Chapter One
Broken Glass and Bullshit
Briana
Everyone at The Gin Room treats me like I am made of glass.
Not cheap glass.Not the kind that shatters in an alley and gets swept into a dustpan while someone curses about cutting their hand.That would almost be better.Cheap glass breaks, bleeds someone, and gets thrown away.
No, they treat me like expensive glass.The kind kept behind locked cabinets.The kind people admire from a distance and never touch unless their hands are clean and their voices are soft.The kind everyone watches too closely because one wrong move might send it crashing to the floor.
I hate it.
I hate the careful smiles.
I hate the gentle voices.
I hate the way conversations snap to an end when I walk into a room, like everyone is hiding the sharp parts of the world from me as if I haven’t already seen them.As if I don’t still feel them in my sleep, in my skin, in the phantom ache at my throat where teeth once sank too deep.
The bruises are gone.The bite marks are gone.The nightmares aren’t.And to me, that seems like a cruel trade.
I stare at the ceiling above my bed and count the cracks in the old plaster.There are seven.Eight, if I count the tiny one above the window that branches like lightning.I have counted them every night since Aldron moved me into this apartment a couple of blocks from The Gin Room.
The apartment is beautiful.
I resent that too.
Polished wood floors.Soft gray walls.A bed big enough for someone who doesn’t wake up swinging at ghosts.A couch that swallows me whole if I let it.Fresh flowers on the kitchen counter because Ari says flowers are “emotionally supportive,” and a basket of snacks beside them because Korvin apparently believes trauma can be bullied into submission with protein bars.
I laughed when he handed them to me.Then I cried in the shower for twenty minutes.Healing is humiliating, and no one warns you about that part.
They tell you surviving is brave.They tell you that you are strong.They tell you the worst is over as if your body gets the message just because the door is open and the monsters are gone.
But my body is a stupid, stubborn thing.
It still remembers cold hands.Sharp teeth.The metallic stink of blood drying on my skin.It remembers being hungry, weak, and too tired to scream.It remembers the sound of my own pulse becoming dinner music for creatures who smiled while they hurt me.
So, no, I am not sleeping...Again.At 2:17 in the morning, I give up pretending and shove the blankets off my legs.
“Fuck this,” I whisper.
My voice sounds rough.Small.And I hate that too.
I pull on leggings, an oversized black sweater, and boots.My blonde hair is a mess around my face, tangled from hours of pretending to rest.In the mirror beside the door, I look almost normal.
Almost.
There are shadows beneath my eyes and a hollowness in my cheeks that was not there before.My mouth is pressed into a line I don’t recognize.My throat is bare, the skin smooth again, and somehow that makes me angrier than the bruises did.
At least the bruises told the truth.I touch two fingers to the side of my neck.Nothing.No marks.No proof.Just memory.
My stomach twists, and before I can think better of it, I grab my keys and leave the apartment.The hallway is dim and still.Most of the staff apartments are occupied by creatures that could rip me apart with little effort.Witches.Shifters.A half-fae dragon queen.A bear who looks like he could bench press a truck and probably has.The bar’s owner is an ancient vampire with more secrets than furniture.
And me?The human blood bag they dragged out of hell.
My fingers tighten around my keys until the metal bites into my palm.“Not anymore,” I murmur.
The elevator opens with a soft ding, and I flinch anyway.Anger follows immediately, hot and welcome.I step inside and press the ground-floor button harder than necessary.My reflection stares back from the polished metal doors.For a second, the shadows behind me move wrong.
