GLASS: A Standalone Novel Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  About GLASS

  Part One: Shards of GLASS

  Prologue

  The Beginning of it All

  Fall 2013

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two: Broken GLASS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part Three: Hearts of GLASS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Connect with the Author

  A Thank You Note from Arianne

  GLASS

  by

  ARIANNE RICHMONDE

  All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed, or translated, in printed or electronic format without permission. Please respect this author’s hard work and do not participate or encourage piracy of any kind. Purchase only authorized editions. Any unauthorized distribution, circulation or use of this text is a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Arianne Richmonde 2016

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © Arianne Richmonde, 2016. The right of Arianne Richmonde to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) 2000

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by: Hang Le

  About the Author

  Arianne Richmonde is an American writer and artist who was raised in Europe. She lives in France with her husband and coterie of animals. GLASS is based on much of her personal experience—she used to be an actress.

  As well as GLASS, she has written The Pearl Series, Beautiful Chaos, and the USA TODAY bestselling suspense story, Stolen Grace.

  If you like sales, giveaways and being the first to find out about the latest release CLICK HERE.

  For more information on the author visit her website:

  www.ariannerichmonde.com

  Click here to follow her on Amazon and browse a list of her books

  The Pearl series:

  The Pearl Trilogy bundle (the first three books in one e-box set)

  Pearl & Belle Pearl (books 4 and 5 in one e-box set)

  Shades of Pearl

  Shadows of Pearl

  Shimmers of Pearl

  Pearl

  Belle Pearl

  Beautiful Chaos

  Stolen Grace

  About GLASS

  This edition of GLASS is a standalone novel (based on the series Shards of Glass, Broken Glass, and Hearts of Glass). GLASS started out as a very short story I wrote in 2012, with an unexpected twist at the end. I received hundreds of emails and Facebook messages begging me to continue the story and make this into a book.

  Extra thanks to my special friends and team. In no particular order: Sam, Letty, Nelle, Cindy, Dee, Cheryl, Paula, Gloria, Kim, Lisa, Angie, Rachel, Sharon, Tracey, Tracy, Lauren, Marci, Noemi, Patty, Fanci, Siv, Bella, Lilah, Nade, Kathleen, Amanda, Wanda, Jackie, my special Angels, my fabulous Pearlettes, and all the readers and bloggers who have spread the word about my books and added me to your bookshelf.

  Part One

  Shards of GLASS

  PROLOGUE

  I’M ALONE IN THE DARK, locked up, with nobody to hear my cries. They’ve taken him from me. Nobody believes me. She is a liar, a thief, and a fraudster, and probably a murderess. She’ll kill him for sure.

  Not only does she want me out of the picture . . .

  She wants me dead.

  THE BEGINNING OF IT ALL.

  THE MINUTE I LAID eyes on him I knew he was dangerous. Why, I wasn’t sure, but I also sensed I needed him in some unfathomable way. I, just like everyone else in the company, was in awe of him.

  It’s a great thing when you know you’re going to see the person you’re crazy about, every single day of the week. Except Sundays – the day we had off. During rehearsals, that is. Once a show is up and running, though, you perform Sundays.

  Then there are the “dark” days: Mondays. Dark, because the theater is empty – no performances. Dark for me because I knew I wouldn’t see him.

  We were well into week three. Every day I was a bundle of nerves because I knew how lucky I was to have the job. It had been drummed into us at drama school that acting was a thankless career, that only a few lucky percent “make it” and to expect to be either unemployed or learn to love the second string to your bow, because that second string would become your lifeline – your bread and butter. And forget about being a movie or TV star, or even less likely, a Broadway success story – you’d be lucky to get a commercial, lucky to do regional theater. Lucky to get any job at all.

  I’m not sure why Daniel Glass picked me for the role. A friend of mine, who also went up for the part—way more beautiful than I consider myself—lost out to me. Her agent told her they said she was “too sophisticated” that they were looking for “somebody with simplicity yet with integral strength.” What the hell that meant, I wasn’t sure. Trying to get inside the minds of directors and producers is an enigma to me. All you can do is be yourself at the audition and hope for the best, hope your lucky number comes up. That you win the lottery.

  Because that is what being an actor is all about. Playing the lottery.

  In my mother’s day things were even tougher. There was no YouTube, no Internet. They had to send out their 8 x 10s in large manila envelopes via snail mail. Knowing that nine times out of ten, their expensive black and white photo with a résumé stapled to the back, would be thrown into some casting director’s waste paper basket. It cost her a fortune. Once, she told me, she got chased around the “casting couch”. Literally. A big time British director, famous for vigilante movies, called her in one day. She was over the moon with excitement. She finally had gotten her break, she thought. She was dating my dad at the time, a penniless guitarist back then. The director asked her to come to his “office” at his house. But he didn’t ask her to read a script, that day; he made her an offer, instead.

  “You can spend ninety-five percent of your time with your penniless guitarist, but the rest of the time I want you to accompany me to premieres, to play my girlfriend—be on my arm,” he told her.


  She laughed and asked him if he was kidding. Then she found herself running circles around the casting couch while he chased her. When he realized she was serious and it was a definite “no”, Mom told me that he turned aggressive and shoved her out of the front door, his gold medallion swinging on his hairy chest. As if the medallion had a life of its own. Shunned. Pride hurt.

  I wish my mother were here now to guide me, to give me a hug when I break down from the pressure of wanting to be perfect. Nobody understands that actors are the most insecure human beings alive. Even the stars, even those who are constantly working—even they suffer from the fear of being less than wonderful. Actors want to shine, we want to please people and, above all, we want to be loved.

  I wanted to please Daniel Glass.

  I would have done anything for him.

  And I did.

  FALL 2013.

  “YOU’RE LATE,” he says, as I try to slip surreptitiously through the swing doors of the theater, unnoticed.

  I pretend I don’t hear, and shuffle quietly into a seat at the back. All heads turn, though. All eyes are on me. I lay my satchel gently on the floor.

  “I said you’re late, Janie,” he shouts, his voice booming across the room.

  “I’m sorry, I got—”

  “Please leave.” His voice is still now, cold and deathly, but without anger.

  I titter awkwardly.

  “Out! I mean it. Out. If you have more urgent things to attend to than rehearsal, I think you’d better attend to them, don’t you?”

  “I just—”

  “I mean it, Janie.”

  I pick up my satchel and slither out of the room, feeling like a scolded puppy. Daniel hates lateness. He also hates noises that interrupt his train of thought. Or interruption itself. He can’t abide that, people chit-chatting in whispers when he’s talking. Even if they are discussing what he has just said. No, Daniel wants everyone’s undivided attention. Nobody dares avert their eyes. There are certain things he cannot tolerate. However, if you do play by all his rules he is charming. Sweet, even. But if you break a rule . . .

  Well, this is the first time it has happened. I’m the first person in the cast to have tested him.

  I linger patiently outside. I am the child in the corner. I can hear him talking to the others as I listen to my measured breathing. They are discussing scene two. He wants the character of Jack to wait two more beats before he says his line. Two more beats? Nobody is as precise as Daniel. Would the audience even notice two more beats? Now they’re discussing how long a beat actually is. Three seconds? Five? Daniel is telling Jim (who’s playing Jack) that he’ll feel it instinctively. But I wonder.

  Jim, like me, wants to please his director. Even through the thickness of the walls, through the door, I can feel the urgency in Jim’s body. He told me the other day that he has never respected a director so much in his life as Daniel, yet he has never worked with a director as young as Daniel, either. Daniel is only thirty. A rising star—the one with the Midas touch. All his productions, so far, have gone to Broadway and toured the major cities of the world. His actors win Tony awards. The pressure is on. We all want to be perfect.

  And I was late.

  They all begin to file out. Notes are over. Everybody will now spend tonight tossing and turning, questioning Daniel’s notes over in their minds.

  “Later, Janie,” Suzy says, skipping past me.

  “Later, Suze.”

  “Hey Janie, don’t take it personally,” Frank whispers, as he sidles around me with a grin on his face. Daniel praised him. Told him his kiss with Angela in scene one “spoke volumes”. Frank is beaming like the Cheshire Cat.

  “See you tomorrow, sweetheart,” Angela says, and she strokes me on the cheek. And then she adds in a soft voice, “Don’t worry, he’ll forgive you.”

  “See you,” I reply dejectedly.

  Daniel is still inside the theater. I can hear him shuffling papers. No iPad or tablet, he hates gadgets and only uses his cell in emergencies.

  He calls out to me. “Janie? Are you still there?”

  I slip through the door quietly.

  He isn’t looking at me but says, “Stop twiddling your hair, it shows how nervous you are.”

  How does he know I was twiddling my hair? I was, but how did he know? “I’m so sorry I was late.”

  “You need to get those habits under control,” he murmurs, “not good for you, as an actor, to have little traits like that, which can manifest themselves when you’re working, when you’re supposed to be in character. As an actor, you need to be aware of all your body movements, even the ones you think nobody notices.”

  He is still looking down at his notes. But then his gaze turns to me, and I feel my insides churn and fold; my heart misses a beat—I sense my shortness of breath. I steady myself against the still half-open door. I feel faint. His eyes are searing into me. Blue. What sort of blue? Prussian blue? They are intense, piercing, rimmed with dark lashes that make perfect sense with his almost black, ruffled hair. But his eyes tell a tale of infinitesimal sadness that gives him a trace of vulnerability. A lie, I think. Daniel is not vulnerable. He’s a pillar of strength. My heart is now pounding through my thin pink dress.

  “Come here, Janie, I want to talk to you.” He motions for me to sit in the chair opposite him, at the small round table, where he has just been giving notes to the others.

  I sit down, smoothing my silky dress over my bare knees. Why I chose this dress to wear today, I’m not sure. It’s a summer dress, not a Fall dress, but the clear blue sky outside had me fooled this morning. The lyrics to the song, “Autumn in New York” skitter through my mind. There is no place like New York in autumn. There is no place like New York, anywhere. I love this city.

  “You must be freezing in that skimpy outfit,” he scolds.

  “Not really,” I lie.

  “It’s showing through your bra, just how cold you are,” he says, his eyes roving to my pebbled nipples. “Sorry to sound personal, but you really should put on proper clothing. The last thing I need is you getting sick on us all.”

  My face flushes red, and I realize that I chose this thin little dress to look attractive for Daniel. He has noticed me. But in the wrong way.

  “Are you eating properly?”

  “Excuse me?” I ask. Who is he? My father?

  “You seem to look faint sometimes. You’re so slim, I wonder if you’re getting enough nutrition.”

  “I had a yogurt for lunch and an apple and—”

  “Thought so. Not eating enough. Actors need sleep, good food, and plenty of exercise. Stamina. Integral strength—it’s part of your job profile. We’re still only in rehearsals right now, Janie, but getting out on stage every night, plus matinees, is taxing on the body as well as the brain. You need to look after yourself. Your body is your tool, remember that.”

  “I go for long walks in Central Park,” I venture.

  “Not enough.” His eyes are looking me up and down, burning through my body, through my almost see-through dress. Can he see my panties? That they are damp? The way he looks at me has made a slick, moist pool gather between my legs. I’d fuck him on the table right here if he asked. But he doesn’t see me that way. He sees me as a child. I want to say, Spank me, then, for being naughty. I want to say, Take me across your knee and spank me for being late, for not eating properly, and for being lazy about exercise, but I answer, “I’ve joined that gym around the corner from the theater.”

  “Joining a gym means nothing unless you actually use it. How long ago since you left Juilliard?”

  “I graduated this summer.”

  “That’s right, you were one of their little stars.” The way he says this doesn’t sound like a compliment but a reproach. He raises a cool eyebrow. “So you’re even younger than you should be.”

  “For the role?” A freight train is now racing through my body. Jesus, he’s going to fire me! That’s why he wanted to talk. I feel my eyes well up.
<
br />   “So how old are you? Twenty-one?”

  My mouth is dry but I manage to croak out a “Yes.”

  “So young, so vulnerable, so f—”

  Daniel is biting his lower lip as his teeth are folded over in an F, but then he stops himself. Am I imagining things? Was he about to say, ‘so fuckable?’

  “So fearful,” he says with a gentle smile. “I’m not going to eat you, Janie. You have tears in your eyes, what’s up?”

  “Have you brought me here to fire me?”

  He laughs. His wide smile lights up his handsome face, his teeth flash white, his eyes crease with mirth. “Is that what you thought?”

  But I’m not smiling back. I’m still shivering with trepidation. I cross my legs. The dampness between them really might be showing through my dress. How embarrassing.

  “No, Janie. Of course I’m not going to fire you. I’m extremely happy with your work, as it happens.”

  I want to fling my arms around him. I want to straddle him, sit on his lap. I manage to curve up my lips a little.

  “You’re making leaps and bounds in rehearsal. You have just the right balance of vulnerability and rawness; it’s working beautifully. No, I want to ask you to come with me to the theater tonight. I’ve been given comps to a play I’d like you to see.”

  My stomach gives another lurch. Is Daniel Glass asking me on a date?

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” he asks.

  My fantasies are coming true! He wants to date me! “No,” I reply, and I notice his eyes flick down to my breasts. I feel myself tingle between my legs again.

  “Just asking, in case you wanted to bring him along. In fact, bring a girlfriend, if you want, or your mom.”

  “My mother’s—” I want to say ‘dead’, but I stop myself. “It’s okay, I don’t need to bring anyone else.” My heart has sunk like a defeated battle ship. He doesn’t see me in the date type of way at all.

  “I just want you to see Natasha Jürgen play this part. She brings so much vulnerability to her role, but at the end of the play she shows such strength . . . well, I won’t say more because I don’t want to spoil it for you, but it’s important for you, I think . . . for you to see this play.”