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

Normally everyone chooses my mom and stepdad’s side, calling me insecure, attention seeking, and the twisting my love for Bowen into calling me his slut.

I’ll never forget the day my mother screamed at me at the dinner table calling me nothing more than his slut when I refused to drop talking about him.

I rushed to my closet to find something to wear when suddenly everything felt like I was asking for it. Every little dress, skintight body suit, and piece of lingerie suddenly screamed for the wrong attention. All I wanted to do was hide my body and pretend it was a bad dream.

I didn’t wear any of this for me… I wore it for my husband. I wore it because I liked teasing him, pushing him, and I liked the way his eyes scanned me before his fists would clench.

His desire for me made me feel more beautiful than any fabric or mirror could.

Elias tainted that by taking what was always for Bowen for himself.

He was deranged enough to drug me to sleep while I was on my period just so he could… do whatever he did to me… and he thought I enjoyed it. Did he think I asked for it.

KHAOS

Grace never calls me. She’s still trying to break nasty habits of being a ghost.

I see her looking for cameras, avoiding phone calls, and still showing nerves around people she doesn’t know. She’d straight up kill me if I mentioned it, but I notice.

Grace is my favorite movie, and I watch that shit every chance I can.

When her contact picture, albeit one that was appropriately of her pregnant boobs, I slid down into my chair during our biweekly meeting that I had actually started attending.

Normally Vic would take the meeting minutes and send them to me. Guess he was over that if I could poison a whole room, survive a few near-death experiences, and knock up Grace in the meantime.

Slipping far enough down so that my eyes were barely above the desk, I answered my phone in a whisper, “Grace? Are you all right? You never-”

Cutting me off, she spoke in her California cool tone yet the words she said made my jaw tense. “I’m not missing lunch… something happened with Eve. That guy no one likes—he was here, feeling her up and shit. I don’t wanna leave her alone.”

The hand around my phone clenched so hard I swore I heard it crack under my less than sunny disposition. “Okay, bring her here but keep it quiet until I can figure out Bo.”

That was the real source of my dramatics. Telling him wasn’t going to be fun or artfully manipulative in the way I loved to give people truths.

Sitting back up in my chair, I felt all the guys’ eyes on me while some dude I didn’t know presented his slides on our annual gross.

Yawn.

Boring.

Wake me when it’s over.

Vic’s stern eyes bore into me like I was a child who didn’t know how to behave at the banquet. “What the fuck is the matter with you?” His words were a violent whisper full of threats.

The insults of Vic were forever going to cause internal bleeding. He wasn’t just vicious or constantly competing with everyone in the room but taking out his opponents with his standards no one meets.

It was sick how much I still wanted his approval. I think we all did in different ways.

He’s the backbone for us.

I’m the heart.

Grimm’s the strength.

Bowen’s the weakness.

Bowen is the one who suffers the most silently and we let him. Eve will change that for him but not until her demons are dead.

“I’m listening to our gross annual report, do you mind shutting the fuck up?” I flashed him a big smile when I dropped my attention to my phone before sneaking a glance at Bowen across from me.

He might have been listening, it was hard to tell, he always looked like he was listening for the sole reason that he was never talking. Stretching enough to kick him from under the table, I wagged my eyebrows and pushed my head over to signal him to meet me in the hall.

I had to think of a lie before I told the truth. Normally that’s how it works, they come in pairs.

Letting the pen in my hand bounce off the table over and over again, creating a tapping noise, was bound to get me tossed from the meeting and signal Bowen to leave too. Thinking quickly, I got a notification of a wire transfer on my phone. I didn’t handle money for the Clave, that was all Vic, and this wasn’t from him.

Bowen wiring ten grand to my account without any notice meant he needed something, and I was supposed to know what it was without asking.

Perfect lie to go with my truth.

I did know exactly what he was after, but it was fun to see him squirm when I cornered him in the hallway adjacent to the frosted glass conference room we barely used.

“Go, now, Khaos. Before I kill you with my bare hands.” Vic wasn’t tense and his voice didn’t even shout. He simply dismissed me, and I took the offer, hauling ass out of the room with my phone.

I paced the hallway length a few times before realizing Bowen wasn’t behind me at all. Still fidgeting with the pen, I cracked the door open and threw the pen at Bowen’s back, hoping it got his attention.

Thankfully, he turned around annoyed and stalked up to the door with an emotionless expression. “What do you want?”

“I woke up to money again… so weird, right? Ten whole grand for being me.” My voice carried a tune and the smirk