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

I did often and this wasn’t it, no matter how much it sounded like it.

Vic cared. No matter how much he broke the rules for Justice, that innate feeling of being a winner would never go away.

None of our traumas were going away.

The air shifted in the room before I could find the cause when Elias stood with his arms crossed against his chest, staring at Eve in her slip after I had tossed the sweater filled with blood.

He just stood there, digesting her, committing her to memory the way I did.

Shrugging off my pea coat, I draped it over her shoulders and stood as close as possible. It was hard to miss the guttural laugh that sprang from his lips in response.

Plucking the joint pinched between her lips, he took a long drag. “Everything I love about you seems to be missing… you’ve made my decision to stay easy, Eve. Aren’t you going to welcome me to LA?”

Fuck. He told her before I could, and I didn’t even see it coming.

 

I should have seen it coming, no one likes him. Even my demons point and laugh at how royally fucked this guy seems.

Eve was shaking at his words, shaking so much I could see that halo drop right out of the air and hit the floor with a devastating crack.

This is her demon.

She slayed mine with no hesitation using a holy object meant to display the body of Christ. It was pulled right from the dynamics of our childhood. We’ve always been that for each other and nothing was different now—only that I still didn’t have confirmation, just her swift change of emotion.

Eve’s still wet hands curled into fists when she spoke her words through a tense jaw, “You can’t just let me be happy can you?”

I was waiting for the wall of tears when her fist landed against his jaw with force. She had snapped right back into the old Eve who would fight you if it meant protecting her happiness. She wasn’t violently throwing fists trying to chase adrenaline or false power—she unapologetically fights for us.

Stepping in front of her, Vic flanked her other side. “Problem, Bo?” He hated him almost as much as she did and I was desperate to see it.

Did the darkness eat all the light parts of me enough to think the vile of the world are normal?

“He was just leaving. Weren’t you, Elias?”

Flicking the joint in the holy water, he leaned into me. “Enjoy her while you can.”

I wanted to kill him right there, slay her demon and ensure her happiness but something pinned me in place. My demons held me back from the truth.

Khaos came pouring into the room with so much energy it clashed against the residual anger left to sit heavy in the air. “CeCe said she needs to say goodbye before her body boards the plane. I told her it’s way too soon; she just got into a plane crash. PTSD is a bitch.”

Watching Elias walk away, I bit off my insult, lashing out the way I knew how to at his stupid timing for a joke. “What do you know about PTSD, ass? Read the room.”

Resting his arm across my shoulders, he found my line of sight, watching him walk away the way he needed to before he forced me to steal the truth. “I know that guy is walking, talking PTSD.”

Snapping my eyes to Khaos, I searched for answers in his features when I knew better. He only gives you the map, not the location of the damn treasure.

Eve was still shaking, part fear and part anger. Guiding her inside the room next to where the refreshments were, I made her say goodbye to her mother before it was too late.

Hate her or not, closure is underrated.

If I could say goodbye to Braeden I would have, but instead he left a note under my pillow, full of questions and guilt, no closure in sight.

ELIAS

Seeing Eve was like a cold breath of fresh air that fills your lungs in this energetic way that nothing else seems to do.

I felt a connection to Eve even when she left Denmark, a connection that wouldn't be severed no matter how many girls I picked up in bars or promised a throne to. Eve wasn’t a girl you could fuck out of your system, she was poison slowly working her way into your bloodstream, hoping you’d die a death at her hands.

That unbreakable connection drove me mad until I started keeping tabs, inserting myself into her life—cauterizing the wounds I helped create.

I wanted to be both: her nightmare and daydream.

Her mother and my father’s death wasn’t an accident, it was part of the redemption I desired in order to keep our connection alive.

I watched carefully during the whole wedding and saw the gaps where I was missing in her life. I was the stability, the strength, the person who taught her exactly how to survive long enough to arrive here—the meaningless void of a life that was just out of reach.

She was stumbling her way through being my Eve and his Eve. Neither truly winning, just tearing her apart instead.

The wake was all the convincing and justification I needed to know what I was doing was right.

She needed me more than ever.

Good thing I handed the old lady across the street a duffle full of money to vacate her lovely home so I could move in. You know, to keep an eye on the parts of Eve I embedded myself in, the parts of her she needed to keep surviving… Me.

EVE

I had been sitting in the same spot on the couch for longer than I was keeping time. There