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

all the other first world amenities you could desire so it was a weird prison to navigate.

I didn’t feel trapped or persuaded to behave better. I even said out loud: Braeden couldn’t survive without Wi-Fi, seriously?

That was before my fourth night of captivity, and before a priest made his way into my room, sitting at the end of my bed and the silence swelled between us. Our elite families went to mass every Sunday, so seeing a priest and confessing your sins wasn’t abnormal. Seeing a priest in pajamas? A little weird.

I forced myself to focus on my heavy ring on my left-hand ring finger, it belonged to Braeden and he never took it off. A gold signet ring with a gold snake and the Clave symbol. 

Twisting the ring on my finger I waited for him to drag me to a come to Jesus moment, make me confess my sins and set me straight. I was cataloging all my sins into priorities when his hand landed on the bare skin right above my knee where my shorts rode up. 

All my attention was pointed right at him when he laughed at my pale, lifeless face. “It’s summer vacation, you aren’t supposed to be locked in your room.” 

Wasn’t supposed to be, yet the door was locked from the outside every time I twisted it. 

Reaching from behind his back, like a magic trick, he revealed a bottle of brown liquor. I was a teenager hell-bent on acting like Braeden and alcohol was the only kind of trouble I hadn’t found yet. None of my Father from church back home popping his eyebrows and encouraging me to give it a try felt quite right. 

A slithering feeling sunk into my soul of how a snake might gracefully tangle itself in your limbs, getting you right where it wants you before the immobility starts to torment your body. I could feel every part of me go into survival mode before I understood what was happening.

Father stood, snagging two glasses, twisting the top off and pouring way more than a taste into the heavy glass. “I heard your parents are giving you a hard time… You’ve been through so much. Losing Braeden was hard for me too.” 

The bitter alcohol made my face pinch, and suddenly this damn island provided the comforts I lost so long ago. I could see it in Father’s eyes that he missed him too, and that was enough for me to feel safe again—feel validated and heard. 

The slithering feeling crawled up to my throat when he poured me another glass, and the room got hot enough for me to start sweating even with the cold air pumping on high. Pulling off my shirt, I felt my head fall back with the spins against my pillows. “I’m so tired,” my mouth muttered into the air but mostly into the pillow. 

I felt Father’s body get closer, but my eyes were too heavy to open when his hot breath blew me. “You look just like him… he was so good to me, are you going to be good for me too?”

I shook my head, trying to figure out what his words meant—if he meant God or something else. 

Braeden wasn’t good for anyone, so what was he talking about? He carried a razor-sharp tongue, a burning hatred for the world, a kind of cruelty that left stains and scars.

All I felt was a warm tongue licking the shell of my ear, and my body was too heavy to move. Even if I could, I wondered how far I would make it with my head so dizzy I felt like throwing up. 

I thought this was the worst of it, my punishment for being horrid in the face of more loss than grown adults. I thought to myself that if I survive tonight, I would be reborn, saved, forgiven…

The tightness in my jaw felt welded shut when I felt his hand snake into my shorts and wrap around parts of me that I claimed as Eve’s. 

She was the only girl I felt anything for, and now the snake in the grass was tightening around me with so much force I felt all of me dry up. In this moment, everything went numb and lifeless. I felt dead in ways that explained Braeden’s bad choices and choice words. I understood every rebellion in this one violating touch. 

Swearing? Drinking? Hating everyone? Fighting? None of it mattered, because he died the second someone so unholy whispered he was good for him.

Braeden died long before the cliff, and no one saw it. 

The bed squeaked against the force Father used, his hands burning my hips and my teeth clenched so hard I felt my gums begging to bleed. Every tear that hit the pillow was the old me seeping out, crushed under the pressure of him, while he fucked me right into dying the same way Braeden did.

My behavior never changed, only got worse and my parents had no choice but to ditch me on the island to sort it out. After a while, your mind turns it off, but that’s the problem—your body doesn’t forget, and as much as it didn’t forget, I wasn’t going to forgive.

Waking up from the memories I pried open by demanding Eve hit me to replace the pain with her had me flying to the bathroom. I could feel the tension pounding in my head from finishing whatever bottles she left unharmed in our fight.

I was hungover: from Hennessy and Eve combined. It fucking sucked worse than a normal hangover—not that I would know. I’m a serial drunk who had somehow laid off liquor enough to be completely slapped in the face by it this morning.

Standing over the toilet, I berated myself for the heaving I was doing with my hands on my knees. I eat anxiety for breakfast, lunch, and