by Elena Monroe
Last was Vic, best friend and the only one who understood my nuisances. Pushing the door open, the room was devoid of people or even the duffle bag he brought.
Shrugging to myself, I jogged downstairs almost putting the brakes on myself when I remembered Elias was on my couch and her parents were in my guest house.
Fuck.
My couch was empty when I glanced that way only to find Vic and Justice on one side of the kitchen while Elias pushed food between his lips like a starved child.
Finding their wide eyes, they looked like they had just seen a wild animal rummaging through my trash.
Gliding past Vic, his hand pressed against my chest and stopped me. In a low tone, making sure only I could hear him, he whispered, “I’ll help you burn the body.”
Good to know, yet completely unnecessary.
Pushing past his hand, I tallied up the amount of dislike when I dropped the ingredients into my blender and decided against pussyfooting around this like everything else bad in my life. “Elias, why doesn’t anyone like you?”
I was nothing if not blunt and too impatient to do things the polite way.
Elias stopped eating, patted a napkin to his mouth and straightened up. He went from wild animal to poised without trying.
Now I see where Eve gets it.
“I used to have a simple answer for the minuscule of the world: money, power, heir to a throne. Guess that doesn’t work here considering you have it all but a crown.” His features were soft, almost boyish, and his body should be a tower of awkwardness yet he was graceful.
I hated him too.
Who the fuck gives a shit about crowns? We have elitism out the ass.
Cursing myself for leaving my gun upstairs, I would have shot him right here in my kitchen just for being an asshole. I didn’t have anything to say; I didn’t care about his privilege, I cared about why Eve looked paralyzed when he whispered in her ear on our wedding day.
“Who are you to Evey?” I held up a finger, not my middle finger like I wanted, when I pressed the mince button on my blender.
Once it was done, I twisted off the top and poked a straw into the muddy-colored liquid, waiting for him to speak. “Brother by marriage,” he quipped, the words short of any details.
Brother not stepbrother like she had been saying. He had a twist on the title.
“And?”
He stood up, breezing his way to the island between us, staring at me like he was challenging me to tell him what I knew. He was on edge thinking I knew shit I shouldn’t have already. “And what? And am I the best brother she’s ever had?”
Elias didn’t want to get caught saying the wrong thing so he kept it simple. He wasn’t as stupid as he seemed and that alone would make this fun.
Ignoring him, I pushed past Vic and Justice with their ready to comment and left the way I arrived, shouting, “I want everyone out in fifteen or I can’t be responsible for what happens.”
Leaving my blender cup on the bathroom counter, I went to start the shower when I could see Eve through the glass stained with steam that fogged the outline of her body. She knew my routine and yet here we were.
Leaning against the counter with my arms folded against my chest, I watched her, humming to herself while running a soapy loofa against her body.
She was a trap if I ever saw one.
Waiting for her to be done, she spoke above the water cascading down her body like rain. “You don’t have to wait, Bowey.”
Smirking at her words and invitation, I actually did. I was implementing a no sex rule until she willingly gave up the information I wanted about Denmark, her stepbrother, and traumas that happened miles away.
Pulling open the door of the shower, I stood there with my hands bracing each side, leaning in far enough without getting wet. I was distracted by her being completely on display in front of me—not shy at all.
“Actually, I do… Until you can give me some truths, I’m out of commission. Better replace those batteries in your vibrator, Evey.” My eyes were low and the smirk across my face was undeniably victorious.
Her eyes got smaller with the realization that last night was going to be the same kind of material I had to use for years. It was only fair she went through a dry spell. Dry her out until she comes to her senses.
It had been 48 hours since I laid down the law with Eve, and she was a full-blown dominatrix with a whip trying to break whatever pride I had left.
She was parading around even more naked, even more sexualized than normal, and whenever I left the house, my phone would blow up with photos and texts that made my dick ache.
Trust me, it wasn’t easy but the truth never was.
Trying to close the front door as I left, I was stopped with a half-naked Eve who was willing to give the entire neighborhood a show if it meant the glory of breaking me twice. Handing me a brown paper bag with a blue butterfly sticker, she didn’t try to cover up any of herself when she leaned outside of the doorway to hand it to me.
With stern eyes, she understood not to take one more step and just simply smirked in my direction instead. Still standing there, I leaned in letting my lips drop to her neck without actually touching her skin when I spoke, “Anything you want to tell me, Evey?”
Letting my lips crawl up her neck to her ear, I felt her melt into me as my hand smoothed against her side until I nearly reached her ass. I was torturing her and myself in the process when she shook her head no.
Pulling myself away and twisting on my heel, I left her there, withering and swooning for more as I climbed into my car. Dropping the brown paper bag onto the passenger seat next to me, I eyed it like a bomb quietly waiting to go off.
The sun was high in the sky, and I had already died a few deaths all at her hands.
Grabbing the paper bag and my phone, I headed for the elevator to the safety of my office. Eve hadn’t shown face here since her run-in with Justice and I was thankful for that.
Peeling open the brown bag, I peeked inside fully aware she knew I didn’t eat. I found a perfectly folded pair of small purple lace panties, a polaroid of her topless, and a scandalous note that read: If I have to use accessories then I figure you are too…
Crumpling the bag in my hand, I left her trinkets on my desk, trying to will myself to not use them the way she intended. I have been fucking Famine for years and now my body wanted to demand everything I’d starved it of.
The green folder sitting on my computer keyboard caught my attention—the one I asked Donte for too long ago. I almost forgot all about it while he took his precious time getting it to me.
Opening it, I let my eyes scan for words that would put the pieces together without all the gruesome detail I was expecting. How much paid, her parent’s names, her grooming outlined, and then my eyes dropped to the word sterile.
I dropped the folder back down to my desk, letting it go ignored when I closed it, stopping it from weighing on my conscience.
The Clave would have never agreed to an arranged marriage if Eve couldn’t have kids.
They didn’t know and this folder was the only proof of Eve being tortured in ways that made my stomach clench, threatening my smoothie to come back up.
I barely put the folder away, hidden in a drawer that had a lock and key, when Chevy’s abrasive knuckles wrapped against the door. I wasn’t buzzed enough to hold conversations, let alone brace myself against her attitude.
When the door silently pulled open, I didn’t see my assistant like I thought but Vic standing tall with a benevolent topcoat. “Eve’s parents died this morning… I tried to call you when Rodriguez gave me the heads up.”
I knew what I was supposed to feel, some kind of remorse, yet I didn’t. Her mom was a waste of space who valued serial dating more than being her parent and her stepdad was still in the running for being the sole reason Eve was all but water boarded in Denmark.
I didn’t care, and I was pretty sure Eve wouldn’t either.
“Okay, when’s the funera
l? Who is making their arrangements?” My voice was flat and unemotional when I asked for the details realizing this was my problem now. No one else’s.
Vic was frustrated when his fingers ran through his hair with a groan. “It was their private plane, Bo, they don’t fall out of the fucking sky. There’s foul play here. Someone killed them, and I can’t protect you if you don’t tell me.”
Sitting back, I poured the liquor into two glass cups and pushed one towards the Vic that was for some reason coming apart at the thought of her dead parents.
In his defense, he did have a hand in killing his wife’s dad.
This was triggering for him.
“I didn’t kill her parents. Believe me I want to… I can’t take credit for something I didn’t do.” The liquid warmed my throat and lurched its way down to my empty stomach.
Finally accepting the few fingers in the glass, I watched him debate drinking on the job before the contents disappeared. “There’s something going on there. Why would anyone want to kill them? It’s her parents, Bo, they’re all fucked but they’re all we got.”
“When I figure out what happened and what they did to her I’ll let you know.” I said it sharply, not giving him any ideas that I needed help. This was something I spent most of my time trying to solve.
Leaning back, I watched my phone light up with a text from Eve when I lazily picked it up. The last time she texted me, it was a photo of her wet and naked, just out of the shower.
Swiping up the thread with her texts, a new photo appeared of her in bed, tangled in the sheets and clearly naked.
It had become her new tortuous routine to send me photos after I made it clear that we weren’t having sex again until she could be honest.
She wanted me to know what I was missing, and my dick was pissed off at my control.
I knew I had to tell her about her parents right away, but something stopped me from pressing the button to call her. Instead, I stood up, leaving her trinkets behind and headed straight for her.
In the face of tragedy, I wasn’t the person you’d find comforting, not anymore.
The entire way back home I had to dig up my humanity and figure out how to be the guy that would make this news easier.
Her parents were fucking dead.
Their plane crashed and left nothing behind.
Slamming my palm against the leather-bound wheel, I shouted a solid fuck at myself for not getting any information from Vic before I left. Texting him, I asked him if Elias was on the plane too, hoping that maybe fate got to him before I could.
None of that mattered; all that mattered is that they are gone now.
None of this changed how badly I wanted the truth.
Now I wanted it even more and expected it to come slipping out like word vomit because her tormentors were gone.
BOWEN
I sat in the driveway for almost a half an hour trying to determine how someone like Eve would take the news. All I had to reference was her butterfly dying, and in that case, I told her it was sleeping for a solid week before she called bullshit.
Her parents aren’t a butterfly.
Exhaling, the memory of Braeden dying suddenly filled my forefront like a bad reminder that this would be painful no matter how it’s said. My mom was too broken to even muster up the words, and my dad was too busy making arrangements to tell me. I figured it out on my own since Braeden had left me a note under my pillow the day he traveled to the island.
He didn’t say outright that he planned to kill himself, but the note certainly left eerie prints all over. Paired with a crying mom and a dad who drank the pain away, it became clear Braeden didn’t leave me an apology note; it was indeed a suicide note.
Wrestling myself from the bad memories, I headed inside determined to handle this better than my parents did with me.
As soon as I stepped through the door, I shouted her name and listened for a response that never came. Jogging up the stairs, I forced myself to slow down. This isn't news I wanted to deliver.
“Eve?” I tried one last time before I pushed on the door handle of my room and found her inside. She was sprawled out in the center of my bed, legs open, with a toy pushed against her clit.
I begged myself to stop looking, but her moans might as well have been ropes keeping me in place.
Her skin was smooth, and I could smell her fragrance from the doorway—a receipt for seduction and turning bad guys good again.
Her delicate hand moved the toy between her legs and her nipples pinched into even harder buds. My hand snaked right down to my jeans without permission, giving myself a squeeze like it compared to my wife chasing an orgasm in front of me with no shame.
Holding up a finger, she continued on like I wasn’t here at all, and as my forehead touched the wall, I slowly started banging it, trying to make it stop.
“Almost done,” her small voice crept out, drenched in moans.
Fuck me.
I heard every wave of pleasure in that girl’s voice until her moans became silent screams. I knew she was done when I spun around to face her again and reminded myself of humanity instead of blurting out the bad news like I wanted.
Leaning against the wall, I avoided her eyes, hearing the blanket wrap around her nudity. “I have bad news…”
She sat up like I said we were divorcing, waiting for more when I continued, “There was an accident. Your parent’s plane was in an accident, Evey… they didn’t survive.”
The room felt heavy, I felt dizzy, and she seemed perfectly unaffected.
With a shrug, she patted the surface of the bed looking for her panties and clothes. Whatever she deemed as clothes. “They aren’t my parents. My dad ditched me, remember? He’s my stepdad.”
That’s what she’s stuck on? My misuse of the word parent?
“He raised you since you were thirteen, Eve, give the guy some credit.”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she stood up, wiggling herself into small pair of panties before tying a robe around her body. “Raised me? That’s what you think he did? Raised me to be what, Bowen? Scared to be myself?”
Standing in front of me, I was seeing parts of Eve that I hadn’t seen in years. The anger and honesty looked good on her but how much she hated her stepfather equally matched Elias and it sent red flags up shooting up around me.
Still looking up at me with her arms crossed—all the tension between us screaming, and I just wanted to touch her. I just didn’t know how to go about doing that in this moment. She sliced through my thoughts when she asked, “Did Elias die too?”
Some weird combination of shrugging and shaking my head came out in a muddy version of I don’t know. I didn’t have any details, but I planned to get them.
Pushing past me, she forced me to follow her. “Eve! It’s your fucking mom!” I was trying to reason with the parts of her that didn’t care.
Turning around into me, her hands landed on my chest causing the robe to gape open, leaving her body on display again. She leaned into me, her lips so close and an orgasm I could still smell torturing me.
Her eyes locked on mine as she said, “If I’m sad, will you pity fuck me, Bowey?”
She was twisting my new rules into daggers, and let me tell you, daggers are motivating.
Clutching onto her hand, I leaned in dangerously close, so close our lips brushed with my words. “Maybe if you gave a shit, Evey.”
With her eyes dropping down under an angry brow, she huffed before pulling away. Walking straight towards the cabinet of Hennessy, her fingers landed on the most expensive bottle. It was the one tainted with the milestone of becoming a horseman. I left it there for the day I quit and await the bullet to the heart and head.
She was always forcing me to survive.
She had a taste for the finer things in life now, but I was just some dupe for the good guy I used to be.
Tossing the cap across the room, she laughed menacingly. “I’ll give a shit if that’s what makes you fuck me, Bowey. At
least something good can come from her being an absent parent. Would you feel better if I weep, Bowey? You want me to be a mess for the woman who didn’t raise me, never believed me or protected me, left me in the hands of a family she barely knew?! She doesn’t deserve my love only in her death.”
I watched her closely, sitting on the armrest of the couch with my elbows digging into my knees as she drank from the bottle.
The demons I had were already rubbing off on her if the first thing she runs too in the face of trauma or annoyances is a bottle.
“I want you to feel whatever you feel. No refunds, Eve. You don’t have to justify anything to me, but you don’t have to pretend it doesn’t hurt either.” I kept my voice steady and soft; she was a wild animal right now, and I needed to keep my distance until I was beckoned.
She scuffed like she was suddenly invincible. “Says the guy who doesn’t have a single photo of Braeden.”
I had to pretend that didn’t feel like a dagger too.
“And? I can just look in a mirror. That’s the awful part of being a twin, Eve. Having photos or not, it doesn’t mean I don’t hurt.” Wounded or not, she was now turning my worry into irritation pretty quickly.
Dropping my jaw to my closed fist, I watched her drink some more—painfully. I was watching her destroy herself and suddenly I understood the pain of watching me survive.
Destruction is hard to watch in any form.
Shoving a finger in my direction, I watched her practically climb the coffee table over to me on her knees with the bottle tight in her grip. “I hurt for years, Bowen. This is my liberation.”
Dropping down the couch, I stretched my legs out, still watching her from out of the corner of my eye as she rattled off insults to go with the injuries. Letting my head fall back against the armrest, I decided to let her drink herself into oblivion if that’s what she needed to do today.