#yesterday in my city someone shot someone else in broad daylight at a park and the cops haven’t found him yet but they made a huge show of

[madigoround]

Truly and genuinely need to sell my house, buy a plot of land in the middle of fucking nowhere and go live apart from people because I seriously think some sort of sickness has infected people, most people are just acting so fucking cruel in the last few years and more and more lately with no regard for human decency or respect for human life. Something is truly fucking wrong with people nowadays and I need to get the fuck away from it

[janelizziemarykittylydia-blog]

Shattered Glass Smiles, Chapter 3

Finally (finally) got around to posting this!! Due to vacation drama and a house without wifi, updating was a little difficult, but I’m back now and I’ll (hopefully) be posting more regularly! :D

Thank so much to all notes & comments! You guys are all absolutely amazing! <3 <3 <3

Synopsis:  In which the year is 1959, Feyre is engaged to Senator Tamlin Greene, and Rhysand is the head of a notorious mafia dynasty called the Night Court.

AO3

CHAPTER 1, CHAPTER 2

-3-

“Bulls, Bullshit, and a Dog Named Bryaxis”

I said the words—I accept, sitting in my dressing room, staring at my mirror.

I didn’t know what I’d expected. My experience with Rhysand Black, however limited, should have taught me not to expect anything: Rhysand was an unpredictable maelstrom, a sparking electrical wire; a fistful of clouds holding thunder.

But after I sealed my fate in a thick manila envelope (I accept, I accept, I accept), Rhysand only replied, “Tomorrow. Metropolitan Museum of Art, front entrance, nine am.”

And hung up.

I rung again—give me more details, what the hell—but he didn’t pick up. Likely he knew it was me, and he wanted to preserve his air of mystique.

Fucking Rhysand and his fucking dramatics.

The night Tamlin hit me, I didn’t go back to bed with him. I’d forgiven, but not forgotten: a cut marred my cheek from where it had hit the doorframe, and while last night might have been the first time Tam struck me, it was not the first time he left bruises on my body.

Tamlin loved me, and his temper was a volatile thing, not so much a product of true malignant intent as a short gunpowder fuse. But it was hard, sometimes, to remember his gentleness when all I could see when I looked in the mirror was a forget-me-not bruise on my cheekbone and a bandage near my eye.

I opened the window above my vanity and lit a cigarette, chain-smoking until dawn.

At seven in the morning, I came back to bed smelling like an ashtray. If Tamlin noticed, he didn’t say a word.

He kissed me goodbye as he left for work, whispering I love you in my ear.

“I love you, too,” I said, and wondered why the words, too, tasted of ash.

***

I’d never been to the Met. I grew up in Boston, and I’d been to museums there, though rarely, but despite my months in New York City, I had never traveled the handful of blocks to the museum.

Back in April, I would have been thrilled. Now I hoped to God Rhysand didn’t ask me to go inside, where portraits would hiss accusations.

I sat on the front steps in the pouring rain, inhaling exhaust and cigarette smoke, as an elegant Aston Martin pulled up to the curb.  Someone opened the door, and Rhysand stepped out, wearing a Cheshire-Cat grin.

It faded when he caught sight of me, in my too-loose clothes and my ratty hair, bandaged and bruised.

“You don’t have an umbrella,” he said. “You’re soaked.”

“Afraid I’m going to ruin your upholstery?”

Rhysand smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. His gaze fastened on my Band-Aid. “Get into a bar brawl last night?”

“Tumbled down the stairs.”

“And hit your cheek? Must have been some fall.”

“It was.” I turned my attention toward the road. “Where are we going? I’ assume we’re not actually entering the Met, unless you’re planning to case the place.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not going to steal a Rembrandt, though it’s something to shelve for a later date.”

“Christ,” I muttered.

Rhysand popped open the passenger door, sliding into the driver’s seat. “Get in.”

Part of me wanted to protest—wanted to fight back, and kick, and scream—but that part of me fell quiet, muted by the residual pain in my chest and cheek and chin.

I got in the car.

Rhysand gave me a weighted look as merged the car into the center lane, his lips twisting downward.

A pack of cigarettes sat on the center console, grabbing my attention. “Can I have one?” I asked, reaching for the box.

“No smoking in my car.”

“Why do you have a pack of Lucky Strikes in here, then?”

“Those aren’t my cigarettes; they’re my friend’s,” Rhysand clarified, taking a right. “Nobody smokes in my car.”

But my attention had snagged on another detail. “You have friends?”

“Ha, ha,” he said dryly. “Your witticisms never fail to charm me. But yes, I do have friends, and I don’t smoke.”

“Bullshit. Everybody smokes.”

“Not me.” A cabbie slammed their fist on the horn, and Rhysand flipped them off.

“Why not?” I knew I should be pressing the real question—where the hell were we going—but I couldn’t remember the last time I had met someone that abstained from nicotine, aside from the prissy girls in the ladies’ social groups Tamlin constantly egged me to join.

“Don’t like the smell,” he said, turning down an avenue lined with elegant brownstones and sodden pedestrians.

“I repeat: bullshit.”

He shrugged. “I’ll tell you the whole story sometime, if you want to hear it,” he said. “But not right now.”

“Next time?” I stared at him. “This is a one-shot deal.”

“Is it?” He slammed on the brakes as a little girl crossed the sidewalk, hop-scotching through pothole puddles, splashing her skirt. Her mother hurried after her, wet and scowling. “A heist takes more than one meeting to accomplish, you know.”

“A heist?”

“A coup. A caper, pilferage, act of flawless larceny.”

“Thanks for the Thesaurus. I was more concerned with the fact that I’m involved with a heist.”

“What did you think you’d be doing? You’re working with me, after all.”

“Candyass.”

“Such vulgar slang,” he mused, sounding completely unbothered. “What will prospective voters think?”

“Fuck you.”

“If that’s a proposition—”

My lips grew white. “It was not,” I said. “I would rather fuck a wall.”

“Sounds anatomically improbable,” Rhysand said, “but be my guest.”

I counted to ten silently in my head. When that didn’t work, I tried counting to fifty.

“I have a question,” Rhysand said, somewhere around thirty-three. “Yesterday, you refused to go anywhere that wasn’t a public setting in broad daylight with me. This morning, you didn’t care if you got into my car. Why?”

“We made a deal.”

“As you so eloquently put,” he drawled, “bullshit. We had a deal yesterday, too.”

“I still have a gun in  my pocket,” I reminded him. “And I still know how to shoot.”

“Again, you had a gun yesterday, too.”

“Enough.”

“I’m just—”

“Maybe,” I interrupted, “I was tired of not being able to trust anyone, alright?”

Rhysand’s mouth closed with an almost-audible snap, momentarily startled into silence.

I didn’t say anything else, jaw working.

“You can trust me, Feyre,” Rhys said at last, voice oddly hoarse. “I may be an ass, but we made a deal. I won’t hurt you. I swear on my sister’s grave.”

And it was that—that last bit—that snagged.

Sister’s grave.

I didn’t know Rhys had a sister.

Then again, I didn’t know much about Rhysand at all.

Biologically, Rhysand had to have a family, but it was difficult to picture this broken boy with the bloodstained hands with a mother that read him bedtime stories at night. Then again, more often than not mothers were not around to read bedtime stories. My own mother had been too busy hosting dinner parties and downing whole bottles of champagne, taking spoonfuls ladanum at night that had less to do with aching joints and more to do with a love for opiates that drowned away the world.

I didn’t reply. I just—looked at him. Sister’s grave, indeed.

“I’m taking you to a shooting range,” Rhys said, hands flexing on the wheel, easing away from treacherous waters that stung when pressed to our scars. “I’d like to know how accurate that aim of yours really is.”

***

The shooting range, as it turned out, was a private structure on the outskirts of an estate in upstate New York—an estate that belonged to Rhysand.

We drove through the Bronx, past crumbling tenements and clouds of sewage that hit too close to home, and into Westchester, driving north for about two hours.

Neither of us spoke. Raindrops slipped down the window, tires squealed on asphalt; chipmunks darted across the sidewalk.

Rhysand wound through a series of turns that led us onto smaller and smaller lanes, until he eased onto a tiny one-lane dirt road, following hand-painted signs. Stark, leafless maple trees wove a net above us, casting dappled shadows onto the seats.

The rain had stopped. The world was quiet.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“One of my homes,” he answered.

“Homes. Plural.”

“My line of work,” he said wryly, “is very lucrative.”

I rose a brow. “Crime does pay, apparently.”

“Not for petty criminals,” he allowed, “but for me, yes. Quite a bit.”

He turned a left, and I opened my mouth, about to speak, but found myself suddenly incapable of words.

I had never thought about Rhysand Black’s house before, but the connotation brought images of blood-stained doors and Anne Boleyn’s head on a pike to mind.

But this—

This was—

The trees parted, revealing a quaint sage-green farmhouse, shutters painted black, flower boxes overflowing with wilted yellow mums. A weathervane swayed on the shingled roof, and in the rolling hills stretching out behind the farmhouse, I caught glimpses of a white barn, chicken coop, and goat pen.

A dog sprawled out on the deck. It lifted its head when Rhysand yanked the key out of the ignition, putting the car into park.

“This can’t be your house,” I said.

“No?” He stepped out of the car, and the dog jumped to its feet, bolting over. It was enormous, big enough for a small child to ride, and shaggy. Rhysand grinned, kneeling on the ground to pet the beast.

“This is—domestic,” I sputtered. “You’re the head of a goddamned crime syndicate. This can’t be your house.”

“I don’t typically take business here,” he said dryly, kissing the top of the dog’s head.

I stared, quite certain I was hallucinating. Rhysand Black did not kiss dogs. He just—didn’t. That was something normal people did. Normal people, with souls and fully-functioning hearts.

“Why the hell am I here, then? Aren’t I business?”

Rhysand reached into his pocket, pulling out a dog treat (did he just walk around with little biscuits in his pocket? What kind of alternate universe had I stumbled into?). “Sit,” he told the dog solemnly.

The dog sat.

“Roll over.”

The dog rolled over.

“Good boy,” he crooned, allowing the dog to snap up the treat, woofing joyfully, tail batting Rhysand’s legs.

“Rhysand,” I said in a warning tone.

“Feyre,” he mimicked. He rubbed the dog’s belly.

“Where are we?”

“I told you,” he said. A gust of wind swept over the grass, tossing up the collar of his peacoat and tousling his hair, black strands falling over his forehead. His skin had gotten darker since I’d seen him last May, no longer an unnatural alabaster, but a deep, rich caramel. “We’re at one of my homes.”

I just looked at him, uncomprehending.

He got to his feet, brushing off trampled blades of grass. “This is where I grew up,” he said. “Before my father started my training.”

I blinked. For such a simple statement, my mind spun with the influx of information—Rhys had grown up in a place like this, a boy once, perhaps with a sister. And his father had trained him. For what? His current business?

Surely not.

Unless…

“Bryaxis, heel,” Rhysand said, whistling. The dog—Bryaxis—trotted to his feet, tongue lolling. I was beginning to reconsider my initial observation; I wasn’t even sure if the beast at Rhysand’s side could be qualified as a dog. It came up to Rhysand’s waist—Rhysand, who was almost six-foot-four, towering well over Tamlin. The creature was a blob of dark fur and claws and fangs, a jaw strong enough to bite a person’s hand right off.

“What the fuck kind of breed is that?” I said, staring at the monster.

“I don’t know,” Rhysand said, completely unbothered. “Bryaxis came from a litter of my father’s bitch. I don’t know what her heritage was, and I don’t remember the sire.”

I narrowed my eyes at Bryaxis. He narrowed his eyes back at me.

I’d never had a pet before, barring the stray cat with rabies that wandered around our neighborhood in Boston, coined Scrunch by my sister Elain. Still, I knelt on the ground, holding my hand out. Waiting.

Something like surprise flickered across Rhysand’s features. Bryaxis trotted over, sniffing cautiously, and I pet the top of his head. He rubbed up against me, fur surprisingly soft.

“He doesn’t usually like strangers,” Rhysand said, looking at me oddly.

“Of course he doesn’t,” I said. “I can only imagine what kind of riffraff you subject him to.”

He laughed, the sound sudden and startled, and I smiled—genuinely smiled, even if just a little, more at Bryaxis than anyone else, for the first time in… God, in weeks.

The smile pulled at the cut on the corner of my eye, and I winced, pressing my fingers to my forehead.

Rhysand stopped laughing.

I had the sudden, irrational urge to cry, and I didn’t know why.

“Can I see?” he said.

“What?”

“Your cheek,” he said. “Beneath the bandage.”

I rose my hand to the scabby skin, uncomprehending. “See it? Why?”

“To make sure you’re all right,” he said. “If it hurts when you smile, whatever it is, it should probably be cleaned.” He frowned. “You did clean it, right?”

This time I was the one that laughed, a horrible, rusty sound. “I cleaned it,” I said. “Put some whiskey on a cloth and slapped it on the cut. Don’t worry.” I got to my feet, pointedly ignoring how Rhysand stiffened. “Where’s this shooting range? Point the way.”

He didn’t move. “Feyre.”

“Point the way,” I repeated, this time with vitriol. “Let’s go.”

Rhysand looked like he might say something else, but at the last minute, he shut his mouth and nodded. Still, something lurked in his eyes—something raw.

I didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if he cared.

“Lead the way,” I said again, gesturing before me.

He did.

***

The hills around the farmhouse might have appeared smooth and unobtrusive, but they were not. I struggled in the squelching mud, heels sinking into the grass.

“Motherfucker,” I said, not for the first time.

“Language,” said Rhysand mildly, also not for the first time.

“Climb it, Tarzan,” I retorted, shoving ahead.

I reached the top of another hill, Bryaxis before us, sniffing the ground and occasionally wrenching a poor vole or mouse out of the thicket in his jaws, and stopped in my tracks.

“Here we are,” Rhysand said, barely an inch from my elbow.

I would have moved, but it was cold, and he was warm, and my coat was too thin.

The shooting range sprawled out before us, unofficial and makeshift but still clearly functional. A row of targets stretched out for about twenty feet, each pocketed with holes. A locked shed was shoved off to the side, presumably containing an array of weaponry.

Rhysand leaned against the trunk of a stark, massive ash tree, arms crossed. “After you, Feyre darling.”

“You know,” I said, pulling out my pistol, “I’ve been wondering. Why do you care about my aim’s accuracy?”

“For my business purposes, of course.”

“Right,” I said. “So I’ll need to know how to shoot for the job I’m assisting you with.”

“Correct.”

I clicked off the safety. “I will not shoot a living being, Rhysand.”

“If you’re as good of a shot as you claim, you should be able to aim for the kneecaps,” he pointed out.

I lifted my hands, steadying my stance, and shot.

A perfect hole appeared in the middle of the target. Rhysand straightened a bit.

“You saw me,” I said quietly. “On the floor of that cellar.” An ear-splitting pop, and another circle appeared in the target, no more than a centimeter from the first. “You watched that bitch give me the knife, and”—pop—“you watched their blood pool on the floor.”

Pop, pop, pop.

Funny, how it always came back to me here, fingers wrapped around a gun that I detested but carried out of  necessity and the scars that, unlike the cut on my cheek, would never fade.

Memories flickered in my peripheral vision, me at—

Fourteen, slapping cash down on the counter and getting a little pea-shooter in return,

Fourteen and a half, shooting Coca-Cola bottles in the backyard as Nesta watched from the porch, smoking and silent, Elain covering her ears inside,

Fifteen, when a man shoved me up against the wall on the way home from the club, and I pressed the gun to his belly and told him to go fuck himself,

Sixteen, when I hit all the Coca-Cola bottles on my first shot,

Nineteen, when Tamlin took me away, and I put the gun inside a box and threw away the key,

Nineteen and a half, when they grabbed me off the street,

Nineteen and a half again, when I smashed open the box that held my gun and pressed it to my chest, sobbing and weeping and damaged irreparably.

Pop, pop, pop.

I lowered my gun, chest heaving.

Holes peppered the target, each within the bull’s-eye.

“No more,” I said. “No more blood.”

Rhysand didn’t even look surprised. He flicked his gaze between me and the target, as if he’d expected all along that I could walk my talk, that I was made of sterner stuff than Tamlin or Lucien thought.

Slowly, he nodded.

“And,” I added, “I have more bullets left in here, so don’t even think about trying anything.”

“I thought we moved past that.”

I put on the safety and slid it into my pocket. “You can never be too careful.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is paranoia, Feyre darling.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“What? ‘Feyre’?”

“No.” I gritted my teeth. “Darling.”

Rhys smiled at me. “Why? Is it Tamlin’s pet name for you?” His tone turned mocking, and I bristled.

“No. Tam and I don’t have pet names.”

“How disappointing.”

I scowled at him. “Why do you even care about Tamlin, anyway? It’s not as if our relationship has anything to do with you.”

In a blink, the carefree, joking Rhysand vanished, replaced by a creature even more feral than Bryaxis curled up by his feet. “Doesn’t have anything to do with me,” he repeated, so lethal that I flinched.

“Yes,” I said. “You don’t care.”

Rhysand’s lip curled. “Don’t tell me what I do or do not care about, Feyre. As it just so happens, I don’t particularly enjoy finding you soaking wet on the steps of the Met, pale and bruised to hell.”

“Tamlin has nothing to do with my bruises.”

“Lovely little liar.”

Something inside of me broke in half, cracking with the echo of a broken twig. “I am not your pet project, Rhysand,” I snapped. “I don’t need your pity, and I sure as hell don’t want whatever your twisted definition of care is. I’ll work with you, because I made a deal, but my personal life is none of your concern.”

Rhysand’s face had gone blank, wiped clean. “Fine.”

“Fine.” I stomped back up the hill. “Let’s get out of here. I want to go home.”

He didn’t say a word, but started up the hill after me, Bryaxis loping alongside him. This time, the dog stayed far from my feet.

***

While we made our way through the hills, I paused atop a grassy knoll, Rhysand a few yards in front of me.

Far off, buried in heather and knee-high grass, I caught a hint of carved marble—a gravestone, nestled between the hills, with an angel mounted on top. All I could see from here were the wings.

I swear on my sister’s grave.

Perhaps in a different world Rhysand Black and I might have found common ground, shared in heartbreak and sisters that were no longer in our lives—either through death, or other reasons. Perhaps in a different world I would not know how to shoot, and I could close my eyes at night without hearing the woman scream.

But that was not this world, and I, at least, had too many sharp edges, broken and battered as I was. Anyone that touched me drew blood on their own skin, spilling a trail of poppies through the snow.

***

The second Rhysand and I reached the farmhouse, he started cursing, fluently and expansively.

I stepped around him, alarmed. Three cars were parked in what passed for a driveway: a low-slung cherry-red Cadillac convertible, a glossy black Ferrari, and a nondescript blue BMW.

“What the—” I started, just as a piercing shriek sliced through the air.

“CASSIAN ILLYRIA! GET BACK HERE!”

Rhysand lunged, slamming me to the ground. I had only a second to absorb the scent of jasmine and citrus and the warmth of his body, swearing, as—

As a man came bolting through the drive of the farmhouse, clinging onto the horns of a bucking, braying bull, screeching at the top of his lungs. Rhysand had pinned me down to avoid being flattened.

A few other people ran after the man—a blonde-haired woman that looked vaguely familiar and another nutmeg-skinned man—a petite woman sauntering behind them, laughing with a slender cigarette dangling from an ivory holder wedged between her fingers.

“HELP ME!” the man on the bull hollered.

The petite woman laughed even harder.

“What the hell,” I said, wheezing under Rhysand’s weight, just as the bull flung the man off its ass, directly into a dense thicket of trees.

The cow bolted off, and the thicket rustled, the man rising from the grass, leaves and twigs in his hair. He vomited into the bushes as the blonde-haired woman and nutmeg-skinned man hurried after him, shouting expletives.

“I’m fine,” the man said, before promptly pausing to vomit again.

Rhysand pushed himself off me, face in his hands.

“Feyre,” he said, voice muffled, “meet my family.”

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