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

we knew only as high-ranking members of the Clave. Confidantes. Holy men. People we should trust.

The lesson we all failed to learn was how much we were supposed to trust each other—only. No one else was a horseman, no one else had our names, no one else had this much power.

Pulling up to a main building with a helipad on top complete with the Clave’s helicopter, I came to stop trying to assess where this was going. I sat back waiting for directives or guidance when Bowen stood there paler than normal with his hands in his pockets.

Oh shit, he had feelings.

That realization hit me like a ton of bricks. I thought Bowen was a living dead boy which was a waste of life when his brother could have lived.

Standing up, I heard the same whispering that jerked my head to the side looking for someone to be standing just behind me when there was no one in sight except us. Tuning the guys out, I focused on the whispers, trying to hear them and make out the words.

I’ve missed you, Jason.

No one calls me Jason… not since I became a person far more dangerous for an average name. I couldn’t even remember the last time someone called me Jason until I felt my chest get so tight, I braced my hands on the top of the cart trying to catch my breath.

The words echoed in my head over and over until they sounded like screams when my brain finally remembered why I knew this place.

I had been here before.

 

I couldn’t tell you why or when or even how, but I had been here before. Enough to know this island can fuck up your whole life without laying a finger on you.

“I’ve been here before…” I muttered to myself while trying to heave in gulps of fresh air and my knuckles turned white when I felt Khaos standing next to me out of nowhere.

“You gotta relax. This place is fucked up and it’ll all make sense soon. We’re doing this to heal you too.”

Heal me too? What the fuck was wrong with me besides a possible tumor and a handful of medication daily?

I grabbed Khaos by the shirt and brought him so close I could feel him relax against me with his sex appeal turned on high. Dropping my hand from him, I let my head drop again. “I don’t need you or anyone else to fix me. Abigail fixed me.”

Khaos’s hand patted my back. “We all have trauma to fix. You’re just one of us now.”

One of them? No, I wasn’t one of them. I was much worse.

Abigail fixed me, shined a light on the monsters hiding under the bed and accepted me in ways I didn’t know someone ever would.

Bowen was dripping in life I’ve never seen him wear, feelings blemishing his normally smooth features when he announced, “We want to do this or not?”

Turning around, facing the overgrown trees, I sucked in a deep breath trying to hold myself together while my brain pieced together why I remembered this place. Finally steadying my breathing, I turned around and trailed behind the guys.

There were more armed men in all black with black ski masks on and AK-17’s at the ready to make us bloody dust instead of people. Everything about this place felt wrong, maybe it was just the downers working against me and the fucking monster in my head making me hear voices.

My hand still shook when the guys parted like the red sea and let us by like we were royalty. I didn’t want to be anything connected to this place let alone heirs to a throne built on robbing people of their innocence.

We were all broken but we were born into it—not forced.

The space was vast, full of places to sit, all stark white to draw you in deeper because you don’t see the darkness lurking around the corner. It was so quiet you could hear breathing from the guys if you listened hard enough.

Anything to drown out the voices.

Bowen waved us along like he knew exactly where he was going down the long hallway lined with closed doors and more silence. Gripping my gun tighter, I followed along like I always have, never making too many waves besides renaming myself.

The voices got louder, speaking above the listening I was doing when I got lost down a smaller hallway branching off the one they were still on. I was giving into the voices and letting them tag my hand to drag me to the truth.

Touching the door handle, I pushed down and let the door open enough for me to see the inside before I was brave enough to set foot past the threshold.

The room was bare but perfectly kept and when I stepped inside there was pressure in my chest that almost had me folding over. Frantically looking for a trash or bathroom, I hurled into a waste basket next to the bed. All the memories forced their way up my throat with me on one knee. I was in a place that I had clearly forced myself to forget when all that was left in my foresight was Braeden, my best friend who died.

Standing up with all my memories somehow flooding back to me, I realized I was in his room when I found my eyes stuck to a photo frame of us younger sitting there untouched. He was the only person I denied loving enough to drive them to suicide.

That kind of guilt never truly went away, it only bred my monsters.

BOWEN

I knew exactly where Grimm’s dad would be—exactly where he always is… in the presidential suite looking out onto the same ocean my brother hurled himself into just