Fucking shit, I thought as my jaw clenched.
I threw on a set of joggers and an oversized t-shirt, discarding the towel on the floor. Another round of banging, and something louder — like a kick — boomed as I ran toward the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and went to the door. I wasn’t going to be unable to defend myself if they tried to bust in.
"Who is it?" I asked through the door, masking my unease without any real difficulty. Practice makes perfect.
"Where's George?!" the angry voice barked and the man hit the door again. I jolted while withholding a squeak deep in my chest, tightening my grip around the filét knife.
"Crossriver!” I pushed out in a snarl as the squeak threatening to escape snagged my vocal cords. “Fucker, stop pounding the damn door!" I shouted a second later while my legs trembled beneath me. I allowed none of my fear to be heard through my harsh voice, though. To show weakness, especially as a woman, was nearly a death sentence in northeast Kaine Bay.
"Bitch," the voice on the other end said. "Money by Friday! Or Mr Krim comes to collect."
"Asshole!" I shouted through the door while a knot tightened my stomach. Not only did we owe money to the mob, but now we had loan sharks after us, too? "The fuck, Dad?" I sighed as I listened to the man move, a car door slamming, and then the sound of a vehicle speeding off.
I grabbed the doorknob and sank down on the floor; my legs finally giving out as reality crashed around me like some ludicrously loud hail. We were screwed. I was screwed.
Apart from the house, my name stood on Dad’s debt bills as collateral. I would be the one paying the steep price for his idiotic behaviour and reckless actions. No, no it won't happen. Dad’ll get here and he'll — who the fuck am I kidding?! He's been gone for days, he's—
My head snapped up.
He’d been gone for days.
"You bolted?!" I shouted to the empty house, fury burning inside my veins while I glared toward the closed bedroom door at the other end of the hallway. "You fucking sperm donor," I hissed and threw the knife toward the door in a crushing wave of rage. It skidded along the uneven floor and slammed into the dirty wood while I tried to contain the overwhelming need to break every piece of furniture, fixture, and wall in the filthy house crowding me.
But the door opened. Dad stood, groggy and sleep-tousled, in the doorway, a naked leg visible atop his bed behind him belonging to some thin, pale woman.
"The fuck you shouting and banging around for?" he grumbled and rubbed at his slightly red eyes. At first, I was relieved. He hadn't bolted and abandoned me to deal with his ridiculously huge debts. He was right there, hungover or possibly slightly high.
And then, I bellowed out a gritted scream at him unlike any I had ever unleashed on him before — unable to contain it as my heart pounded and my mind overflowed with how everything would surely end for me.
Three seconds, then his hand turned my head with a stinging slap so harsh my eyes cinched shut for a full moment. My skin heated from the impact. It caught me off guard as my dad wasn’t the type to hit. There had been slaps, some pushing and shoving, but he wasn’t violent — usually. It wasn’t beyond him, but it wasn’t what he normally did. Words worked far grander to break me than any physical contact. He knew that. Had learnt that early on and abused the hell out of the softer heart I once upon a distant time ago had.
I didn't move from the floor, didn't look back at him while my jaw burned from the collision. His bedroom door slammed shut after a few thumping steps while I sat on the floor with dripping wet hair, a stinging palm print across my cheek, and the weight of black hopelessness crushing me.
My insides crumbled behind the walls I’d built. Like someone had taken a bat and swung it against my heart, shattering it as if it was made of nothing more than fragile glass. I have to leave, I have to get out. But Mom, my future...
I cried silently, leaning against the thin door which separated me from the ruthless world beyond, while reality swept me away like a tidal wave of black ink — suffocating me with its relentlessness as the word collateral swirled around me.
6
RAWLER
The week had been hell. Pure. Fucking. Hell.
It was her, Fio — as her friend had called her that last Friday with a whine. I couldn't wrap my head around the gorgeous woman with the ethereal shine as she laughed and the sensation of complete breakage when that very joy disappeared in a mere blink. She haunted my mind every waking hour and carved herself into my dreams with legs that never ended followed by the sensation of sparkling glass to be shattered by the simplest of touches.
It didn't show, though. I would not allow it. But behind my mask — created by a life of training to cover, conceal, and control — a turmoil unknown to me raved within my chest. As if her legs had wrapped themselves around me in a vice grip and my fingers ached to slide along them but something else, less physical, tugged at my thoughts.
I couldn't get her last words out of my mind.
She had cursed her father with drunken mumbles of debt, before that insane spin which had had her nearly crashing into the damn concrete before I had managed to get a hold of her, despite her hips offering so much goodness to grab for.
Her recklessness pissed me off beyond belief. Thorn was not a place to get black-out drunk. Nowhere is a place to get blackout drunk, I thought while I remembered her trembling body, how she’d vomited and crumbled in my arms. It hadn’t even fazed me that she expelled her stomach content. I was not new to vomit, albeit not for that reason.
My teeth gritted as I reminisced about her unconscious body. How it had simply hung, folded in on itself. The weight of her when I picked her up had been strange in my arms. I hadn't carried a body in three years — dead or alive. But the way hers had formed itself to my own, how her legs had dangled with her heels thudding against my lower thigh while her head had tipped back to expose her pale throat, felt perfectly suited to me. It had been a battle, of my seldom-existing conscience and my irate wanting of her, to get her in the waiting car instead of taking her home right then and there.
The feel of her bare skin against my palms, the short bolt of something suffocating that chilled my body as she crumbled, how her relaxed features tore at my last piece of willpower to not raise her up and feel those lips against my own even in her unconscious state. I bit back a rumble as my nails dug into my palms — that somehow had been granted the privilege of grasping her body.
A frustrated gust of a breath left my nose while my mind lingered on her. Her recklessness, her beauty, the sensation of needing utter care while touching her. The complete oppositions that seemed to live in her between shining laughter and broken stillness made no sense, even less so given I knew nothing about her.
"Boss," Nero said and I blinked. I had completely zoned out, something I never did in the company of anyone but him or Baynard. Barely even with them, the two I considered friends, since before life changed ruthlessly fast — and still did.
"What?" I stood from my desk and walked over to the glass wall that allowed me to see widespread views of Kaine Bay and the ocean beyond. My domain lay all around me. Yet I still strived for more, like the cartels of old.
"The Vargas are encroaching on our territory. Spreading from the east, trying to get into the lower south."
"Our warehouses?" I asked as I pinned my eyes on the swelling waves in the distance, the foam barely visible from the height of my office in the golden evening light.
"No, the clubs."
"The clubs?" I turned. Nero nodded, his shaved head nearly shined atop his square shoulders in the dim light of the office.
"They've been moving merch right under our noses. Patty got wind of it this morning."
I gritted my teeth at his words, not in the mood to deal with the scum of the east side who'd been trying to crawl, sneak, and weasel their way into Tavares territory, my territory.
"We've been accommodating enough. Set up a meeting."
"Yes, Boss. Tuesday is merch night at their main club, invite only and low chance of surprises."
"Set it up. Tillie can do it," I said, and he nodded. "And get me Baynard."
Nero stood, his folded laptop in hand, and left the office, shutting the door quietly behind him.
I turned back to the sprawling view, trying my hardest to expel the little goddess of glass from my mind. It didn't work. "Fucking rid—" My phone buzzed and interrupted my sentence.
"Baynard," I snapped, thinking he’d been in the office, too. He wouldn’t have called if that had been the case though.
"Yes, boss?"
"Is the invitation out?"
"Yes, boss. But the woman, Fio, she's nowhere to be found. No social media, no online photos, no trace of her or anyone named Fio." His words made my hand harden around the phone.
I wanted to know who she was, her name and whereabouts, her familiar ties and what debts she had spoken of. I wanted to know every slice of her life, every section of her past, each sliver that was her in her entirety — everything I could get my hands on. Nearly as if she had fucking possessed me.
"Miss Rebecca Silvano, though," Baynard continued, and I snapped to attention at his lowered voice, "she's truly the daughter of Senator Silvano who's been halting our business in Waylaine."
"I’m not surprised," I said while my mind began ticking with possibilities. We had been trying to expand our businesses further in the neighbouring city for nearly eight years, always getting snagged at the finish line by the hands of that senator, be it by raid, some new law, or even insiders tipping him off about where we wanted to set up our new business branches — we had been thwarted too many times.
"Yes, boss. Been trying to get something on him for years."
"And now, his daughter has waltzed right into our arms. Isn't that something," I hummed in a musing of a thought that sounded far too dark.
"Boss?" he asked, a darker hum to his voice in turn. I knew what he was asking. We had morals and a code. Innocent women and children weren't merch; they were off-limits at all times possible. We may use them for leverage, kidnapping, or threats of torture were sometimes made against them, but if they were innocent, they were ultimately left unharmed if it could be helped.
The underground wasn’t a place where the good prevailed like in fairy tales, and there was no way to play the game without sacrifices. Sometimes that sacrifice turned out to be a part of your soul, or part of another’s innocent loved one. An ear, a finger, a life even. It had been a long time since I had been able to care enough for it to bother me.
That innocent women and children should be left unharmed had been my sister’s dying wish, and I’d heeded it to as great an extent as possible ever since she was taken from the world. Not wishing her — or our — pain upon any other woman or family. The innocent bystanders, regular people, were to be kept out of everything to as great of an extent as possible, too. It made it far easier in the long run as law enforcement had far less on us and fewer willing witnesses if they ever managed to get something to stick.
The Vargas, however, operated under different rules, digging themselves further and further into the depths of hell with the malicious, depraved monstrosity of a business they tried to run and expand.
We were all doomed men and women, we had made our peace with it, but there were lines I would not cross. Human trafficking, slavery, forced pimping, forced drug abuse to trap people — things the Varga family dealt with and the Tavares family shunned. I tensed thinking about it, my hand nearly crushing the phone against my ear as my sister’s face flitted across my mind.
We still didn’t know who’d been behind her death, or my father’s, even if the people who had physically done it were all dealt with instantly yet rather… slowly. The mastermind behind it all had never been revealed, though, and it fucking irked me each and every day that the true killer — the string-puller — was somewhere out there enjoying air in their lungs despite all our maddening efforts.
"Get close to her," I said, my voice calm and stiff while my mind wandered to the possibilities that lay before me with Miss Silvano in our midst. Surely there was some way we could use the politician’s daughter to our advantage. Men would shun few means when it came to their beloved daughter’s life.
But she’s her friend. The thought barged in like a sudden snowstorm crashing through the world without consideration for the aftermath, for how it would blind drivers and bury the unsuspecting in white coldness. Why my mind allowed it to even exist in the first place, I couldn’t tell. I had never cared, should never care about others above the family, yet the thought had been there. For a short fraction of time, something blackishly-blue had swept through my mind that I couldn’t describe.
"Yes, boss," Baynard said far off on the other end of the phone. I disconnected the call and tossed the pristine piece of technology on the sleek wooden desk with chromed edges and details when Nero came back in, the laptop in one of his long-fingered hands now open, a grim look covering his harsh features.
"You need to see this," he said and sat it down on my desk. "The numbers for the last six months, there's something going on."
I sat down while pushing away all other thoughts to the back of my head and pulled the laptop closer, scanning the numbers over our assets and incomes, one of the curses of being more hands-on than the previous bosses, of not delegating everything to others, of needing control beyond telling others what to do, where to be, or what to cause.
Nero was right, the numbers fluctuated far too much and didn't reach the usual quota. Someone's been stealing from me. Someone is taking business away. Silvano is stopping our expansion in the north and the Vargas are trying to encroach on us in the east.
My eyes narrowed and my spine tensed as I took in the information.
We’d been keeping the peace by everyone knowing the rules. The last three years things had obviously changed. By my father's death, my rising to head of the family, things had shifted. It was time to reclaim the respect the Tavares name was due from Radland and all its cities. All will remember just who we are and why we are the predators, not the prey...
"Gather the family," I said quietly, my voice nothing but coldness.
Nero straightened as my eyes reached his. He looked far more like our mother than our father — in opposition to me — with his long and narrow face, the slimmed straight nose and straight hair where I had angular features, a curve to my nose, and wave-like hair that never wanted to stay in place.
"Are we—"
"We are. It's been too long." Nero nodded and took his laptop while I stood, buttoning my black suit over the black shirt and maroon tie I’d used far more than usual lately.
"It's time they remember who we are, brother." Nero's lips tugged upwards, a small smirk highly uncharacteristic for the stiff-lipped man. It was all I needed to know he was exhilarated by the idea of freeing our powers once more. Powers we held a tight leash on, men and women who’d been caged by the peace, far beyond ready to wreak havoc behind enemy lines.
"Do they think I’ve gone lax?" I whispered to the wall of glass as I watched the sky flicker with the last strip of sunlight before it sank beyond the horizon. A flash of orange was reflected by the tall buildings all around as it left the sky. "They shall remember why they dubbed me the heartless..."
7
RAWLER
I woke up panting. Adrenaline surged through my body while sweat clung to my skin. The image of my sister, smeared with blood and bruised all over, still hovered in my mind, right on the edge between dream and reality. It was both.
I shook it off, drew a deep breath, and got out of bed as the sun began to climb outside. It was early, maybe five in the morning, and I was too wired to stay still. I hit the treadmill in my gym instead to kick my body into gear and break free of the stiff sensation in my muscles.
The surround sound system blared a concoction of hammering rock music while I ran myself out of breath for close to an hour, unwilling to stop until my legs shook beneath me while my mind was freed from the tethers of the past. I tried to focus on what lay ahead of me for the day, but my mind played tricks and threw me even further forward, toward the night looming after it with the possibility of seeing the goddess of glass once more.
***
I clamped my jaw as hot water cascaded over me under the wide shower head and lowered the temperature quickly to accommodate for my warm core. I needed to cool down as the goddess lingered in my head, all legs and hips, and the look of laughter made my already warm body heat in another way, pestering me consistently.
Neither Nero nor Baynard had been able to find out anything about her. Who lived off the grid like that if you weren’t part of the underground? And even then, to live but have no trace at all? I didn't know how, but it intrigued me further.
I’d spent the evening looking at the photos Baynard snapped for me during that night at the club. It only led to a frustrated jerk-off with little to no satisfaction despite the swift release. It had been yet another evening like all other evenings since last Friday night.
I even cancelled my Thursday meeting with Stacey, unable to even consider fucking another woman, touching another body when my hands still held the memory of Fio’s skin and softness. I couldn't tell why I felt that way, couldn't explain it or rationalise it. She was under my skin, sneaking through my veins, scratching at the void in my chest — digging for something that wasn't there even though I didn’t exist to her. I seriously doubted she remembered how the evening had ended, and I knew she hadn’t seen me before diving toward the unforgiving concrete.
I buttoned up my white shirt, cinched the black tie, shrugged on my black narrow-notched suit, and added the square cufflinks of gold with engraved Ts as a final touch. Looking in the mirror, I saw the man my father had created — carved out with choice words and planned markings hidden beneath my clothes as constant reminders of the battles I had fought and won past my adolescent years.
My phone buzzed in the bedroom. I grabbed it after a few long strides out of the walk-in closet. "Speak," I snapped.
"Mr Tavares, you have an invitation to The Den for Tuesday evening. I've emailed it over and added four guards seeing as it's Varga territory."
I smirked at Tillie's words. She was a good PA and always thought ahead, working things out for herself without me having to tell her.
I was the first in my family that took on a personal assistant. Not something done in my line of work — more a law-abiding billionaire type of thing — but honestly, it had been a damn good choice.
"Good. Inform Nero, Baynard, Caius, and Theon."
"Already done, sir."
Why am I not surprised at the smug sound of your voice?
I shook my head and smirked at the sun beyond my windows while thinking of the war about to be unleashed. The hellfire I was about to rain down on those who dared cross me, it would become a bloodbath and we would relish it.
"Good work, Tillie," I said evenly.
"Thank you, sir. Anything else I can do for you?" she chirped, my praise hitting the mark for her as I rarely spoke any compliments unless they were more than due.
Tillie had worked hard and diligently for years, and I knew the importance of loyalty, for employees to feel valued, especially in this business. Loyalty, it’s hard-earned but surpasses fear each and every time, one of the few lessons my mother taught me about the family business and my father had utterly failed to understand.
That some wanted recognition, others money, some the ability to work with next to no rules, and then there were the easiest of them all, those who just wanted to be seen and praised for their work. Like Tillie, a fiery woman who would gnaw at my nerves with her constant questions — that sometimes turned rather helpful — but never did anything but splendid work that eventually led to a minor praise of some kind. The only words I always avoided with her, specifically were “good girl” — for a good reason, too.
"Check the accepted invites for tonight at Thorn."
"Any name in particular?" she asked, and I took a second to school my voice into its normal tone.
"Rebecca Silvano," I calmly said but my pulse picked up from thinking about the goddess, who would be accompanying the politician's daughter no doubt, while I heard Tillie tap some keys on the other end of the line.
"Accepted, sir." Yes.
"Is the living room in order?" I asked, almost as if I talked about the weather and perfectly masked the excitement that filled my body with a wicked speed.
"All will be there by nine am sharp, sir. Everything is set," she said. "Why are we gathering, sir?" she continued and my back straightened as I strode through my penthouse with its sleek, white marble and stainless steel, walls of mirrored glass against the world outside and high ceilings within that gave the impression one had no limitations while the wooden flooring reminded one of earth and the actual world all around.
"War, Tillie," I stated as I pressed the elevator key and stepped in a second later while shoving the phone in my pocket — thankful to my brother and his computer whizzing which allowed us to speak so freely on certain devices.
The doors slid close as I drew a calming breath, the idea of war sent a conflicted thrill through me. I was ready to draw first blood if needed, to unleash the devils within my control and rain hell upon those daring to cross the Tavares family, daring to cross me.
***
I reached Thorn in no time, easing my maroon Corvette C8 into its designated spot, right by the back entrance. Tillie stood by the door, her brown eyes glued to my tinted window while the wind tousled her bleached hair. Her body radiated uncomfortable tension. I understood why but held no compassion for her.
Beyond the door at her back, below ground, sat thirty of the most dangerous men and women within Radland's borders — possibly far beyond even. Tillie was part of the family but at the administrative level, so she never really dealt with many of the people I would rally for war today face to face. Being behind a screen, being a voice through a phone, is far different from seeing dead eyes burn with malicious joy up close.
I stepped out of the car and some tension left my PA's shoulders at the sight of me. If that was good or bad in my line of work, I couldn’t tell, but in terms of trust and loyalty, I’d say good.
"Mr Tavares, sir, thank god." She sighed, but she remained in place as I walked up.
"Problem?" I asked as I pulled open the door and entered the private area of the club with her right at my back.
"I — no problem, but that room," she whispered.
I merely nodded while my body straightened even further, in the best of ways.
Tillie had been my PA for nearly three years, overseeing the warehouses in St. Rickerton to the south of Kaine Bay before that, and this was the first family gathering she had experienced. I understood her feelings, but I couldn't allow them in that room.
I opened the door to the actual club — ready to grab a whiskey by the bar before heading down to the living room below — but my step faltered for a sliver of a second.
I hadn't been back at the club since seeing her there.
To be back in that space, no matter how different it appeared during the day with all the lights on and no music or people, it catapulted my mind straight to the glass goddess who drank Black Russians without ice and straight Three Wise Men shots Wild Turkey style while standing on endless legs in golden heels.
Not now, for fuck's sake, I swore at myself as I picked up my walk toward the bar again. I started to get pissed at my own mind, at her for invading it so effortlessly, for crawling beneath my skin and constantly reminding me of the smoothness of her skin edged into the very fibres of my fingers where they had been wrapped around her bare, dangling legs and slim arm.
"Patty," I greeted. She smiled and sat a crystal tumbler down with amber liquid before me. I downed it, instantly knowing it would land just right to soothe the other form of tension lingering inside me. War, no matter how gloriously bloody and necessary, was not a small matter to declare. Even if we all hungered for it, the freedom it yielded to those locked up within the borders of a fragile truce.
"Stay here." A clipped command.
"What? Why, sir?" Tillie protested while watching me with an open mouth. I cocked my brow at her, and she shut her mouth so quickly her teeth clinked.
I understood why she wished to be present. In our business, face and rumours were everything. The thought of losing face was abhorrent, and I understood she wished to be there as my PA to show the older family members she was truly capable of her job. A strong woman — not a victim of fear. But, she was. At that time. I did not blame her for it.
"I can smell your fear, and so will they," I said quietly, without any emotion in my voice.
"Just stay here, Tillie. Trust me, you don't want to be in that room. Nothing good ever comes out of it," Patty said while wiping the counter.
"I came out of it," I stated flatly while looking at her.
"I am aware, Boss. And are you a good man?"
"Point taken," I admitted with a raising of my empty glass, allowing her to speak the truth as she always did with me when the circumstances were right for it. The woman was nearly fifty, well versed in the family life, and absolutely lethal despite her deceptively youthful, sweet looks.
The only reason she stopped joining the living room meetings was her "less known, less thought" rule which suited me splendidly. I ordered without explanation, and she executed without question. Trust, loyalty, and honesty. Three things of great value that I connected with few. Patty, however, was one of them.
"Find out what you can about Tuesday," I told Tillie and slid the empty tumbler along the bar until Patty grabbed it mid slide. I turned and, with a quick glance toward the centre of the dance floor, left while Patty poured Tillie a glass of juice.
***
All eyes were on me as I strode into the living room, our war room, council room — the mughal green walls held our darkest secrets from all time since the beginning when Thorn had been a boarded-up casino hotel. Battles, big shipments, strategy, executions — everything of higher importance were discussed within these deadly walls.
Today, war lay on the table, and I could nearly touch the tension within the thick air at the first family gathering since the death of my father.
I sat down at the head of the table, Nero to my right and Baynard to my left. A set of thirty eyes all trained on me until Nero rose and claimed the room's attention. None spoke, all simply waited for my right hand to speak, as was custom.
"Family," he began while looking around the table, "we are here to discuss war." The room went gloriously stiff and still, a surge of bloodthirsty excitement mingled with the silence like thorns along a sleek stem. I could physically feel it, as clearly as the weight of my chunky gold ring weighed down my right ring finger. It displayed me as the family head, The Boss, which was the only title bound by Tavares blood. Our Family connected several families yet the rule remained with my bloodline.
As my father before me, his father before him, and so on for several generations, we wore the ring in solitude. My word was law, as my father’s had been before, and the familiar weight of the ring reminded me of it every second of every day. However, with that very ring came a shitton of responsibility and power — power now being tested. Not for long.
The Glass Goddess
Excerpt: Chapter 8-9
8
FIORA
My foot tapped the concrete, my golden stilettos a barrier between my bare skin and the rough surface. Where is she?
I’d been waiting for nearly fifteen minutes in the suffocating evening air filled with the humidity of lingering summer rain. Becca was late, a rare occurrence. Her being so punctual one could almost set the clock after her.
I snagged my phone from the little black purse with a golden chain draped over my shoulder. It matched my skin-tight golden dress with its black lace details along the hem that barely reached below my ass, showcasing my long legs and bare back as the dress dipped down in a V to my lower back held together by the thinnest little golden chain across my shoulder blades. Another gift from Becca. The whole shimmering ensemble was.
I woke the screen up. No messages, no calls. I sighed and lowered my shoulders, then called her.
"I'm here!" Becca called, but not from within my ringing phone. She was a few feet away on the sidewalk, huffing and puffing while running with the lit phone in her waving hand.
"Took you long enough," I called as she half jogged and half staggered toward me in her silvery heels with strings wrapped around her sturdy calves. Her glittery dress — of some loose-fitting, silvery material — reached to her knees and sparkled in the street lamps' yellow lights. She was a sight, as always.
"Where were you?" I asked as I shoved the phone down in my little purse with force to make it fit, cursing to myself about why they made phones so damn big nowadays. I only ever really used it to call or text, maybe play the odd game or listen to music now and then, so I really didn’t need something so big. But beggars can’t be choosers.
"I couldn't tell Clive to drive me here! I had to walk, from the restaurant, and give him, the slip," she whined while getting closer and drawing ragged breaths. "Do you have any idea, how hard, it is, to sneak away, dressed like a glittery beacon?!" she huffed out, a few strands of hair out of place and a light dusting of sweat across the tip of her button nose.
"Well, why didn't you go to the bathroom and use the back exit beside it?" She stilled, obviously not having thought of that.
"I'm an idiot. I sneaked through the damn kitchen." I burst out in a loud laugh that shook my entire body while I tried to imagine the plump pudding dressed to grab attention trying to sneak through a kitchen with over ten people working in it.
"Yeah, yeah, haha," she sniped and rolled her eyes, but her lips held a smile when I straightened and looked down at her.
"So," I said, after having collected myself, wondering if I should tell her that I was planning on leaving right away or wait, or not tell her at all even.
Becca wasn't aware of just how dire my situation had turned, nor that my father had borrowed money from a loan shark, too — fuck, I hadn’t even been aware of it. If I’d told her, she would have wanted to help and, as often as I made her do foolish things, that was something I couldn't allow. I wasn’t that stupid.
Her father's money could go nowhere near any loan sharks or mobs. It would put everything the (horribly superficial) man had been working toward in jeopardy — not to mention the mountain of trouble my sweet Becs would be in if it ever came to light.
No, I couldn't tell her. I'd have to leave quietly, simply a text saying goodbye after I was gone or something — giving her no chance to work her puppy eyes on me.
My heart sank, and my smile faltered as I remained silent. She looked up at me with such love and friendship in her beautiful, big eyes, ready to go party in enemy territory one more time, and I was going to leave her behind. My only friend. My only love. My only lifeline. The only one I truly cared about and received care from in return.
My fingers flexed with a horrible need to strangle life for the shit it threw my way. Dr. Calvin’s words about controlling it — spoken in her sing-song voice — from my youth centre time in Wickerton echoed in my head, urging me to tamper it down. To lock it up, shut it down, silence that part of me growing with malice and glowing suffering each passing day it seemed.
Becca grabbed my arm, dragging me into her and squeezing my forearm between her voluptuous tits. "You okay?" she asked quietly.
"I'm great. We're about to have the time of our lives," I said as I found my way back to happiness and smiles, pushing the cold, the violent urges, and the hurt away behind my walls where it wouldn’t touch my heart — for the time being.
I glanced back at the club behind her, which I remembered entering but not leaving, and lo and behold who stood at the door. I snickered and Becca turned her head at the noise.
"Look who's waiting for you," I said with glee as both of us looked toward Baynard guarding the door and keeping the never-ending line in check without a problem despite being on his own.
"Think we need to stay in line?"
"Ha! Not a chance, Becs."
I grabbed her hand, dragged her across the street, and the second we got close to the club, Baynard's scanning eyes found us. His eyes reached mine and something fluttered in my mind, a memory of something beyond my reach that wasn’t quite touchable. But then his gaze went to Becca and he straightened ever so slightly. Well, someone’s smitten.
"Ladies," he said in that humming voice of his and removed the rope in front of him without hesitation as he moved slightly to the side.
"Hi, Baynard." Becca smiled as her hand tensed in mine. I had to strangle a chuckle at her cute behaviour. Perhaps she remembered something about last time that I didn’t?
"Miss Silvano, and Fio," he said gently, and I stiffened. How did he know my nickname? Had I given it to him last time? Don't get fucking plastered this time, I admonished myself as I had no idea how much had been divulged over a week ago. I couldn’t stop the slight tremor that shot along my spine as I worried for a split second they knew who I was, who my father was and that now, this whole thing, wasn’t only a bad idea but a truly idiotic one as they had invited us.
"It's a little packed tonight, but there's always room for you lovely ladies," Baynard continued gently, most of it aimed toward Becca — for obvious reasons.
"That's great," she said happily, and Baynard gave her a gentle smile. He was so at odds with his looks. All gentle with a humming voice and sweet eyes. Like a big teddy bear who was too aware of his surroundings despite his eyes being transfixed on my sweet pudding of a best friend.
Something about the way he had a gentleness in that hum of his set my mind at ease rather quickly, too. It chased away that lingering annoyance at having something in my mind literally right at the tips of my brain cells yet wholly unreachable.
"Hey! We've been waiting over an hour! These bitches need to get in line, too!" a guy with an odd accent shouted from beside us somewhere at the front of the packed line that wrapped around the tall building and was, by now, terrifyingly still and quiet.
I was wrong. So, so, so wrong about the big man.
His head snapped in the guy's direction, all semblance of gentle sweetness he had directed at us cleanly wiped from his features in less than a second. His entire aura changed, it was nearly palpable.
"Perhaps your grave has a shorter waiting time," he hummed darkly. His voice wasn't shouted or raised. Just a sound that reminded me of feral wasps. A shiver slid down my spine. Judging by the look on the pale guy’s face, he experienced more than a shiver beneath Baynard's narrowed gaze.
The guy lowered his eyes in a rush and Baynard turned back to us, to Becca.
"Sorry about that," he said and the smile returned, his features softened once more while his stance loosened.
"No worries. I've been called worse," Becca said but giggled uncomfortably. I squeezed her hand while Baynard’s jaw hardened for a split second at her words.
"Baynard," I said and his attention came to me. "Is it really packed in there?" He nodded and almost smiled. Good, it'll be harder to spot us.
Baynard moved swiftly, allowing us to pass without even having to show the invitation. How did they get her number anyway? It’s not publicly available…
We went inside and were met by the little hallway which sort of gave you that last chance to turn around and leave before entering the club beyond the black door with a golden knob.
We weren't turning back though — more like running toward that gleaming handle.
The music blared, the floor slightly sticky from spilt drinks, and everywhere I looked it was packed. We blended right in, two regular girls in a nightclub where all were dressed to impress — or invite others to play was perhaps a better phrase for it. Either way, we were free to drink, dance, laugh, and live as we wished — even if only for a few hours.
"Not getting plastered this time," I shouted into Becca's ear as the music was way louder this time around. She nodded and we headed for the bar to get something to kick me into gear and ease the nervousness Becca still harboured about being in a mob-owned club. I didn’t blame her. It made sense — unlike us entering enemy territory willingly and then consuming alcohol to the point of being completely inebriated. That did not make sense, yet we’d done it.
A familiar face waited at the bar. She spotted me before we’d gotten all the way there. My height did have some advantages, after all. I pulled Becca along behind me, clearing a path while some we passed looked up at me.
"Girls!" the bartender said happily and wasted no time getting two shots of Three Wise Men Wild Turkey style, and straight, ready when we arrived at the bar. "It's on the house, and I'm Patty, by the way," she said and handed the drinks to us along with a set of gold bracelets with a small, rectangular plate in the middle. We shouted our nicknames to her in return.
"Eleven," I read out loud as I took the bracelet and glass. "What is this?" I asked over the music. But Patty only smiled mischievously at me and jutted her chin toward the stairs. It made her blonde hair sway ever so slightly, and I questioned my previous estimation of her age as her neck came into view, showing more age than the thirty-something I’d guessed.
"It's even better up there tonight," she called over the music while we both clipped on the golden chains. “Less packed than here.”
"Well, bottoms up!" I shouted to Becca, and we clinked our glasses before downing the shots.
"Whoo!" she exclaimed as we slammed the glasses down on the bar, Becca doing her little act of fist-bumping the air above her head with far too much enthusiasm.
"Go up first?" Becca asked as we moved toward the stairs next to the terribly — deliciously — packed dance floor. I smiled over my shoulder at her, cutting a path with my tall frame for her to walk through behind me, as I wasn’t shy of pushing my way through crowds where Becca was a bit more careful. I blamed all the idiots who’d ever dared comment a single negative word about her weight or the amount of space she took up in the world. If anything, she didn’t take up enough space. The world needed more Becca, always.
We got up the stairs in no time, the guards only glancing at us before moving aside and removing ropes to let us through. I walked as close to the middle of the steps as I could to avoid looking down while my legs grew unsteady beneath me seeing how high up we were and how fucking long a fall it was down. But going up one could at least focus on something higher rather than the depths below.
Becca, on the other hand, basically slid herself against the railing all the way up.
As we got up the last two steps, some tension left my shoulders and I relaxed when we moved toward the bar, away from the edge of the floor. The space was filled with gorgeously dressed people standing around tables, sitting in booths, and filling the sofas at the furthest end — but it wasn't packed like the lower levels and the music was lower. One could easily chat over it yet nobody else would be able to hear any of it.
I leaned against the bar with my forearms, Becca right beside me with her tits nearly laying on the wooden surface. Her bra and dress barely contained them as she stood on her tippy toes leaning forward. Even when she complained about back pain or under-boob sweat, which I had never really suffered from, I still envied having a chest that would fill out any dress or top. It would hide my tummy pouch, too…
"Ladies," the blond bartender from last time said as he stepped up to us. "What can I pour you?"
"Black Russian, hold the ice."
He nodded up at me with a nice smile that stretched his slimmed face in a generally good-looking way. He wasn’t to my personal taste in men, though — too sweet-looking and, well, blond.
"A Bellini with lots of ice, please," Becca said sweetly while she bobbed up and down on her toes in tune with the music.
She was a little less nervous, a little more at ease this time. I suspected it had to do with a certain bouncer, but I had also sensed a faint smell of wine on her breath when she arrived on the sidewalk earlier.
Becca held out her card and the bartender refused it, saying it was on the house — exactly like Patty had done. Odd, I thought, but we didn't push it. Free drinks are free drinks, even if Becca could more than afford the outrageous prices on the third floor.
Instead, we turned to see if we could find an empty table somewhere. Of course, we had no such luck seeing how the place was filled on all floors, even up there at the exclusive-looking top.
But something felt a little odd this time. Something was different at the club — apart from the free drinks and VIP treatment. I felt watched, as if eyes were sliding over me, tracking each motion I made. But nobody actually looked at us more than the odd passing glance. Shake it off, there’s just a lot of people around.
"We can stand there," Becca said, pointing toward the railing where a slightly obscured standing table stood off to the furthest left, nearly hidden from view all around by the curve of the edge and the booth next to it occupied by some suited men who looked like they were all business and no play.
"Nicely spotted, Becs.” I smiled and we hooked our arms while sashaying over on our heels that clicked loudly against the wooden floor below, all while sipping on our preferred drinks.
"Miss Silvano," a familiar humming voice said from behind us. We both stopped and looked over our shoulders at the big man my best friend absolutely beamed for a second later.
"This way," Baynard said and turned. We shared a confused look, but I shrugged and we followed Baynard who moved far too easily, too silently, with that massive form of his.
The nagging sensation of being watched lingered at the back of my mind as we passed several tables, many of the people occupying them glancing up at us. It made sense I felt watched, eyes roaming up along my long body and then all the way down Becca's curvy form should elicit that sensation. That’s not it, though.
"Ladies," Baynard said, but not to us. "This booth is reserved." It was the exact booth we’d sat in last time. This is just getting freakier.
"We didn't see a sign," said one of the women, possibly in her late forties with platinum blonde hair and too-bright lipstick.
"They’re around the wrists," he said, and the ladies looked down at the red bracelets around theirs, only to then glance at our golden links. I glanced around only to find none wearing golden bracelets like ours.
"You're excused," Baynard continued, and I felt a bit rude taking their table when we were more than fine with standing so early on in the night.
"Baynard, it's alright, we're fine over—"
"No," he simply stated. "I have my orders."
Orders? What orders? From who? About what?
The women left with small huffs while I apologised to them as best I could. Becca didn't say a word. She merely looked up at the big man with black skin that blended with the shadows in the dim light while she boasted a sugary sweet smile and twinkling eyes. Shouldn’t he be by the door?
We sat as Baynard pointed with an open palm — strange scars covering them that I didn’t have enough time to truly look at — toward the empty booth when a lanky-looking server sidled up with a polite smile. His eyes roamed all over us as he cleared the table and wiped it down, though. Baynard gave him a pointed glare, and he scurried off quicker than a whistle could attract a dog.
"Thank you," Becca said to the big man and he smiled at her, all teddy bear mode again.
"You're welcome, Miss Silvano."
"Becca," she interjected. "Just Becca."
"Becca." He nodded. Then he turned and walked off, talking in an earpiece I hadn't even noticed before, and the blond bartender glided up with a Piña Colada topped with three lemon slices and a Black Russian without ice.
I froze in my seat. Something clammy grappled at my skin with the company of unease and the prickling cold sensation of eyes watching me intently, like little needles of ice dancing across my bare skin. What the hell is going on?
"Compliments of the house, to the two most beautiful ladies," he said. All confident, all smiles, and none of the wandering eyes like the other one. A professional bartender, or perhaps his interests simply lay elsewhere.
"Oh, thank you," Becca giggled out, obviously already getting beyond tipsy — she had certainly consumed some liquid courage beforehand, and I nearly wished I’d done the same.
"Thank you," I said with a forced smile while nerves settled in tight knots in my stomach. That damned eerie feeling of being watched intensified as the bartender placed the free and highly specific drinks on our table. Something was definitely up, and I didn't like it. Not one bit.
Stop it, you're being stupid. If anything, they're treating Becs well as they now must know exactly who she is. There's nothing more to it. It's probably Baynard's work. But he’d claimed to have orders, and I didn't know what to make of that.
Becca pushed against my shin with her foot. "What's up with you?"
I shook my head and found my smile. "Nothing," I replied while I rolled the half-filled glass in my hands once. She arched a brow at me and sipped on her Bellini while eyeing the Piña Colada next to my other Black Russian.
"Don't you think this is weird?" I asked, unable to hold my thoughts back as that unknown memory of something important gnawed at the back of my head, hidden from view by my previous blackout, no doubt. It was nearly a sensation, against my lower back, something sturdy flexing against my skin — but what?
"I don't know, I usually get free stuff?"
"How could I ever forget?" I chuckled as I tried to shake myself out of the dampened mood and consuming thoughts. It seemed as if the memories gloated, baring their teeth in some wicked smile I couldn't see as they weren’t inside or outside but hidden within my walls.
Becca held her glass up, we clinked them and — as if we were completely in sync — we both downed them in one go. My throat warmed and tightened. My stomach heated and my limbs loosened. That's more like it. I moved the empty glass aside and grabbed the one the bartender had left.
I hesitated with the cool glass right at my lips. I hadn't seen it being made. Fuck it. I sipped and swallowed as Becca started to sing along to the current song. My foot tapped against the floor, making my knee hit the table each time.
I sat all the way out on the edge of the seat, though, so I moved my legs to the side and crossed one over the other over my knee while stretching them out a little further, finally having space enough while bobbing my free-hanging foot up and down in a slight dangle, not caring if it made my slightly protruding stomach wobble with the motion. I had no one to impress or suck it in for. Honestly, it should never be needed but the world’s a funny, shallow place.
Becca leaned against the half-wall with the steel bar railing on top, watching the dancers below happily while I looked at her, already missing her. I have to tell her... As much for her as for me.
I suddenly couldn't imagine leaving without a proper goodbye. A final hug. "Becs..." I said quietly, she didn't hear me over the music. Later... I'll tell her later.
She turned toward me and beamed with dilated pupils. I burst out laughing, throwing my head back as she looked absolutely hilarious with her puppy eyes widened by alcohol.
To know we’d at least have this night, these memories, a few hours of free bliss without any collar or leash to strangle us while pulling in opposite directions for our futures that both were cages — merely in different shapes — soothed my nerves, the jaded feelings clashing within me.
"What?" she asked, slightly huffing the words out with a frown as I had undoubtedly lost some of the joy in my features as my damaging thoughts slid in between cracks and cavities along my wall. Openings caused by the alcohol I shouldn’t have consumed but would have plenty more of before the night turned to day, and I’d meet my pillow with tear-stained cheeks and smudged makeup after having said goodbye to my sweet Becs. The sweet woman who looked at me with pleading eyes, begging me to understand what she wished for but didn’t dare own up to.
"Wanna dance, little pudding?" I asked, for her and my benefit. She nodded through the laugh she’d let out at the accuracy of my guess and, once more, we downed our drinks and slammed the glasses on the table.
I'm not going to get plastered. I’m just celebrating our last night! I yelled at myself, but, at the same time, I wanted to quench the ache in my chest and not have to remember to tell my best friend I was abandoning her — enough alcohol would allow me to either forget to tell her or to blurt it out without having to remember the abhorrent pain that would surely accompany those words of confession. Confessions of my weakness, my cowardice. That I would not stay and fight for myself, I would run away and hide. How am I supposed to fight for me when none has ever done it…
We stood, the world thoroughly spun for a few seconds as the alcohol hit hard and we stumbled into each other, helping one another to remain upright while we giggled and admonished each other for our stupid drinking without any severity to our voices.
But then I felt it fully again. That prickling sensation of being watched. Someone kept an unmovable eye on us, but Baynard’s back was turned in our direction over by the stairs, so it couldn’t be him.
I glanced around, unable to see anyone looking in our direction with anything more than the average looks of want or annoyance.
The banging of a door, the name Mr Krim in an angry voice, and the threat of collection; it ploughed through my mind, and I whipped my head around to scour the top floor once more. Did Mr Krim have men at the club? Were they watching me? Planning to grab me and go? I didn’t know.
I wrapped my arm around my stomach to ease the ache of worry. It mingled with the burning alcohol that in sync made my stomach coil in on itself uncomfortably tight.
We half stumbled ahead, Becca's movements forcing me to move, and found our feet beneath us in time to get a little steadier before the infernal stairs.
"You really should have elevators," I gritted out right by Baynard as we passed. He didn't speak, but he followed us down without hesitation while his eyes jumped between us and the surroundings. Oh, someone's got it baaaaad, I thought and glanced down at Becca beside me before we took the first step down. My stomach positively dropped down to my feet while it simultaneously wrapped itself up even tighter at my core.
We were too high up, my feet too unsteady, and my legs utterly shook as Becca clung to my arm, and I think I nearly marked hers with my short nails while walking right by the railing. I tried not to look at anything but my own damn feet, taking one step at a time, but she kept tugging at me while bouncing down the stairs, all fired up to dance.
My lips flattened as my grip hardened around her arm. The world tilted, or I was tilting, I couldn't tell which between the swaying stairs below and the pounding music all around. I couldn't get down the damn stairs fast enough and hurried up my steps, nearly stumbling my way down in my high heels. The anxiety pumped my blood faster, spreading the alcohol with a raging speed within my veins as my heart hammered incessantly.
It’s just stairs, just stairs, nothing dangerous. I can walk down fucking stairs without falling on my ass, no problem! So, heart, just calm down! Almost, almost, almost— I drew a deep breath of relief when we got down the first set, and then my stomach balled itself up in a giant knot as Becca dragged me toward the next set.
I knew what she was doing. She babbled about dancing and music while pulling me along as fast as her short legs allowed her to keep my mind off the height. She tried to help me by rushing it. Usually, it worked. But now, with the uncanny feeling of being watched, the pounding music matching my rushed heartbeats, and the overly eager alcohol turning my legs into noodles beneath me, it really wasn’t a good plan. I hadn’t the heart to tell her she was making it worse, though.
We finally got all the way down and became cocooned by the heavy music and grinding bodies spilling out of the designated dance floor. There was nowhere on the ground floor that dancing wasn’t going on. By the bar, between tables, in line to the bathrooms — everywhere.
"Let's do this!" I shouted in Becca's ear the moment my anxiety fizzled out and grabbed her hands from behind me before I began to push through the thick crowd of sweaty bodies. It always felt so good to disappear in the mass.
Only, I didn't.
The gnawing sensation of someone watching me intently was still fucking there. Someone meticulously monitored my movements, and it wasn't the sweet teddy bear who was trying to hide his glances at Becca. No, this was something else entirely. Something, or someone, cold and dark with the ability to prick skin with needles of ice while remaining unnoticed. This can’t be good…
9
FIORA
The music pulsed through me, the alcohol in my veins mixed dangerously fast with anxiety while my body gyrated along with Becca's. The cold burning against my neck from unknown eyes, the thumping against my flesh from strangers' bodies, all of it sent me on high alert but none of it could quite reach me through the drunken haze either.
Becca laughed and wrapped her arms around my neck, pushing her soft body against my own as I leaned down and hugged her to me. I have to tell her, I thought as pain stabbed my chest, tears pushing behind my eyes.
We’d been having such a wonderful time. Everything was so simple when there was only her and I — filled with alcohol and surrounded by unknowns who didn’t matter. I didn’t want it to end.
But it wasn’t fair of me to just leave. I mattered to her, she mattered to me, it had been us against the nooses our fathers cinched around our necks for ten years. Ten years of unrelenting friendship no matter the hurdles, the struggles, the interventions of others on her part and the secret keeping on my part.
This is going to hurt. But I gathered my courage. "Becca!" I shouted right by her ear, barely audible over the loud music.
"What?" she shouted back. I don't want to do this.
"I'm leaving!"
"Why? This is fun!" she shouted with a giggle as we swayed and hugged, her full plumpness against my nearly flat front, against the slight softness situated at my lower stomach rather than where I wanted the fat to be.
"On Monday," I pushed out, "I'm leaving forever." It was a miracle she heard the last part, but I knew she had. Her entire body had gone still in my arms, and so had my own. Every muscle in her body tensed but she still managed to lean back and look up at me. My back hunched beneath the heaviness spilling from her tear-filled eyes.
"You're leaving me?" she asked, and I nodded while I tried to hold on to her warm body as others slammed into us from all sides.
"Dad—" I drew a deep breath "—he's out of time."
"Out of time?" She scrunched up her eyebrows, not understanding. I nodded solemnly as her tears began to flow while she shook her head, seemingly shocked and confused by my words even if I knew she understood what they meant. Her father dealt with the mob all the time, with criminals and underground lords, so it wasn’t unknown to her.
"We still have tonight," I said loudly, in an effort to ease the pain that spilt from her and nearly pulled me under like the waves at rough tide crashing against the shore with the ocean's full force behind it.
"You can't leave me! I'll pay! I'll have Father—"
"No, pudding," I said and leaned in, pressing my lips to her ear." This can never come back to you. I love you."
She cried and clung to me. Her short arms laid heavy around my neck as we struggled to remain on our feet. I did my utmost to push away the escalating intrusion of unknown, cold eyes burrowing into my bare skin. It was a palpable, invisible force that tried to dig itself into me, and I couldn't do anything about it. But I knew, whatever it was, it would be the end of me. I truly had to leave.
I began to sway us from side to side, Becca followed my lead as we leaned back a little. I gave her a soft smile that probably came out crooked between the pain and the alcohol. She shook her head and said she refused to think about it tonight, then promptly made me promise we would have one last hangover pizza party in the morning while using her biggest puppy eyes — usually reserved for the times she asks her dad for a new car or a private jet trip to some holiday beach when she was supposed to do more charity work.
I agreed to the hangover pizza party, not wishing to return to the house I would be leaving on Monday already tonight, and wanting every single second of Becca-pudding bliss available before we would say our final goodbye.
A few songs later that bled into each other we were two sweaty messes with smeared makeup in desperate need of something to drink. I nodded toward the bar and Becca smiled at me, a glint in her eyes that was in no way good.
I couldn't think of it, couldn't take a moment to feel the loss and hurt. I would break. My resolve would falter and I would turn into a selfish bitch allowing her to pay for my freedom, to buy me. Never. Never, ever, ever, ever, I chanted despite the fact that fear and anxiety clawed at my insides with feral hunger for my pain.
I grabbed her hands and we tried to move through the crowd, me pulling her behind. We didn't even get out of the centre of the dance floor, no matter how we pushed.
"Fucking bullshit, I want a damn drink!" I shouted and shoved, stumbling ahead when a body moved out of the way.
I managed to stay on my feet and kept Becca tucked behind me, into my bare back. "You good?" I called over my shoulder and she nodded, then her smile widened, and as I turned my head back, I saw Baynard cutting through the crowd as if it were water and nothing more. To be that big and swift, how fucking amazing would that be?
Baynard reached for me but I dragged Becca from behind me and shoved her toward him while swaying slightly on my heels. I followed in their wake as he held her hand with one of his own behind his wide frame, easily clearing a path for us without breaking a sweat.
When we arrived at the bar he let go of her hand. We both shouted a wide-smiled 'thank you!' to him. He nodded gently and moved off to the side, stationing himself among the shadows to the left of us.
I couldn’t help but wonder if he was aware he would disappear if he simply took one more step back and allowed the shadows to fully mingle with the darkness of his skin. Like he’s… There’s no way, right? He’s not… No. He can’t be. I’m being utterly stupid. He’s just a bouncer, not some appearing and disappearing assassin! He’s a mountain, for fuck’s sake.
Yet, a little voice in my head whispered that looks could be deceiving, that the teddy bear my best friend was infatuated with worked at a mob club and had a few hours ago turned into someone completely different in the blink of an eye. I tilted my head and watched him as he watched the crowd too fluently. I’m freaking myself out. I just need some air, clear my head.
"Can you get me a Rusty Nail? I need some air!"
Becca nodded and I jutted my jaw toward Baynard, telling her to go over to him when she had the drinks — even if I suddenly weren’t so sure about him. He, on the other hand, already moved toward her. She would be safe with him while I found someone to bum a smoke from, and possibly get away from whoever kept such a ridiculous track of me.
"Be right back!" I called as Becca turned, Baynard being three steps away.
I squeezed myself through the crowd, angling my body to the side and getting to the black door with the golden knob with some difficulty now that I was on my own in the frenzied mass of people. Every face was blurred, every touch reminded me I was up for grabs, for collection.
A moment later I stumbled across the road, toward the beach up ahead, while dragging in smoke, filling my lungs with poison I only ever indulged in when things seemed most dire — when anxiety seemed to worm around in my flesh, digging itself deeper until my very bones itched.
That I’d been able to stay away from all kinds of drugs — except alcohol obviously — was some kind of miracle. But the odd smoke here and there did grace my lips, I wasn’t going to apologise for it, but I wasn’t proud of it either.
I trembled in the midnight chill as the salty gusts of wind caressed my sweaty body, cooling it instantly. I needed a moment to collect myself, then I would go back and dance my ass off with my bestest friend — until Thorn closed sometime in the morning and barely any time remained for sleep before the hangover pizza party.
My heels sank down in the sand. I stubbed out the cigarette after one final drag and removed the shoes, leaving them behind on the edge between sidewalk and beach.
My toes flexed, burying themselves in the cool sand, providing welcome relief from the dull ache in my soles. A deep exhale left my lips as the cold eyes I’d been tracked by all night had left me when I left the club two or three minutes ago.
I stepped forward, inhaling the salty breeze while it tousled my hair harshly. My legs wobbled beneath me. The uneven, soft surface did nothing to help keep my drunken self balanced. I didn't care, though, if I got sand between my butt cheeks from a fall was no concern at that time when the sound of gently crashing waves called for me to come enjoy the quiet of nature.
Water had always been a comfort, in it and near it, it was so... eternal. The power of the ocean, the gentleness of a seemingly bottomless lake, and the secrets hidden behind each waterfall. I loved it. Not to mention one couldn't fall in water. Sink, yes, but not fall.
So, when I stepped over the border between dry sand and wet saltwater, I inhaled softly. The inviting water sloshed over my feet, up to my ankles, and then retreated with a gentle caress over my bare skin with the sand it dragged back. Goosebumps travelled up along my legs as the water chilled me ever so slightly.
My shoulders slumped. I leaned my head back, allowing the breeze and waves to grace me with their caresses. Nothing else existed in the world, and I knew I'd go somewhere I could be by water when leaving.
In that little moment, I truly decided to leave, to abandon everything I’d ever known for the world beyond the borders of Radland which I had never left.
There were so many places I wanted to go, to see and do things I’d never truly dared hope for. It felt like a chain released me from its bolted place in the walls all around me. Walls I was soon to burst free of.
I stretched my hands up, my dress barely covering my most private parts clad in a black thong of lace. I chuckled as relief filled my entire body. There would be no debt to pay, no ownership over me, nobody to tell me I wasn't worth jack-shit. I'd make a life for myself, somehow, somewhere. Maybe even with someone who could possibly love me the way I deserved — as all who’d only ever been collateral deserved.
To find someone who would stand by me through everything, who would never abandon me among mobsters and sharks, who would hold me when the night came and kiss me when morning arrived. Someone who would put me above everything else and never jeopardise my safety over the rush of gambling, over money.
"Maybe someday, somehow, I'll be truly free..."
As if the universe heard the plea from the depths of my soul, and decided to wipe out that hope in the blink of an eye, an arm wrapped around my waist while a hand covered my mouth. The scream bursting from my throat was suffocated as my feet left the comfort of the water in a rush.
I kicked and thrashed. My arms flailed while I bit down hard enough to taste blood from the palm smashed against my lips with brutal force.
"Bitch!" a man's voice barked and the arm around my waist clamped down so hard I feared my organs would be turned into useless mush. I groaned and huffed as I struggled to breathe while his finger sat right below my nostrils, barely allowing any oxygen to be drawn down into my lungs.
"Hold her," another man hissed. Cold, slender fingers grabbed my ankles with bony strength.
"She fucking bit me!"
"You like that, shithead," the second man hissed as my widened eyes found his face.
He looked appalling. Cold blue eyes and rough-looking skin covered in stubble with hollowed-out cheeks made my heart roar in a frantic panic. I struggled to get myself loose, to kick him right in his ugly face, but his skinny fingers had a tight grip on me.
"Get her in the car," he said, a disgusting smirk marking his lips. I wanted to vomit as the man behind me held me up even higher, forcing my body to almost lay over his shoulder backwards. I lost all sense of what was up and down as my mind spun from the alcohol and my body screamed for air when tossed about like a sack of unfeeling potatoes.
I reached behind me, tried to scratch at the man's neck and head with all the strength I had. He hissed and jerked as my short nails dug in and ripped at his skin, wetting my fingertips with his blood.
"Fucking hell," he hissed as I managed to kick one foot free from the other man when his hold around my waist lessened for a second.
I wasted no time. With all the force I had, I jabbed my knee upwards, my long legs reaching up to the man's chin. With the impact, I heard his teeth rattle as they were forced together.
He dropped me and I scrambled to get up, but the blue-eyed man tugged on my foot. I fell face-first into the wet sand. Seawater covered my face just as I drew in a gulp of air, nearly choking me right then and there as I inhaled the salty liquid. My eyes and throat burned.
I coughed and tried to get up, my heart in an uproar, my body trembled as adrenaline flooded every fibre of my being with a rush beyond any other as if the ocean lent me its power only for the tide to be swept out by one swift blow to my head.
I slumped into the water. Everything spun as I fought the pain and disorientation when hands grabbed my limp upper arms and heaved me up. I groaned. Nothing was the right way up and my body threatened to expel everything I had on the inside, down to my damn liver.
"This one's fucking feisty," a slurry, muffled voice said from far away, even if I could feel the vibrations of the voice through my stomach as I swayed and dangled while not knowing if I was upside down or turned sideways. Becca... Becs... Please... My mind pleaded but I couldn't even open my eyes. I fought with everything I had to stay conscious. To breathe. To bear with the throbbing at the back of my head.
"Mr Krim will be pleased," another voice said, as muffled and far away but I couldn't feel it.
"She'll fetch a price with these legs," the voice I could feel said and something big slid against the back of my thighs, prodding and intruding along my bare skin — thoroughly unwelcome.
My body kicked up a stir within and as fear mixed with panic, as alcohol mixed with dread, I vomited to the sound of dark curses until everything simply disappeared. Only a spinning nothingness enveloped me like a too-quiet tornado.
***
I shivered, being shaken by something and somehow being in motion without me actually moving. What, happened...? My mind felt sluggish and off. Every limb ached as I struggled to grab onto my consciousness and reel it in.
Flashes of water, of the need to breathe, and harsh hands gripping me in places they shouldn't flickered through my mind. The fuck happened? A low groan escaped my lips when my head bumped against the hard surface below.
I jolted to life, bolted up, and slammed my forehead into something immovable before I had even gotten my body upright. "Shit," I hissed as my hands came up to the throbbing area. "Fuck’s sake."
I blinked my eyes open only for my breath to catch in my throat instantly. Darkness encased me, apart from a red light that shined impossibly bright for its tiny size over to the side. The cramped space seemed to press in on me.
The car roared ahead while sending vibrations through my sore body as I lay in its trunk. How long? I had no idea, but as reality came crashing in, like a rude salesman banging on your door at eight in the fucking morning on a Sunday, I struggled to catch my breath while swivelling my head around in a rush.
"Don't panic, just, just don't panic, don't panic, it's alright, it's alright, it's alright," I whispered as my breathing turned ragged and hyper. My hands moved all around the inside of the trunk, looking for something — anything — that could get me out or help me to protect myself.
There was nothing. Only the plastic I lay on, which seemed to cover the entire bottom of the trunk. I knew enough to know that wasn't a good sign. Not a good sign at all.
"Breathe, you're alright, you're alright," I whispered to myself as my entire body began to tremble fiercely while I tried to remember how to use my lungs.
The name Mr Krim echoed in my mind along with the feeling of hands on the back of my thighs as I tried to remember what had happened, to know what I was dealing with. I almost wished I hadn’t. It became so real, so fast.
Despite the situation, it caught me off guard that I had truly been collected. Taken, captured, snatched — I’d been confiscated like goods. As if I weren’t human or held a free will and a life of my own. I am just collateral, owned and bargained with… I really am anything but my own.
I bit into my lip to stifle the cry that threatened to escape. The tears, well, I could do nothing to hold them back as I realised exactly who had taken me. It wasn’t the mob whose club I’d been daring to dance within but the loan shark who’d sent a collector to our house not long ago.
I sent a silent thank you to the heavens above that Becca hadn't been with me, that she was unharmed with Baynard back at the club — or wherever she was, as I had no idea how much time had passed without my phone. The only tell it hadn't been too long was the lingering alcohol, making the ride in the trunk even worse as the world tilted and spun. The threat of vomiting loomed over me while confined into such a small space.
The car took a sudden sharp turn. I slammed my knees into the back of the trunk and winced. I’m too fucking tall to be pushed down into a trunk! But I had no time to think about it further as the car slowed only to stop with a small whine from the brakes.
My heart was in my throat, a tang of iron from my raging pulse lingered at the back of my mouth. Doors opened and slammed shut. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I scrambled to get myself turned around so my feet would be the first thing to get out of the trunk. I wasn't going to go willingly, no matter how my body hurt or how my head spun. Whatever plan they had for me, they'd have to fight for it to come true.
The seconds ticked by, each one feeling like a minute, and then the click of the trunk’s latch rang through the tight space as muffled voices reached me. I braced my hands above my head against the back of the seats. It provided me with some leverage to wield my body with more force.
The second the trunk opened enough, I kicked my bare feet straight out, hitting something half soft and half hard but not sparing a second to think about it as I scrambled to get out of the cramped space. I was going to get myself free and bolt; that was the only plan I had.
It had been a useless endeavour.
I hadn't even gotten upright after my feet hit the concrete — my ass still in the trunk — before hands grabbed me with such force my bones threatened to break. I panted a pitched squeal before I got dragged out and slammed down on the concrete so harshly I lost all air in my lungs.
"Told you, she's fucking feisty," a man said and laughed from beside me as I got my lungs to drag a breath. I glared up as I got up on my elbows, twisting my body half around.
"Well, ain't that just so much fun," another one said with a chuckle.
I turned my head, tilting it back to look at the man who began to crouch down beside me — not affording me a full view of him before he lowered himself.
His wicked grey eyes drilled into me while a sadistic smile spread across his narrow lips. They were split with a long scar from his cheekbone down to his jaw on the left side. He was big but pudgy, giving demonic teddy bear vibes all the way. The hair at the nape of my neck stood at attention from the death he reeked of.
He reached out and tipped my head even further back with a finger under my chin. I jerked my head away with a hiss, baring my teeth. I had no idea why; it was just some feral instinct shooting through me as my tampered anger at the whole fucking world surged by his unwelcome touch.
"Oh, feisty indeed." He laughed before grabbing my jaw with bruising strength, forcing my mouth open with my cheeks pressed in between my teeth, making me unable to bite down without jamming my own flesh between.
He jerked me closer with rough force, as if he endeavoured to pull the spine out of my back. I got dragged closer by the sudden motion, scraping up my knees, elbows, and palms before I had time to find any purchase to heave myself up.
"We’re going to have such fun times." He smirked before his eyes rested on my slightly open mouth. His tongue darted out to lick at the scar that indented his lower lip. "Such fun times," he repeated and the next thing I knew, everything turned blurry. A throbbing began to spread along the side of my head as I gasped a shallow breath at the blow before losing grip on my consciousness.
The Glass Goddess
Excerpt: Chapter 10-11
10
RAWLER
I watched with a twisting of my gut as my First Guard led her off the dance floor. One minute she had been dancing in the most glorious of ways, sending me into a fit of rage at not being the body she ground against — the shattered whiskey tumbler on the other end of the room the only proof remaining of that emotion — and in the next, she held on to Miss Silvano as if her life depended on it.
I had watched, unable to move a single muscle, as she cried in the middle of the dance floor with people rubbing up against her from all directions. My hands had fisted with the need to bash them bloody against those intruding bodies. But it looked like she wasn't even aware they were grinding against her.
So broken, so fragile. I watched her stumble behind Baynard and Miss Silvano. It looked like all synonyms of wrong that she followed. She wasn't a follower; no goddess should walk behind anyone, least of all the goddess of glass who shined like a lighthouse, calling for all to come to her frail embrace and find reprieve from the raging storm that was the harshness of the world.
The moment she disappeared from view, I sagged. I had been holding my fucking breath while watching her tear-stained face go through the crowd. I had no idea what kept me in place, what stopped me from bolting down to her when the thing in my chest within the void clawed its way toward the surface.
To see her shed tears, it tore at places I didn't know existed within me. Yet, at the same time, something about her was so strong. She wasn't crumbling. It appeared more as if she readied herself to face something. I had no idea what that could possibly be, and it was hellishly unnerving to be stuck on the outside with no control.
I leaned my forehead against the glass, watched the dancers far below in the rays of white and purple light. It held none of my interest to see moving bodies tightly packed together with barely any clothes to speak of now that she wasn't one of those bodies.
I walked over to the leather sofa, grabbed my suit jacket, and took my phone out of the inner pocket. Needing a moment to compose myself, I scrolled through the images I had of her while sitting down, once more being a fucking creep. I had zero excuses apart from wanting to see her.
Her face lit up my screen over and over — a smile, a smirk, a burst of laughter, a zoned-out expression while she danced freely. From her glazed eyes to the way her teeth shined while framed by her wide lips, to the way her black hair made her shimmering skin nearly glow in contrast, it all tugged at that unknown thing, or place, hidden far within the depths of my inner void.
I should just go to her, introduce myself, talk with—
The phone vibrated in my hand and Baynard’s name shined across the screen. It took me a second to realise he was actually calling, my mind still stuck on the face I recently studied so intently.
I pressed the phone to my ear. "Yes?"
"Boss," he said, but I could barely hear him over the music in the background, "she left." My blood ran cold.
"What?!" I snarled while rising in one swift motion.
"Yes, Miss Silvano said Fio needed some air," he continued, unfazed by my rage.
I gritted my teeth and dragged my free hand through my wax-fixed waves, tousling them out of their proper place. Air, just air, she'll be back.
"Keep me informed," I said and disconnected the call before tossing the phone on the sofa. It bounced twice before sliding to a halt right on the edge. I pressed one of six buttons by the door of my private little fishbowl a second later and the bartender instantly came running with another tumbler of whiskey precariously balanced on a black tray.
I opened the door when he was two steps away, snatched the drink, and slammed the door so harshly it shook the wall of mirrored glass. I cursed myself out about not knowing how the fuck to approach Fio while I downed the alcohol, feeling it burn through my throat and chest before landing in my gut, while my mind laughed at me.
"Why are you different?" I snarled while glaring at the empty tumbler tethering on the edge of being crushed by my clenching hand.
There was no reason for her to get beneath my skin. For one second between laughter and breakage to hold such sway over my thoughts. She should be nowhere near the void in my chest that I preferred to be completely still and silent at all times.
She obviously didn't care. She doesn't even know you exist, you dumb fuck.
I set the tumbler down. Resolve mingled with trepidation as I left my private area and made my way down. I wasn't going to allow her another moment where I did not exist.
She had crippled my mind and turned my calculated world into something beyond my control on the inside. My dreams had been trespassed upon by her. My blood had been heated against my will. Light of the sheerest kind had sliced through my immovable darkness with little to no effort. It shouldn't have been possible.
Some part of me detested her for it, while another wished to cradle her — protect her like I had never protected another before. One second. It was one. single. fucking. second. My fists clenched by my thighs while my feet made quick work of the three flights of stairs in their mix of rage and want.
I took the last step down at a slower pace. Music along with the scent of alcohol-infused sweat intruded while my eyes scanned for Baynard and Miss Silvano. They were at the edge of the bar. Baynard switched between watching her and checking toward the club entrance while the short, thick woman tapped on her phone far too quickly. Her breasts jiggled in the too-tight silvery dress each time her arms moved and, usually such a view would have made me smirk and move right in. Now, it didn’t even register in that part of my brain any longer as my entire head seemed to be caged and bound to the woman who wasn’t there.
Baynard saw me. I remained in the shadows, off the edge of the dance floor by one of the support pillars. None touched me; no accidental gracing or bumping occurred. Some knew who I was. Others were ordinary people who only knew my faceless name yet understood — on some primal level perhaps — that I was not to be touched.
Ordinary citizens had no idea how deep the darkness had taken root in their city. They saw the news — a killing, a robbery, an explosion, a drug raid — but they knew nothing of the underground. Knew nothing of the world existing in tandem with their own, paralleled with their day jobs, their family bliss, their tidy apartments with potted plants and unorganised shoe racks.
Could I hope Miss Silvano's friend knew nothing about me? That perhaps Fio was an ordinary citizen who happened to be friends with a senator's daughter? If so, I had a greater chance. To do what? Get her lush lips around my cock? Have her scream a name not my own when she comes undone? The thought sent a shiver down my spine.
The only name I ever wished to hear leave her lips was my own as her long legs would be wrapped around me, squeezing me through convulsions of pleasure created, owned, and marked by me alone.
To hear that, though, I'd have to tell her who I truly am. What I am would come after. Could a glass goddess remain whole at the hands of a heartless killer?
My entire body stiffened as the words echoed in my mind. The world around me turned muffled and distant. I wanted her. In every manner possible. However possible. But could I live with shattering her, as I would undoubtedly do? Could I live with myself if I drowned out her sheer light with my dense darkness? When shards of glass lay at my feet and her joy is nowhere to be viewed as the coldness of my world turns to chains, wrapping around her?
No.
I hadn't kept Rhina out of harm's way, and my sister died for it. Because of me. I wouldn't do that to the goddess with endless legs and shimmering skin. I wouldn't strangle that head-throwing laughter despite the ache in my cock and the sizzling sensation of need within my skin. Despite knowing — with every fibre of my damn body — that she could very well be the only woman in existence ever to make the void shiver, I wouldn't approach and take what I wanted. To take, claim, own — as I always had, without regard or regret.
Baynard met my gaze as whatever burned my insides turned icy cold and blackish. His eyes widened ever so slightly, and I gave the shortest shake of my head. He nodded in return, slowly.
That was it. The only acknowledgement between us of it being over and done with. We didn't need more. He knew. He had been there with me when the coldness now rising had been let loose to rein freely. He knew it, understood that part of me on some shallow level that I barely allowed.
I moved through the crowd with ease, long strides transporting me toward the private door in the back. I tapped in my personal code and the doors slid open, revealing the mirrored elevator which would take me down beneath the club.
Not until they closed did I allow my shoulders to slump as I leaned back against the mirror.
I had given much for the life I led. Had sacrificed all things normal for the family. I never regretted it. I wanted the dark and seemingly lawless world I had been born into and excelled within. She, beautiful Fio, did not fit into it.
I huffed shortly and shook my head. "It's been a long time since I cared enough to deny myself." Those were the only words I allowed the universe with its multitude of endlessness to hear about what a weakness she would have become for me. Just like Rhina, yet not the same at all.
My world was not a place for soft, squeezable emotions. Not a place where you could be fragile or pliable. It was a place where any leverage available would be used to crush you, a place for damnation and power beyond one's wildest dreams. Powers that came with a price, a price too steep if you allowed anything that mattered to be visible.
The doors slid open, and I entered the empty living room after a few steps through the hallway. Its cold darkness greeted me with silent recognition of another form of darkness entering the space. I made my way over to the little cabinet of fine liquor, but I hadn't even opened the crystal decanter when my phone kicked up a stir in my pocket.
"What?" I said through gritted teeth as I held it against my ear, not wanting the world to intrude.
"Sir," Tillie said, "Theon and Caius found out who's been stealing and who they’ve been working for."
"Who?"
"Mr Krim, sir."
Oh, that fucker has a death wish.
"Anything else?" My voice was too low as anger simmered in my veins. We had warned the loan shark, and the Tavares family only gives one warning.
"No, sir."
I disconnected the call and shoved down my phone with too much force, beyond pissed. Too many things were happening in my world, trying to topple it, for it not to be related.
I poured the whiskey, knowing I’d already had enough for one night really, and grabbed the glass. My phone kicked up a stir once more before I even got it to my parted lips.
"For fuck's sake!" I slammed down the glass, nearly shattering it, and hoisted up my phone. "What?"
"She's gone," Baynard said on the other end, and I sighed.
"I’m aware," I responded flatly, grabbing the glass with my free hand before I tossed it back.
"No, boss, she's gone. Miss Silvano can't find her," Baynard said, and first at that point did I notice how quiet the background was. What?
"Baynay!" was called in the background with a frantic, slurry female voice. "Her purse! Her purse!" the muffled voice continued, and it was as if all blood drained from my body while I listened to Baynard moving on the other end.
"She's not here! Her shoes—"
"Fuck, boss, her shoes and purse are at the beach, by the ocean line." By the ocean?
My eyes widened as my mind was slung back to the dance floor, to her tear-stained face that looked filled with resolve while the word "debt" bounced around in my head. No. No, she can't have... That's not possible.
But as my mind raced through every second of her within my view, every millisecond I had watched her unrelentingly, I lost the sensation in my hands. They went numb.
How she jumped between the brightest joy and being utterly broken, how fragile she appeared to me and the way she seemed to be far too reckless with her own security — with her life. As if she didn't care, as if it didn't matter to her if she lived or died while getting black-out drunk in a mob club and so out of it she hadn't even been able to get herself home.
The sensation of her unmoving body in my arms, against my palms and fingers, washed over me. How her warm skin felt through the back of her dress. How she had leaned into my hand, taking the support I offered to none but her. How she had slumped, turned horribly lax, after expelling everything within her stomach all over the concrete.
The tumbler slipped from my fingers while I heard Baynard speak on the other end. I had no clue what he said. I was drowning in my own mind, words echoing on repeat about how she never even knew I existed.
"Boss!" Baynard shouted and it made me blink. The man never raised his voice if not absolutely necessary; the damage to his vocal cords made it too painful.
"What?" I asked, my voice far too even.
"What do you want me to do?"
"About?"
"Miss Fio," he said.
"What about her?" I asked, not understanding what there could possibly be to do. Death was a certainty in my world, so it shouldn't have affected me as badly as it now did, leaving me only half aware of my surroundings and fully aware of the numbness taking over when it had no right to even exist, as she had never known I did.
"Should we look for her?"
"If she's in the ocean—"
"Boss, you—" He turned quiet, but I heard the underlying insult he’d nearly thrown my way.
"Baynay! Baynay, please!" pleaded the female voice in the background and the frantic tone snapped me out of the numbness, the stillness I’d been stuck in when I had thought she’d ended herself before I ever had a chance at seeing those eyes up close, or to hear the head-throwing laughter that had caught my attention so swiftly. I was all over the place in the damn near shortest time possible.
"I'm coming."
My mind raced with scenarios as the elevator moved far too slow, as the crowd didn't move out of the way fast enough while I ran through the club, being touched by people unable to step aside in the packed place.
Not until I shoved open the door, getting greeted by chilly night air, did my mind turn into the ordered and calculating muscle it was as I tried to figure out where she had gone — without shoes or purse while leaving the friend she had appeared damn near chained to a few moments ago.
Baynard stood up ahead by the edge between the beach and the sidewalk, with Miss Silvano clinging to his waist, obviously too drunk to hold herself up. Someone should teach these women how to fucking drink responsibly, I thought while my own body felt slightly too warm and sluggish with all the whiskey floating through my veins.
I had been careless, too, but I wasn’t at risk in the same manner as them.
"Boss," he greeted as I reached them both.
"Where?" He pointed toward the ocean. I moved over, my eyes glued to the sand, but among the tracks of thousands of people who traversed the beach daily, it was impossible to see if anything had happened. I looked toward the black water foaming at the beach with its ever-present waves. No sign of her. No lighthouse beacon called for me.
"It's all your fault," Miss Silvano blubbered when I came back.
"Whose?" Baynard asked the snivelling woman.
"Your fault. It's your fault. She hadn't…hadn't done this if it weren't for you!"
"For who?" I asked while grabbing her upper arm, spinning her around to face my stone-cold eyes.
"YOU!" she screamed and launched herself at me, but I grabbed her wrists easily and held her straight up, only allowing her toes to remain on the ground while her arms framed her head and her stomach graced my midsection.
"My fault?" I asked, barely audibly over the waves and wind.
"She would never have left if it wasn't…wasn't for you!" She hiccuped while she tried to kick me, missing completely. "You're Rawler Tavres," she hissed, mispronouncing my name with her drunken voice while she tried to glare at me.
"Rebecca," Baynard said to try and calm her, or possibly me — I couldn't tell which as blood roared in my ears.
"You blame me? I don't even know her fucking name," I growled as I pulled her so close our noses nearly touched while her full body got forced against my own. I was beyond furious. I had just decided to deny myself the only thing I had wanted for myself, that had somehow touched me within, in fucking years.
"She left ’cus you were gonna collect her!" The woman was stupidly drunk, shouting at a Boss and throwing around accusations that had most likely been insignificant to me had they not been about the glass goddess I, a mere fucking moment ago, had decided to leave the hell alone for the very reason I did not want to collect her, destroy her.
"Rebecca," Baynard began while we remained glaring at each other, "what are you talking about?" That made the woman lean her head back to look at the man behind.
"She said she's leaving, leaving on Monday. Leaving me and, and everything to, to get away from the mob," she panted, and her body grew heavier in my grasp around her wrists.
"Why?" Baynard asked as I glared at the woman's naturally sun-kissed throat. That she dared expose it to me told me she was either the stupidest fucking person in Radland, or she was utterly secure in her standing in society and therefore moronically believed herself to be beyond reach. Or just plain fucking drunk off her ass.
"Because of the debt."
My mind froze at those words. Fio had cursed her dad for debts a week ago, before she blacked out.
"What debt?" I growled, and she jerked her head back upright to glare at me. She only looked at me half dazed though, like a spoiled princess pouting for not getting what she wanted.
"Her father's gamblin’ debt. She's the col-lateral," she said, stumbling over her words as I watched her eyelids droop. I shook her arms. Baynard took a step closer, but I glared at him and he wisely stopped.
"Name."
"Huh? It’s Hall, of course," she slurred and I released her wrists, making her drop down on her generous ass against the ground with a slight thud and whine. Baynard stepped forward and helped her up, holding her close to keep her on her feet as the woman began to cry again while mumbling about Fio leaving her. I found it an utterly annoying sound.
I hauled out my phone. Tillie answered after three signals. "Debts under the name Hall?" I said as I looked toward the club with its bright purple sign, calling for all to come play.
"No," Tillie said a few seconds later. "There’s no Hall in our records, sir."
I disconnected the call and glared at the screen. It didn't make any sense. Nothing made any sense anymore.
Between the debilitating emptiness I had felt a few minutes ago, when I thought she’d done something truly horrific to herself, to the confusion of being accused of causing her pain, when I hadn't even known she existed up until a little over a week ago, and then to the ice which crept through my entire body when wondering where she had possibly gone — if she’d gone willingly or had there been a collection? Had she lied to her friend about leaving on Monday, or had she truly intended to stay until then? Who did her father owe a debt to, and why had I not asked Nero to check the damn Network for traces of her?
"There is no Hall in our records," I said as I glared at the black screen of the phone in my hand.
"But she said... She said we went here ‘cus it’s enemy territory, to say fuck you to our fathers," Miss Silvano blubbered while swinging her hands around in an uncoordinated fashion that seriously ticked me off.
"In secret, nobody was supposed to know. But you knew me right off,” she continued and began to hug herself while looking up at Baynard, whose arm still rested around her shoulders.
"It's my job," he replied as I watched the two look at each other, something unspoken between them I had no time, or wish, to decipher.
"But you didn't know her?" He shook his head at her question. "But her father said the mob. To stay away from the mob, to not get caught. She wasn’t supposed to, to get caught by the mob. She was…payment," she hiccupped and slurred while my vision narrowed and my blood stilled further by each word.
Baynard looked up at me the second I looked at him. "Boss," he said in a dark hum.
I nodded. "The Vargas." Fuck.
11
FIORA
Everything ached, throbbed. A constant pulsing that seemed to never let up. I was trapped in some sluggish darkness. It held me down and under while I struggled to drag myself toward the surface. My eyelids were too heavy, I couldn't will them to open no matter how I tried.
I lay perfectly still on my side, unable to turn despite the pain in my hip and shoulder from the weight of my own body. A tiny, useless groan escaped through my dry lips. The smell of piss, vomit, and dankness infiltrated my nose, making me want to gag.
"Lay still," a woman whispered right by my ear. My heart sped up and the sluggishness seemed to lessen as my pulse began to race.
"It'll take a moment," the woman continued, "then it'll get better."
Better? I didn't understand but my body told me I had no choice but to heed her advice. I slowed my breathing as best I could from the ragged state it had been in and tried not to freak out while my body refused to obey.
"They give you a heavy dose the first time. It makes you weak. Then it's just small ones to keep you too sluggish to do anything..." Her voice was soft but subdued, so quiet yet not a whisper. It reminded me a little of Baynard's humming. Shit, Becca! No, no she hadn't been there...
My thoughts felt wrong, the voice that was my own came too slow — being confused and disoriented even within my own head. It was disconnected from the rest of my body and almost floated in nothingness, just a heavy mass of something fuzzy keeping me tied down with invisible ropes.
"Try to sleep," the woman said, and I half expected her to stroke my cheek, but all I heard was a strange rattling. It disappeared as fast as it came.
"N-no," I managed to pant out while I wished with every ounce of strength to open my eyes.
"You're not going anywhere, if you're lucky." She whispered that last part. The hair at the nape of my neck stood at attention, a chilling trail of goosebumps crawled along my spine. I was going everywhere though... A silent tear slid over the bridge of my nose and dripped off as I sank in on myself, the weight of the mass of fuzzy nothingness too heavy for me to carry.
I drifted off. It felt so easy to allow it to take over. My walls were nowhere to be found while my mind flashed with memories of all the things I never wished to think of. But, as it all slipped away, a sensation lingered at my lower back of something strong and steady. Muffled words I couldn't make out were spoken in a deep vibration at the back of my mind while the eerie sensation of icy needles along my bare skin from when white and purple lights flashed along it cradled me, speeding my breathing up until a choked sigh slipped from between my lips.
***
I groaned and turned. Something rough scraped against my bare shoulder and I winced. I sat up and looked at my shoulder, only to find a giant bluish bruise along with a few red marks from the rough concrete surface. What the— I swivelled my head, dizzying myself instantly as the motions of my body didn't match those of my mind.
"Still, calm yourself down," a woman said, and I turned my head toward the voice — far too slowly yet all too fast.
As I blinked away a slight haze my eyes met steel fencing and a dirty face housing empty blue eyes and slightly sallow skin. She could have been beautiful, had it not been for her ragged appearance and tattered clothes. She looked half-sick and half-exhausted.
"Where? What happened?" I asked as my eyes bounced all around the dingy room without windows and far too little light.
"You tell me," she said. "We all have a different story."
I gulped down a breath, feeling slightly alien in my own body that refused to do as my mind told it at the right speed, with the right motions. "I feel...strange," I said as I shook my head. My tousled hair flew all around my face.
"It's the drugs."
I stopped moving. "The...this is because of drugs?" I asked, but she tilted her head at me, and I realised my voice was barely audible. The words were just about too slurry to be understood.
I tried to take a deep breath, but nothing worked as I wished it to. My nearly numb tongue didn’t allow me to pronounce the words, like when you get your wisdom teeth removed and your mouth doesn’t work for hours.
"Drugs?" I asked as steadily as I could while I crawled over to the fence two steps away and leaned against it.
"Yes," the woman said as she inched closer with the sound of rattling accompanying her movements. I looked down along her body only to find her bruised leg chained. It looked painful with the red indents around the cuff slightly flecked by dry blood. I guessed that’s what it was in the dim light.
"They’ll drug you again, and again, and again… As long as you remain here, you'll be safe, though."
"Safe?" I wheezed with a scoff bordering on a whimper.
"Trust me, those that leave either never come back or they come back broken. You don't want that."
I want out. I was going to go everywhere, build a life of my own. I was leaving, I was leaving, I was leaving—
"Calm down, take deep breaths," she said as her finger graced my sore shoulder through the metal fence. I tried to calm down, tried to stop the errant hammering of my heart forcing my pulse to race and my vision to blur further.
"What's your name?" she asked, and I turned my head to look at her while my shoulders slumped, my long legs lay folded atop the cold flooring with a sticky shimmer to it.
"Fio," I whispered. "I'm Fio."
"Lena," she said as her finger stroked my shoulder, but the light pain as she graced my bruise and roughed-up skin was oddly grounding.
"Hi, Lena."
"Hi, Fio."
We were silent for a moment after that while I closed my eyes, still not able to grasp the uncomfortable sensation of being disconnected from myself so thoroughly.
It was nothing like being drunk. When drunk, I went numb and soft. This was something else entirely, and I fucking detested it. No matter how I tried to pull my shoulders up or keep my head up of its own accord rather than have it leaning against the uncomfortable fence behind, I couldn't manage it. Not because it was heavy, but because there was a blockage between my brain and my muscles.
"I've been here for nine days now, I think. It's hard to tell with the drugs and no daylight."
"Why?" I breathed out, hoping she'd understand.
"Money, I didn't fill my quota," Lena replied before she chuckled out a huff. "He gave me to Mr Krim, to be sold in whatever manner needed to get his money out of me. I'm not the first, but I never thought...I didn't think I'd be one of them."
"Them?"
"Why are you here?" she asked, avoiding my question.
"Debt," I said as I allowed my mind to drift. Every inch of me was sore and ached, but I had a suspicion there was far more pain to be felt if it weren't for the drugs slithering through my veins while spreading its poison, numbing me.
I mumbled some words about being collateral and had no idea if Lena heard me as my mind stumbled over itself. I listened to the faint hum of her voice as she talked right beside me without being able to discern the words she used. My mind was in a dreamlike state despite being awake.
I used every ounce of strength I had to remain conscious while my mind replayed memories of waking up without my mom, being signed away as collateral, losing my freedom to organ mushing arms and unwelcome hands travelling along my legs. I couldn't get it to stop, no matter how hard I tried to raise my walls and protect my heart from the pain and fear. Poison filled me, and not just in the form of drugs.
"L-Lena," I breathed and her fingers rubbed at my shoulder again. "Does it end?"
"No," she simply said. "It's in the water. And you'll be so thirsty you won't be able to resist..."
"Shit," I exhaled as I pushed my eyes open only to be met by the stark reality of being trapped, caged, and unable to pull myself together enough to get out.
"Look around you," Lena said and I glanced toward her, the blue in her eyes even duller in our closeness, before I slowly turned my head while the fence creaked behind me.
Lightbulbs hung from the ceiling, emitting a yellow glow which made the gloom appear thicker. But what caught my eye was the length of the hallway beyond my little cage. Row after row of cages stood lined along both walls with a cage-wide gap after every second one. Cage, cage, gap. Cage, cage, gap. Over and over.
My breath stuck in my throat. We weren't alone. There were women, men, and even children in the cages. Some were chained in the gaps, like Lena, while others were locked up alone or with someone else. Not a single cage sat empty, no chain unlocked.
My body jolted, and I scrambled toward the door of my cage with its rusty bars while scraping up my knees and palms further on the raw concrete. No, no, no.
I reached the bars and grabbed hold, pulling myself into them. "Oh my god," I breathed as my eyes slid over all the broken bodies, the fearful eyes, the dirty clothes and matted hair. "What is this place? Where have they taken us?!" I tried to scream but it came out choked and raw with no real semblance of words. My mouth was so dry, my tongue thick and unmoving while my lips tingled uncomfortably.
I gripped the bars harder, ignoring the pain in my open wounds. "Where are we?" I asked again while using nearly all my willpower to not turn frantic and spiral down into a pit of panic-laced despair at the sight, sounds, smells, and sensations filling me from every direction.
"What do you mean? We're still in Kaine Bay," Lena said, and the rattling of her chain made me turn my head with a snap that twisted me nearly too far around.
"What?" I breathed out.
"We're in Kaine Bay."
"No, this, this can't—"
"You're not part of the underground, are you?" Her words made my shoulders slump.
I only knew what I’d been able to discern from my dad's phone calls, his drunken ramblings, and Becca's eavesdropping on her dad. This place was nothing like anything I’d ever heard of.
"Are you?" I asked, dreading the reply.
"I worked the floor of the bar above us," Lena said, almost as if she talked about any regular job.
"What bar?"
"The Den," she said as she laid down on the cold floor, seemingly unphased. Her eyes told a different story.
I didn't understand, though. The Den had been built merely five or six years ago and it had been all the rage with those who had big money to spend — from politicians to judges, celebrities to music producers and CEOs — despite being in a worse part of Kaine Bay and definitely not looking up to scratch from the outside. I’d never gone in, though, so I didn’t know what it was like on the inside. What did it have to do with the underground?
"You should sleep while you can," Lena whispered while her eyes closed. "It's going to be a long time before you see anything but these walls hopefully." Her words made me want to crawl out of my skin, but all I could do was pull on the bars, only to make the cage groan in annoyance at my weak effort.
I leaned my forehead against the metal, pulling my legs up beneath me. I turned and hunched my stiff back as I hugged my knees and leaned with my side against the barrier separating me from the freedom I’d been reaching for not too long ago.
At least you weren't there. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you because of me, I thought while the feeling of being squished against Becca's soft body mixed and mingled with that out-of-reach sensation of something strong against my lower back. It was right there, flexing and stroking, yet it refused to step out of the darkness of drunkenly buried memories.
Whatever it was, it kept me company as I began to rock back and forth. Dark, muffled words about something godlike lingered with no logical reason behind them when I should have been wholly consumed by fear and desperation. The untouchable memory granted me something to try and decipher — granted me something to occupy my thoughts with as the darkness crept ever closer. The sensation at my back was comforting — secure — despite being unknown.
I dozed off for a moment I think, my body jerked against the fence by my back when loud footsteps thudded ever closer. My whole body turned rigid. I tried to make myself as small as possible while quietly inching toward the back of the cage where a rusty bucket stood.
The sound of crinkling plastic bottles, filled with liquid, thudding against the floor rang out with every other footstep of whoever moved closer. Lena didn't move beside me on the right. But, as I looked to my left, a lanky guy was huddled up in the corner toward my cage. He trembled, dressed in only a pair of boxers. His body was marked by long red stripes and dark blotches I honestly didn’t want to think further on.
"Here you go," said a snarky male voice, then came the bottle sound. I saw it bounce into the lanky guy's cage and he seemed to nearly fall over himself to get to the water. But the man who owned the voice grabbed his wrist with a pale hand and jerked him toward the bars separating them.
My eyes snapped to his face. The long scar from his jaw to his cheekbone chilled my bones. He had been the one to grab me after the trunk, the one who reeked of death. I wanted to vomit just thinking about the pain in my spin as he’d jerked me forward by my jaw back then.
"We'll have such fun times tonight, won't we?" he said, and I watched as the guy, barely eighteen years old, whimpered and shivered beneath those dreadfully malicious eyes. "Won't, we?" the man repeated and the guy nodded, subdued and broken.
I wanted to claw the man's eyes out at the same time as I wanted to run as far away as possible. He was terrifying.
The man's eyes found mine and sparked to life. I pressed myself into the back of the cage so harshly my sore back screamed in opposition, but my mind focused on the man who let go of the broken guy and moved toward my cage. He held out a water bottle for me, telling me I'd have to come and get it myself — meaning I'd have to reach through the bars.
I didn't move. My tense muscles were locked in place while I glared at him with every ounce of false courage I could muster. My insides, however, quivered like leaves in a raging storm set at pulling them free of the secure branch they grew from.
"Feisty little one, aren't you?"
I didn't reply to the snarky comment.
He twisted the bottle between his oddly bent fingers, but I didn't avert my eyes from his. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction, even if I wanted to hide. I wanted to disappear like cotton candy in water, never to be found again. But my insides snarled at the repression, my caged and blocked anger fuelled wish for violence — or vengeance — pushed at me with tenacity.
"Here," he said and placed the bottle just outside my cage. "You'll need it in a few hours." Why? What happens in a few hours? He smirked. My eyes had naturally widened at the underlying threat.
"Drink up, Miss Feisty," he said as he slowly rose, giving me a full view of his entire body for the first time. He was pudgy, and big, like I’d noticed when he’d seemingly tried to rip my spine out, and something about his aura seemed to damn near draw the gloom to him — as if it didn't stand a chance against the death he emitted with the accompanying facial scar. My stomach turned when my eyes found his looking at me with a salacious hunger.
He left after another minute of silent staring. I didn't dare draw a deep breath or move for a long time. Not until the lanky guy beside me reached his finger through the cage and poked my upper arm.
"Are you drinking it?" he asked with a raspy voice, his empty bottle right beside him. I looked between his glazed eyes and the bottle standing beyond the cage.
"Keep your paws off her water," Lena snarled to the right of me.
Her fingers grabbed the fence. I hadn't even noticed she’d moved closer in my trembling state.
"Fio, you keep your water."
"I don't want—"
"You will. When there's been a day or two without, you'll go mad for it." Her voice was harsh but honest. The way she spoke of days without water made my throat close up as thirst already scratched inside my throat.
The alcohol left me with a lack of hydration and a thudding headache, or perhaps it came from the blows my head had taken — I couldn't be sure why anything hurt, throbbed, or ached when the possibilities were so many. Neither were good, but alcohol was the best hope I had.
I nodded at Lena and slowly unfurled myself. I crawled over to grab the bottle while the lanky man sighed beside me, crushing his empty one with an array of popping sounds. It set off a few cries and shrikes from cages further down the hallway.
I'll get out. Somehow, I'll get out. And when I do, I'm going to get to the other side of the fucking world.
I had no idea how I was going to get out, or even be able to get myself to the door at the end of the hallway when my body refused to obey and my mind swam between the terrors of the future and the unchangeable past. I was going to do it though. Somehow.