by Elena Monroe
Standing over him, I looked down at his face: swollen, bloody, hard to discern features or even bone from wounds.
With my fists still balled up tightly, I kicked his leg, begging his attention from the repeat action of pulling on the cuffs to only end up opening the drawer. I couldn’t blame him, his eye was swollen shut, too much to see properly.
“That’s a dead end.” I watched him push himself into the island more like it could swallow him whole, away from me.
“How were my sloppy seconds? Pretty sure I engraved myself in her so everyone else would feel unbefitting.” Spitting out blood on the ground next to my shoes, I could tell he was trying to gloat.
My hand slapped against his face before I moved around the kitchen looking for the exact thing I had in mind. The weapon I saw Eve using that apparently is considered a kitchen tool. Finding the meat tenderizer in a drawer, I held it in my hand, adjusting to the weight of it before I struck it against Elias’s face.
He coughed until he spit out teeth when I squatted down to his level, holding his jaw in my grip and forcing him to look at me. “You really don’t know who I am, do you? It’s comical that you think I wasn’t the first to taint her innocence. We have too much history for it to not rape our souls. You? You were just a hard actualization of the pain from us being apart. So, I recommend shutting the fuck up, or I’ll cut your tongue out.”
He looked mangled and beat to a pulp as I uncuffed his wrists and dragged him behind me outside next to the pool. I could have tossed him in and watched him drown; there was no way he could hold himself up let alone swim in the deep end.
I never used the pool chairs and loungers for anything but a towel until today when I shoved him on one of the chairs and refastened the cuff to the metal armrest. Yanking the metal of the cuffs against his bruises, he winced in a way that brought me happiness that went straight to my soul.
Going back inside, I grabbed the duffle in the back of the downstairs’ closet holding everything I normally grabbed when it was time to save a new life, a new fake Eve.
This time I was really saving the right person.
Dropping the heavy bag to the ground by his feet, I dug out the duct tape and ripped off two pieces long enough with my teeth to hold both of his wrists in place, even the one still cuffed. I didn’t trust him enough to assume he couldn’t get out of them.
Glaring at him, pinning him in place, I broke off another piece of the tape off meant for his mouth as he stumbled over every pleading word. Every plea fell on deaf ears. I had heard them all before and the people responsible for my demons still died.
He wasn’t going anywhere and he wasn’t dying until I deemed it so.
I could feel another presence in the air when I looked over my shoulder at Eve holding her arms against her body, hugging herself, staring at him like she was facing her demons after all. She was wearing my shirt, falling at her thighs and the ends of her raven hair were still wet.
I was constantly trying to ruin her halo that I never realized a little kind of hell had been occupying her heart.
Walking over to her, I stood behind her with my hands squaring her hips and pushed her forward, whispering to her, “What did I tell you, Evey? You can be a butterfly, just because they’re beautiful doesn’t mean they can’t protect themselves.”
Nodding her head, I took the useless knife out of her hand that caught the sunlight. She had no problem being sharp with me but this is so sharp she has to accept it kills, not hurts.
Walking towards him, she removed the tape from his mouth slowly. “Why did you do this to me? You did this to me… You took…” She couldn’t find the right words to describe being this broken because of someone else. Closing the space between us, I stayed close, but she needed to hear it enough times that she stopped letting it control her.
Elias looked up, completely unfazed. “Still can’t say it? I fucked you first, Eve, because you let me. You were so deprived of human interaction that your legs fell open for me.”
I balled up my fists trying to restrain myself, Eve needed to fight for herself long enough for it to heal.
I buried my demons but I’m pretty sure they’re still alive so maybe I have it all wrong.
Her hand curled into a fist, driving against his face amongst all the other wounds making him wince. He recovered with a twisted smile like any kind of touch got him hard.
I was impressed at the way she refused to grimace at the sting vibrating through her hand when she pulled in back. She refused to nurse it, letting it drop to her side, shaking with anger when she shouted, “I never wanted you. I was always a Bowey girl.”
Pushing the safe end of the knife into her palm, she didn’t even skip a beat when she drove it through his hand. Knives were always her first choice.
Leaving the knife sticking out of his hand, she started to walk away. Grabbing her arm, I pulled her back to me. “Make sure you got it all off your chest before he’s dead.”
Looking around me, she tossed her question, “Did my mother know?”
Elias was crying, mumbling to himself like a prayer, and his face seemed even messier when he met my eyes. “Please, I won’t touch her again. Just let me go.”
He was committed, his body shaking—nailing desperation.
It’s easy to be desperate when you run out of options, and it’s the easiest to fake.
Kicking his chair, I witnessed every fake emotion he threw out vanish into thin air. He sat up straight, snapping right back together. He was in control more than I ever dreamed to be, and now I was glad I never got there.
I’m destroyed by my feelings—good or bad. I let them control every part of me in all the ways that made me horrible at being a horseman.
“Your mom knew. My dad knew. They had as much power over me as they had over you in being groomed and purchased for an inflated price tag.” Elias’s voice barreled over both of us. I was letting him say things I couldn’t explain without hurting her more, and I’m sure he knew as much when he continued to speak. “Ironic, isn’t it, Eve? All your pain and suffering done at the hands of your own husband. Who do you think I work for?”
Fuck.
His eyes were bloodshot, and his mouth was full of venom. All of him wanted to bury me right along with him, because if he couldn’t have her no one could.
Only she was never his. She was always mine.
I was still facing her with my hand closed around her arm when her face fell to the depths of hell. No touch of heaven detectable anymore. “What did he say?”
Her voice trembled, and I held onto her tighter, trying to find an excuse that would placate her enough to revisit this when Elias wasn’t taped to a lawn chair outside waiting for a not so honorable death.
“Let’s talk about this later. I’ll handle him first.” I was praying to whoever was listening to let her accept that answer, but the anger brewing in her dark blue eyes told me differently.
The ring on my ring finger felt heavier. At least it matched how heavy my soul felt—that shit was a brick knowing I was keeping anything from Eve.
“Why bother when you’re so satisfied with everyone else telling me the truth? I thought we were past hiding shit from each other, Bowen. You said you trusted me.” I was worried about the knife in her hand earlier, but her words were always the more dangerous weapon.
My hand dropped from the back of her elbow, and I let her words penetrate the parts of me I kept safe from feeling. My eyes were filling to the brim, threatening to flood over. “I never wanted you to know… I did what I had to in order to save you.”
She didn’t care how this hurt, if it hurt at all, because up until now I was impenetrable. I was a haunted boy with demons that didn’t quit and a heart that did a long time ago.
“Save me? Save me?! What do you think you saved me from, Bowen? All the bad shit happened already and no one saved me but my damn self. Don’t you dare take credit for my survival.” Her voice cracked over the last word like maybe it finally hit he
r that she had survived. She wasn’t fighting anymore; she survived.
Someone was listening when the dark clouds finally rolled in over the hills and the sky opened up into an acid rain. Every heavy drop felt like it had pinned me in place as Eve ran into the house for shelter.
She was uncovering truths I had never planned to tell her. How much I paid had no bearings on our marriage when I always planned on marrying her, willing or not.
I fought as hard as I could to save her before they let me. I used every contact, every back door, every piece of evidence, and every point of contact—and when every trail came up empty, I even had Donte do things I wasn’t proud of. My hands were soaked in blood, so more wasn’t going to change anything, and I deemed it all worth it if it could save the one girl I was supposed to be saving.
This truth was nothing but callous and cold in ways I couldn’t ever be towards her.
Already soaked from the downpour, I turned around facing Elias, still covered in blood that was washing away from his wounds. His skin looked abused and used in ways that would physically hurt to look at if you didn’t know he deserved it.
Rounding Elias, I watched him squirm, plead, and whine his way right into the cold parts of me that felt nothing. Any normal person would feel remorse, regret, guilt—not me. I was a horseman but acted more like an apocalypse: pure cataclysm of the end, and I knew it was for the better.
Yanking the knife out of his hand, I could feel the tug of war his skin played with it to stay in place, cauterizing the wound.
Wrapping my hand around the handle, I fisted his hair, pulling his head back until his neck was exposed for me to do as little as possible. He deserved a painful death that came as easy as breathing for me.
Looking straight ahead, I caught Eve’s eyes in the window, gliding the blade across his neck until I heard him choke on his own blood now building up in his throat.
I knew the disturbing fact that it would take him anywhere from seven to ten minutes to bleed out. He would suffer the last moments of his life and that had to be enough for me because Eve wasn’t going to wait for answers before coming to concrete conclusions.
The blood poured from his throat down his body and dripped on the stones that checkered their way to the pool from the house.
Fuck.
I knew I should have put tarp down before he stained the rocks. Blood on any kind of stone or concrete was nearly impossible to get out. After he’s dead I wanted no trace of him, nothing left but bad memories we were going to replace with new ones.
EVE
I closed my eyes before the blade had ended Elias’s life, ripping through every horrible desire to say any more awful truths.
I refused to see the parts of Bowen everyone else did—they all painted him black, calling him a lost cause. He was just a guy not broken enough to kill for other people.
Safely inside the house, peering out of the kitchen window that hung over the sink, I swallowed down the numbness trying to creep its way back in. I wanted to hold onto the anger as much as I could, as long as I could.
Price tag.
Hands of your husband.
All of his words poisoned me down to bare bones. I was a skeleton of anger trying to convince myself none of what he said was true when in reality, all of it made sense.
Bowen justified himself when he took the credit for saving me. Saving me after hating me enough to inflict pain and lick the wounds after like a false hero.
Opening the drawer next to the sink where I hid the key he didn’t know Khaos gave me, I decided I was going to make secrets a cardinal sin when I bolted to the library hidden behind the walls.
I figured Bowen would be busy dealing with the dead body on his hands when I twisted the key against the lock. Prying the door open, it wasn’t my first time inside and wouldn’t be the last as I headed for the desk nudged up against the window. I guess if you looked hard enough, space would be missing from the rooms boxing it in.
Like most girls handed a happy ending I refused to see the possibilities in it being ruined. Space included.
Rifling through the same drawers I did before, I needed to find anything linked to the price he may have paid for me and to Elias knowing who Bowen was already.
The library was sealed off from the noise of the neighborhood so well that it felt like you were actually trapped between the pages of a book. The shelves were floor to ceiling and all the almost black wood felt comforting.
Bowen had already made it clear it was off limits so naturally it was my favorite place to violate.
Nothing was off limits, not between us, and certainly not after those confessions.
I’d been working my way through the classics, all love stories he kept in the dark library just like where he kept all the love—somewhere dark and out of sight.
This was probably the only part of the old Bowen he held onto, his affinity for books and getting lost in worlds much better than this one. He always had a stack of books in his room like towers you had to avoid knocking over just to get to him.
Turns out, he’s always been guarded, and I just refused to see it.
I took my time, slipping my finger along the bindings of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Haruki Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart, and Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. His taste ran darker now, just like him. I rounded the shelf, still curious as to why he would hide a desk in here.
I never even saw him disappear or do anything but drink, box, and sometimes when he felt frisky enough, he’d play the piano. He was too routine to fit in secrets that anyone could uncover. Bowen didn’t like to actively resemble who he used to be and when he did it was typically with the help of Hennessy.
Choosing the thickest folder I hadn’t noticed before, I let it fall to the desk with a thud. Peeling back the green folder with the Clave logo embossed on the front, I noticed the first page had my full name, birthday, and other obvious details not holding my attention when I skimmed over the words: recorded for buyer.
My eyes stilled on the words when his echoed between my ears: sold to the highest bidder and inflated price tag. Forcing my eyes to move, I continued to read the rest of the document and only stopped over choice words.
Price of purchase.
Education.
Purity.
Maintenance of form.
Skill development.
This document wasn’t the stamp solidifying our marriage being arranged, but that I was put through hell as some sort of initiation into the Clave.
Why were the words ‘buyer’ and ‘prices’ stamped all over this page like I was for sale? I wasn’t for sale; I was promised to Bowey and Bowey only. My price tag being so expensive wasn’t acting like a salve for my wounds either, like it does for other people.
If someone else matched his price, would I have gone through a different hell?
If I was just a price tag, then who else was bidding on me?
Scanning the documents, my past was being shaken out in front of me and the demons chewing on my angel wings were taunting me to deal with it once and for all.
I flipped over each sheet, studying the contents of the folder, soaking up every ounce of truth until things were clear for once. I felt dizzy trying to understand the fact that I was never promised to Bowey.
I saw him out of the corner of my eye nonchalantly standing there against the bookshelf like I did him a favor by finally finding the rest of the truths for myself.
A kind of simmering rage I had long let go of resurfaced when I spun around to meet his gaze. “Everything I went through was because of you? You did this to me?” Grasping for anything I could, I started throwing hardcover after hardcover in his direction from the shelf closest to me.
I was the kind of angry that I could feel all of me tensing, and the only thing left uncontrolled by the anger were my eyes that were welling up enough to make my aim suck.
“I didn’t know what they were doing in Denmark. Do you honestly think I would let anyone condemn your soul to hell ex
cept me?” His words fell out onto the floor heavily, thawed by the love stories being hurled his way, and I was losing strength.
I felt my anger flush my skin, spike my blood pressure, and cover me in a light perspiration that made me feel sticky. “Condemn my soul to hell? Denmark wasn’t a crash course in losing my virtue, Bowen! It was a crash course in losing us. Myself! You don’t know what it was like and what I had to do to survive that place only to be dropped in LA because you fucking bought me. Did you really hate me so much for leaving that you would let Elias do that to me?” The tears broke free, running down my heated cheeks and my fists clenched so hard I felt my nails dig into my skin.
Bowen’s face looked painfully twisted when his voice barely broke a whisper, “I never knew what happened to you, Eve. Do you think I didn’t try to save you the moment I turned eighteen? The moment I could? That we all didn’t try to save you the moment you weren’t legally theirs? They kept changing the rules and no amount of waiting or money was enough for them to let you come home to me. I’ve been trying to get you back for years.”
Walking over to the bookshelf, reaching above his head, he ripped down files that were comfortably in their place. He didn’t even try to catch the pieces of paper that didn’t hold his attention when they fell to our feet, holding a contract up for me to see.
“Your mom and stepdad got greedy. They kept threatening to break the agreement they had with my parents, so I handed them my entire trust fund to keep you safe until you came back home.” His words sizzled against the cold air.
Inflated price tag was right; the Astor’s were worth so much money it was hard to comprehend.
Reaching for more, he pulled his eyes away from me. “Agreement? There was no agreement. That was never real. It was just a false fucking promise my mom made so I wouldn’t have to suffer through dating losers like she did. Think of everything she said as a lie and it’s easier to follow.” My voice shook, and my lip trembled when another wave of hot tears slipped down my neck.