Rhys tried very hard for the next two weeks to not leave Feyre alone for longer than it took him to use the restroom or hold meetings. And even with his meetings, she was in his sight from the glass walls of the conference room. Not that he didn't trust her. He certainly already did. No, he wanted to make sure he was available if she had questions about her work or the company itself. It seemed Tamlin had never trusted her with any information about Spring Corporation despite having her as a personal assistant. That she didn't know even what the company did or how large it was, was astounding to Rhys. And it seemed letting her have that information was enough to gain a little of her trust that this was an actual job and not a scheme for him to get in her pants.
It had taken her three full days to even get comfortable enough to ask him anything at all. Another day after that to have a question pressing enough that she hadn't just waited for him to come and check on her like he tended to do every hour or so. Now he was used to the wonderfully unnerving sensation of feeling her eyes boring into him while he sat at his desk until he looked up to see her in his open doorway waiting to be noticed. She never interrupted and he knew if he asked her to wait, she would go back to her desk and wait until he was no longer busy. It was a luxury most of his family didn't give him. They usually just bounded it, with a quick greeting to Feyre on their way through, sat in the chair across from his, and started talking. Only Azriel had the patience Feyre seemed to display.
But it happened early on the Friday morning of Feyre's second week that he found he needed to go see Azriel. His brother was a notoriously early man and Rhys was almost confident that he could get down to Azriel's office in the basement and then back up to the executive level of the fifty-second floor by the time Feyre would even arrive for work. Already he knew she was very punctual when it came to getting to work. She arrived at her desk at five minutes to 8AM every day. With only ten minutes he knew he was pushing his luck but it wouldn't hurt for her to be alone for a few minutes before the work day either, so he had gone.
When he arrived on the basement level, his eyes swept over the security guards in their black uniforms getting organized for the day. He knew Cassian was likely somewhere as well, issuing orders or inspecting his teams. He ran them like a general ran the military, and so far it had been effective.
Rhys walked past the monitor room where every security camera fed to and stopped short as he recognized both of his brothers were in there. Azriel, it seemed was fixing a monitor that wasn't displaying and Cassian… he was far too entranced in one of the monitors. When Rhys moved to look over his shoulder he saw the split screen display of the executive elevator and the camera that looked out on the lobby of the executive level. It encompassed the sitting area mostly, but also captured Feyre's desk at the very top of the screen. It did not show Rhys' office though he wouldn't have cared if it did.
"What are you doing?" Rhys asked.
"There's a bad connection in the wiring on this monitor," Azriel nodded to what he was working on. "I think I can fix it but I might need to replace the parts."
"An important camera?" Rhys asked. Technically they were all important but some more so than others. Some they could live without for the few days it took to get the proper replacement parts, while others he would pay the cost to get things hand delivered to his door within hours.
"Just the second-floor lobby. Nothing we need immediately," Azriel shrugged.
"And what are you doing?" Rhys turned to Cassian.
"Giving Feyre a proper initiation," he chuckled as he pointed to where Feyre was getting on the elevator.
Rhys frowned at the monitor. It wasn't that Feyre was skittish in the least. She was skeptical but certainly not skittish. He didn't believe for a moment that a prank would convince her to leave or scare her enough into quitting, but she was still in that fragile state of deciding if she liked her job or not. If she trusted them or not. Cassian's pranks usually tended to wear on trust very quickly and if Feyre did not have the same wicked sense of humor most of them had, it was likely she would not find Cassian's prank funny. Even if she did have a dark sense of humor, it was possible she would react badly. Cassian had once caught Amren on a bad day and had had her escorted to the tiny holding cell in his office on the charge of being scary. Rhys had spent the better part of a month placating Amren with gifts and by keeping the security guards that had touched her hidden from her sight. Rhys didn't have enough of a read on Feyre yet to know how she would handle anything Cassian threw at her.
"I want you to think very carefully, my dear brother, if pranking Feyre is worth your life," Rhys asked quietly. He saw Cassian go very still at the question and then turn to face him. "If she does not take it well and you destroy all of the hard work I've put in, I will personally end you."
"Oh, please," Cassian snorted. "It's a harmless prank. Everyone takes them well."
"Until they don't," Azriel reminded him. He gave up on the monitor he was fixing and came to watch the screen alongside Cassian and Rhys.
Rhys waited as he watched the elevator climb and saw Feyre sorting through her purse while she waited. There was nothing, literally nothing, he could do. Even if he called the elevator down, it would drop her off first and then come back for him. All he could do was watch to see what would unfold.
The doors of the elevator opened and Feyre stepped out. Through the very clear image on the monitor he could see her look straight back and frown ever so slightly before she walked to her desk and started to situate herself. Like every morning she removed her company issued cell phone front her purse, set it on the desk, and then locked her purse in the bottom left drawer of her desk. She turned on her computer and while it was booting up, she went to the coffee bar in the sitting area and started to make herself a cup of coffee.
The moment she neared the coffee bar, Cassian began to bounce like a giddy child. Thee was no doubt whatever he had done, it had been to the coffee or the coffee bar itself. Likely Cassian knew her routine already from watching the monitors. Likely it had been for the dual purpose of marking out Feyre's routine to note any discrepancies in the future but also to mark the perfect times and ways to prank her.
"Here we go," Cassian whispered. Feyre had knelt down to open the cabinet under the coffee bar, like she did every morning, to replace the coffee pod she had used and to fish out the powdered creamed and sugar she would put in her coffee. One second the screen was clear and Feyre was visible and the next something burst out of the coffee bar and Feyre was gone in a moving black cloud. The possibilities ran through Rhys' mind. Was it a smoke bomb? Charcoal powder? Some other dark substance he would need to offer to pay the dry cleaners to remove from her suit?
Slowly the cloud moved outwards and Rhys realized it wasn't a cloud at all but objects moving through the air, flapping through the air. He adjusted the monitor and he could clearly see one of the flapping objects was a bat. Oh Mother bless him, it was worse than smoke. There were what appeared to be hundreds of bats flying around the sitting area and Feyre was in the middle of it. What it one of them hurt her? Likely she would need rabies shots or to at least go to the hospital to be checked over. On top of her safety, there were hundreds of bats flying around the top floor of his building. There would be droppings to be dealt with and someone would have to help catch and remove all of the bats. And he had a meeting in an hour with some top executives from Dawn Medical about certain contracts.
"Look at how beautiful they are," Cassian breathed out. "My little babies."
"I'll kill you," Rhys murmured. "You are going to die today after you call Animal Control and clean every dropping from the floor and get it all done before my meeting in an hour."
"They are just toys, Rhys," Cassian rolled his eyes. "Relax. There won't be droppings and in about five minutes they will run out of charge and stop flying."
"Those are those new high-tech toys from Dawn Medical's technology counterpart," Azriel zoomed in and froze the screen on one of them. "Beautiful work if I do say so myself. They move and look like real bats."
Rhys looked closer at the bat too. It did look real, but of course it did. Dawn Medical's technology department, which was pretty much its own company, had started with working in biomechanics. They did all sorts of biomechanical parts for people. He had seen some amazing work in them replacing hands, feet, whole arms, and even eyes that worked just like the real thing, sometimes even better. The fact they were expanding into toys and other technologies meant they could fund themselves better through the public and show a different sort of creativity.
Then Rhys unfroze the screen and zoomed out to find Feyre had not moved. She was so perfectly still that Rhys double checked he had unfrozen the screen. But then she moved, slowly, to put her hand into the cupboard. She pulled her hand back and held one dark bat, half flapping as she turned it over. She stood, set it on her desk, and walked out of the sitting room to the conference room across the lobby without a glance back.
"You're going to go apologize to her and clean up every little toy out of the sitting room," Rhys told Cassian. "I want it done five minutes ago."
"Alright, don't get your panties in a bunch. I'm going," Cassian laughed as he walked out of the door.
"That was a little harsher than you normally are on him," Azriel commented as he went back to the monitor he was fixing.
Rhys knew Mor was more than aware he had been drawn to Feyre. That he was spending a little too much effort on her when he wouldn't have done as much for any other personal assistant. He knew Mor had probably not said anything to the others but it was likely clear to at least Azriel who watched everything with a keen eye.
"I don't want her to have any reason to hate it here. I want her to stay," Rhys admitted to Azriel.
"To be completely honest," he replied with a nod to the monitor. "I get the feeling she's not about to be scared away."
The monitor showed Feyre back at her desk, a smirk on her face as she clicked on her mouse. When Rhys looked to the other monitor, he saw Cassian furiously swiping his card. The doors closed but then they would open again as Feyre clicked on her mouse again.
"Well, look at that," Rhys murmured. Feyre was full on smiling as Cassian tried again and again. No, she certainly wasn't being scared away by Cassian, or at least not yet. There was a chance he would still need to placate her somehow but watching her get her revenge was enough to make it worth it.
"Are you going to go help him at all?" Azriel asked after a full minute.
"I'm going to give her another minute," Rhys replied. "I actually came down here to speak to you."
"Oh?" Azriel set his monitor back down.
"Rumor has it Tarquin has been making inquiries into the operations of Velaris Incorporated. I want to know why."
"I'll have the information for you as soon as possible," Azriel promised.
"Good, now I suppose I'd better save Cassian before he wrecked the elevator," Rhys waved and went to the elevator door that appeared to be malfunctioning with how much it was opening and closing. He waited until the doors were fully open before he slid in. He watched Cassian swipe his card once more and stole a moment to look up at the camera with a smirk and raised eyebrow.
"I don't know what's wrong," Cassian complained to him. "It worked for Feyre and you this morning. There's no reason it should have gotten broken between the levels."
"Maybe it's your ID card," Rhys deadpanned. "Here," he swiped his own card and held his breath as the doors closed. He pressed the button and the elevator started to move.
"I don't understand," Cassian whined. "It worked just fine last night!"
Rhys fought the urge to laugh in his brother's face. He didn't seem to have considered that Feyre controlled the elevator, though he knew his family were all well aware of Feyre having that ability. They had all approved of it before Azriel had programmed the whole thing for her. It was likely Cassian would remember when they got up to the executive level and saw Feyre at her computer, but until then watching Cassian turn his ID over and over to inspect it for damage was amusing enough.
The doors opened on what appeared to be a bat massacre on the executive level. The few bats still in the air were slowly dropping down to the floor. The ones on the floor were twitching with the last few seconds on their charges. Feyre was not at her desk at all, which was back exactly as it had been before she had returned to deny Cassian access to the elevator. Instead, Feyre was still in the conference room, setting out the folders Rhys had prepared for the meeting.
"I'll get these cleaned up," Cassian promised with a nod to the bats.
"Good morning," Feyre appeared at the conference room door. There was a bright spark in her eyes as she looked to Rhys. "Things got a little, batty, out here so I thought I'd start in here this morning. I'll get your coffee in a moment."
"Take your time, Feyre Darling," Rhys assured her. "Cassian is here to take care of the bat problem."
"And I'll get my ID reissued after I get it cleaned up," Cassian grumbled.
"Something is wrong with your ID?" Feyre asked, sounding simply curious though that spark in her eyes grew.
"It appears the elevator wouldn't let him up," Rhys explained with a wink. "When you're done setting those up, I'll show you how to lower the projector screen. I'll be using it for this meeting."
He watched Cassian clean while Feyre went back to work, and when she was ready he walked into the conference room and let the door close behind him.
"You handled that remarkably well," he told her as he showed her where the controls for the screen were.
"You did warn me," she reminded him. "And gave me the idea for revenge." She stopped a moment. "Should I have let him up after you got on the elevator?" She bit her lip. "I mean, now he thinks he needs a new ID."
"Not at all. Let him get a new one. It doesn't cost us more than a fraction of a mark to reissue them and Cassian has no idea at all that you've retaliated. He may even expect you to retaliate and now he'll be left waiting trying to figure out when you're going to do it," Rhys laughed. "Now this is how you turn on the projector for the screen."
After she finished learning all about the screen and projector, Feyre turned to Rhys. "Would it be just absolutely horrible if Cassian's ID just kept… malfunctioning at random?"
"Why whatever do you mean, Feyre Darling?" Rhys turned to see that spark back in her eye.
"I mean, perhaps he might need more than one new ID in the future," she clarified.
"Oh, you cruel, wicked woman. I think you'll fit right in here," Rhys chuckled and as he saw the smirk grow on Feyre's face he couldn't help but hope she would be as insanely happy to be there as he was to have her at that very moment.