THE CONTROL: An Arranged Marriage Romance by Elena Monroe (best big ereader txt) 📗

the knife in his hand ready to do what I did for him with Duke.

BOWEN

I wish I could reduce my miserable life down to one trauma, but unfortunately it was several. A series of events that led to a metamorphosis I welcomed because changing is easier than dealing.

Servants of Patmos was the start of my growing body count. It was when I decided if toxic people were going to exist in my life, then the problems would never go away.

That’s when I decided to bury my problems, literally.

Just like the other half of me with a tombstone in our family plot.

I always felt half here, the bad half, left to walk the earth alone. The one person built to be my other half died one summer without any warning, forcing me to survive alone. Ignoring the reality of it, I got comfortable being just half of someone.

The half that lived. 

The half with the world on a string.

The half that got to suffer through life.

I always wondered what he would have been like if he was still here… If he’d be all the good parts I was missing.

If he would be charming where I’m grating.

If he would light the world on fire with a smirk the way I did.

It was always a mystery why I had any real problems when I had the world on a silver platter and the matching silver spoon to help the medicine go down. The medicine tasted like bubble gum melted down and filtered the world to be this happy fucking place when it wasn’t.

I stopped taking that medicine when my parents were sick of my behavior after Eve moved.

I was the kid that said every smartass remark, did all the things you didn’t want me to, and was an adult’s worst nightmare because I had a smirk parked on my face the whole time.

I used to be different before their method of treatment. Their methods didn’t cure me, instead, it only created more scars on an already full canvas.

Forced to take my brother’s place every summer on the island, it wasn’t hard to figure out why he ran off the cliff into the shallow water hitting every rock at the bottom.

He was sold to the highest bidder every summer which just so happened to be the same man claiming to be holy. He enjoyed making me feel pretty fucking full in the places I didn’t need to experience.

It went on for three years until the devious plan I concocted to kill him turned into a reality when I was sixteen, attending Servants of Patmos.

Old enough to give a shit.

Old enough to fight back. 

That same man started making house calls just to make sure I was maintaining our little secrets. Always making time for his favorite pleasures and my dreaded punishments.

Burying him was harder than killing him. Isn’t that fucked? My arms were on fire for six days until another Sunday rolled around. Guess you can really only sin six ways to Sunday. 

After compartmentalizing his death and my freedom I toyed with the idea that maybe I was left changed...

I hadn’t really given much thought to sex considering I was receiving more than enough in the summer months from a priest, but now that I was free, I decided I should figure it out before I only got hard ons for churches and bibles.

It wasn’t a leap to strongly consider being gay, and Patmos was the perfect opportunity to explore that idea when we returned for our Junior year.

Cam was the small town’s token gay guy who was already breaking stereotypes by being on the football team. It was easy to get his attention, all I had to do was go to a few football games and stare at him the whole time.

None of this shit gave me feels, had my dick’s attention, or even gave me a clear answer to my sexuality. Yet, I let him flirt with me and afterwards I invited him over to get down to business.

Giving it a real college try, I let him fuck me a few times before I felt even more confused.

I didn’t feel anything.

Cam was shoving himself into a living dead boy. I felt nothing with my face pushing into the sheets, his hands gripping my hips, and his grunts bouncing off the walls.

At some points I swore I could feel the breeze off the ocean and hear the waves crash just like I could on that island.

Khaos had a way of making our traumas sit in the corner by being a one-man party. He must have thrown a party every week our junior year.

With no idea what this party was honoring, I padded downstairs to grab a handle of liquor to hide for later when I was finally alone. I had been drinking like a professional for a while already.

Parties were a great cover for it.

The guys were in the living room of Patmos, well one of them, all playing xbox when I sat down. “What’s this one for? Who’s coming?”

Khaos laughed, sitting with his back where your ass goes and legs in the air holding his skateboard up. “Don’t worry, your boyfriend will be there.”

I tensed and stilled at his words when I realized I hadn’t covered that up as well as I could have.

Were they listening outside my door? 

Fuck.

“I don’t have a… boyfriend.” I don’t know why my tongue tripped on the word. I was better acquainted with dick than pussy, but they didn’t know that.

I kept my demons to myself. They’re mine after all.

Vic found my eyes trying to analyze my tone, body language, color of my eyes—whatever he did that suited him to be Conquest. “It’s okay if you do. You like what you like.”

The