THE CONTROL: An Arranged Marriage Romance by Elena Monroe (ebook reader android .txt) 📕

We barely figured out how to be married, be friends, be us again, so throwing a baby in the mix was only going to create more scar tissue for both of us.

I made a mental note to get some clarity on her fertility status after Elias is dead.

Quietly I whispered to her, “I’m going back downstairs before he wakes up. You stay up here.” Pulling up my boxer briefs, now soaked, I kissed her forehead before I climbed out of the tub.

I wasn’t sure how I had just stepped out of heaven to already be feeling my fists clutching onto hell so tightly. Everything I pushed away came roaring back with a vengeance. Every mental image I told myself to not create formed right inside my head long enough to make me angry.

There was no seeing red, I wanted to see black. I wanted to be covered in what hurt Eve.

I didn’t even bother covering up to hide my scars; I wanted him to see just how unhinged I was. Enough to wear my scars like trophies for living with what I did. To show him pain isn’t an enemy but a good friend.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs I could hear the determination of the cuffs, metal on metal, against the drawer handle in the kitchen. I had secured his limp body to the drawer before I chased after Eve. I wasn’t done toying with him, and he knew it by the sounds of him failing to escape.

Standing over him, I looked down at his face: swollen, bloody, hard to discern features or even bone from wounds.

With my fists still balled up tightly, I kicked his leg, begging his attention from the repeat action of pulling on the cuffs to only end up opening the drawer. I couldn’t blame him, his eye was swollen shut, too much to see properly.

“That’s a dead end.” I watched him push himself into the island more like it could swallow him whole, away from me.

“How were my sloppy seconds? Pretty sure I engraved myself in her so everyone else would feel unbefitting.” Spitting out blood on the ground next to my shoes, I could tell he was trying to gloat.

My hand slapped against his face before I moved around the kitchen looking for the exact thing I had in mind. The weapon I saw Eve using that apparently is considered a kitchen tool. Finding the meat tenderizer in a drawer, I held it in my hand, adjusting to the weight of it before I struck it against Elias’s face.

He coughed until he spit out teeth when I squatted down to his level, holding his jaw in my grip and forcing him to look at me. “You really don’t know who I am, do you? It’s comical that you think I wasn’t the first to taint her innocence. We have too much history for it to not rape our souls. You? You were just a hard actualization of the pain from us being apart. So, I recommend shutting the fuck up, or I’ll cut your tongue out.”

He looked mangled and beat to a pulp as I uncuffed his wrists and dragged him behind me outside next to the pool. I could have tossed him in and watched him drown; there was no way he could hold himself up let alone swim in the deep end.

I never used the pool chairs and loungers for anything but a towel until today when I shoved him on one of the chairs and refastened the cuff to the metal armrest. Yanking the metal of the cuffs against his bruises, he winced in a way that brought me happiness that went straight to my soul.

Going back inside, I grabbed the duffle in the back of the downstairs’ closet holding everything I normally grabbed when it was time to save a new life, a new fake Eve.

This time I was really saving the right person.

Dropping the heavy bag to the ground by his feet, I dug out the duct tape and ripped off two pieces long enough with my teeth to hold both of his wrists in place, even the one still cuffed. I didn’t trust him enough to assume he couldn’t get out of them.

Glaring at him, pinning him in place, I broke off another piece of the tape off meant for his mouth as he stumbled over every pleading word. Every plea fell on deaf ears. I had heard them all before and the people responsible for my demons still died.

He wasn’t going anywhere and he wasn’t dying until I deemed it so.

I could feel another presence in the air when I looked over my shoulder at Eve holding her arms against her body, hugging herself, staring at him like she was facing her demons after all. She was wearing my shirt, falling at her thighs and the ends of her raven hair were still wet.

I was constantly trying to ruin her halo that I never realized a little kind of hell had been occupying her heart.

Walking over to her, I stood behind her with my hands squaring her hips and pushed her forward, whispering to her, “What did I tell you, Evey? You can be a butterfly, just because they’re beautiful doesn’t mean they can’t protect themselves.”

Nodding her head, I took the useless knife out of her hand that caught the sunlight. She had no problem being sharp with me but this is so sharp she has to accept it kills, not hurts.

Walking towards him, she removed the tape from his mouth slowly. “Why did you do this to me? You did this to me… You took…” She couldn’t find the right words to describe being this broken because of someone else. Closing the space between us, I stayed close, but she needed to hear