Euphoria (Arrangement Series Book 4)

  Euphoria

  King Ellie

  Copyright © 2020 by King Ellie

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  King Ellie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  King Ellie has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

  Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Other Books in the Arrangement Series

  Prologue

  Phoenix

  I remember her face clear as day. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t see her in my dreams. First, the pure, innocent looks she gave me all throughout high school, but then one night, it all changed. I was no longer in control of who I was, the beast inside of me, the true meaning of my name burst wide open letting me be who I truly am. I couldn’t see past it and she was snatched from us. That night changed more than just my relationship with her, it changed it for my best friend too. We all fell apart even though in the back of our minds we all knew that we were better together.

  Our girl isn’t dead physically but everywhere else inside of me she is. I haven’t talked to my old best friend and don’t know how it is for him. What the fuck were we supposed to do? Call each other each year and figure out how to get over her? How to control our lives when she’s the missing piece? Fuck her and fuck him too just for the fun of it. Why can’t I shake that girl? I haven’t seen her in years yet I’m walking around as if there are eggshells everywhere.

  Am I awake right now or am I dreaming? Is anything real anymore?

  “Phoenix…” She calls my name out. “You’ll always have my back, right? You’re not going to ever find me disgusting, will you?”

  It was a fucking stupid ass question that she’s asking, but I indulged her. “There’s never going to be a time for me to be disgusted with you… It’s you, Bam-bam.” I call her my favorite nickname because of her name, Bambi.

  “I miss Bow,” she says, and she holds onto me tighter. “When is he coming back?” She asks.

  Bowie is gone with his parents for two weeks. He didn’t want to go but they went on a family vacation. Founder’s Kids, like Bowie, don’t have to stay in school because there’s always a tutor available. It wasn’t the fact that he was missing classes that made him upset; it was the fact that he wouldn’t get to see our girl. He was or rather is in love with Bambi. He would do anything for her.

  I think about the first time we first spoke to her. She was like the little deer, spooked out of her mind and staring like she didn’t understand what we wanted. After learning her name, I knew that it fit her perfectly. Bambi holds me closer as we lay in the darkness of her room. Her door is locked, and her stepfather isn’t home. I don’t like it when she’s here alone with him. Usually, it’s either me or Bowie that stays over, sometimes both of us, stay.

  Her stepfather’s a fucking abusive drunk and I want to kill him but that would mean she has nowhere to go. She won’t let us help no matter how much we tell her we can help her out.

  “I want you to know something, even if you and Bow weren’t my first, you’ll be my only when it comes to my heart.”

  I scoff. “Neither of us wants just your heart, Bams.” I move and now I’m hovering over her. I stare into her big, permanent deer-lit dark brown eyes. “We want you. All of you. We want your fucking mouth, your body, the hair on your head, every fucking thing,” I say with conviction.

  “Everything?” Bambi repeats.

  “Yes. All of it, including your soul. It’s ours, Bambi, and no one will ever take that from us, not even you.”

  She gasps as I lean in closer. I softly place my lips on hers, trying not to spook her or have her think all I’m about is sex. Today, I won’t do that to her. I won’t take her as roughly as she lets me instead, I’ll just hold her. We haven’t been kissing long when I hear the door slam shut downstairs; I know it’s her stepfather. Bambi pulls away from my lips.

  “Please, go. He’s going to kill both of us.”

  I smirk. My little deer does not understand. I’d kill her father before he could blink again. As I stare at her saying nothing, I now notice the mark on her brown skin. It looks new. I know every mark on her body, it’s like a competition for the ones on my person, but mine has faded along with the memory of the bastard who put them there. But not, hers. This one is new. I glare at it, trying to control my breathing.

  A heavy knock comes from the door, then the rattling of the knob. “Open up the damned door, girlie. You know what I like when I come back home. I like for you to be nice and ready for me.”

  I suck in a deep breath because now all the pieces to the puzzle are fitting in. Bambi tries to wrap her body around me, but I untangle her before she succeeds. I get off the bed, get dressed and grab the knife that Bambi never noticed I carried around. I walk up to the door and yank it open mid knock.

  “Who the fuck are you!” He shouts. “You’re fucking someone else, you fucking slu—.”

  Bambi’s stepfather doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence as I get all up in his space and I stab him. I know exactly how I’m feeling like I’m void. I yank out the knife and repeatedly stab him while I hold him to me. He’s coughing while I hear Bambi crying from behind me to stop and threatening that she’d call the police. I don’t know if it’s saving me or her rapist stepfather. I grunt as I push her stepfather to the floor and pivot on my heel towards her. I get to her quickly, shoving my entire body onto her and causing us to fall back on the bed. Bambi is crying, I don’t like it when she cries so I reach out trying to wipe her tears. As I wipe her tears away, I smear blood on her face, which causes her to cry even more.

  “Please leave. Please go. Markos.”

  My eyes snap to hers. She never calls me Markos, never, but now...she’s abandoning me. I can see it in her eyes, the determination there. I grab her jaw causing her pain, which makes her bawl. My little deer, she’s so scared.

  “You’ll always be mine, Bambi. Mine.” I don’t think as I get off her, but I pin her to the bed. I spread her legs apart and make it permanent. See,
Bambi had this thing about signing her name after a letter or when she wanted someone to identify it as hers. So, I made it clear for her; with my other knife. I always carry more than one. I carve out… X.O.

  “It hurts, Nix. It really hurts.” Bambi cries harder. I move off her and walk over to get the rubbing alcohol, stepping over her bleeding stepfather. When I come back in the room, Bambi is on her bed staring at her stepfather’s dead body while in the fetal position.

  “Open,” I command.

  Bambi does as she’s told, opening her legs. I pour some alcohol directly on her inner thigh where my signature is, and it gets her out of the trance she was in. “Please, leave,” she says in a small voice.

  I grunt, throwing the bottle on the floor, grabbing all my things as I walk out. Before I make it out of her room, I stop. “I told you what I wanted, Bams, and you thought I was joking. I’m not. We own you, Bambi. You are mine. No matter where you go, we will always haunt you and when you get sick of it, you’ll come to us because no human can live without their soul.” With that, I walk out. I never saw Bambi Laurence-Vasquez again, not even when I called Andres to tell him about the body.

  When Bowie came back into town, he knew from the look in my eyes something was up and I knew from the look in his eyes he would never forgive me for making her leave.

  Bowie

  “Bow…” Her moans fill my dreams and my body shudders in response. “Bow…” Her sweet voice calls my name once again.

  My eyes pop open. One day back on this fucking Island and immediately, Bambi is calling for me. Filling my dreams and instead of me haunting her like I know I should, she’s haunting me. I’ve tried everything. Sleeping with countless women who look nothing like her and engaging in hardcore sexual encounters with those who do resemble her. The girls who engage love it but then they call it borderline painful. They don’t know whether I’m a sadist or a masochist, which doesn’t even make sense, but they consent, so it doesn’t fucking matter.

  I sigh, not wanting to, but I drift back to sleep thinking about the time I came back in town and I saw the look on Phoenix’s face.

  “What is it? Something is wrong.” I say to him.

  He glares at me, but he knows that I’ll force it out of him. Besides his close family, I’m the only other one who can force him to talk. “She’s gone.”

  “What do you mean she’s gone?” I ask. “Gone where?”

  “Her stepfather is dead. I killed him,” he confesses. He knows I would never snitch on him. I would go to my grave with all his secrets.

  “What did he do?” I know that Phoenix doesn’t just kill to kill. He is precise, others may think it’s impulsive, but nothing that he does is impulsive. He is skilled. Plus, that abusive fuck needed to be put down. I wanted to take his life with my own hands, but Bambi wouldn’t let me. She wouldn’t let either of us do it.

  Phoenix looks away. He looks down at his sneakers, which means what he’s about to say is serious. “He used to… to rape her. This whole time, she said nothing. She just let us come in there and hold her, but she never once told us about him doing those things to her.”

  I’m speechless. My heart, my head, everything fucking hurts. How could she be going through this and I don’t know? I did nothing. I took her in my arms, wrapped myself around her, fucked her just as rough as Phoenix did, yet neither of us knew.

  “How could we not know? How could we let him do that to her? Fuck!” I stand and yell, not caring if one of my parents comes into my room. Fuck them for taking me away to do whatever it is they needed to do. They only need me for fucking public shit, but they don’t even care what I do.

  I pace back and forth. This isn’t happening. I feel the tears trekking down my face. I can’t believe this. The anger that I try my best to tamper down gets the best of me. I turn around and punch my wall repeatedly until Phoenix is yelling at me to stop. I turn my anger back on him, “Fuck you, you should’ve kept her here. You shouldn’t have let her go!” I yell.

  Phoenix cocks his brow. “What the fuck do you think I sent her away for? She needs to be covered. If she stayed, she would’ve been suspected. We can’t protect her. We don’t have the means.”

  “I do,” I say, not wanting to hear Phoenix be rational.

  “No, Bow, you don’t. Your parents, the same motherfuckers you don’t like or fuck with, have the power right now. They wouldn’t help you and you know it. I asked Andres for something and he did it. I asked him to take her away because she deserves to be happy, you know it. I know you do,” he says in a calm voice.

  “I know, fuck, I do, but I can’t. I love her, dude. I’ve never loved someone so hard in my damned life. Does that make sense? Someone like me who didn’t come from love is in love. Now, tell me, do I not deserve to be mad right now? Can I not be angry? I know our girl deserves better. She deserves the world, and I wanted to be part of giving it to her but you took that from me. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

  Phoenix shrugs and I know that even though he can’t feel for others, he feels the loss for Bambi like I have. I look at him and he looks at me. We both know that something in us has changed. We became best friends from the moment he introduced himself to me as Markos when we were younger, but now I don’t think our friendship will survive and it’s because our girl took our hearts with her.

  Chapter 1

  Phoenix

  “The new gallery, the one with Sasha Phillips. I need you to observe. Make sure everything is good,” Orion, my brother, says to me.

  I nod, there’s no need for me to ask why. “Anything else, asshole? You need me to come over and wipe your ass too?” I tease.

  Orion scoffs. “Come, kill the demon.” I know he’s talking about his new wife, Guinevere. He hates her and I don’t blame him.

  “Neck or gut?” I ask.

  “Gut, it’ll hurt much more,” he answers.

  “Should I use her intestines to wrap around her neck and choke her with it?” I smile even though he can’t see me.

  He chuckles. “Sick fuck,” is his answer, then he sighs. “I’d love to take you up on that offer but Ainslee would kill me.”

  I laugh. “You mean Papà, right? Cause Ainslee would let you get away with it. She loves you too much for that.”

  “You know she loves you just as much,” he reassures me like I don’t know that.

  “You don’t have to remind me, I know. I love that midget right back.”

  “Speaking of midgets, what happened between you and the LeClaire girl? The little spitfire?” Orion asks.

  “Didn’t work out. Don’t blame her though, I can see it in her eyes she wants more of me, but I can’t give her that and she deserves someone who can, she deserves the damned world. I can’t give anybody that. It’s not me anymore,” I confess. My older brother by two weeks always gets shit out of me.

  “Smart plus fucking with any Founder’s family is not good for you. Ain’t shit good gonna come out of it.”

  “They’re not all bad, Ry,” I reassure him

  “And they’re not all good, Nix,” he retorts. “Sure, the ones we’ve encountered aren’t as horrible lately but let’s not forget that there are more of them and they think they run this world. They think their money makes them higher than the rest of us fucks,” he passionately says. If anyone didn’t know him, they would never know Orion talks…a lot.

  “I get you, Ry, I do, but have you ever considered that the ones you know are proving you wrong?”

  He grunts, which means I’m right and he knows it. “Fine, but I won’t be their fucking jester performing for them when they’re bored and looking to play games.”

  I snicker. “Don’t you worry, I’ll play the jester and end up becoming the fucking King if it means finding the fuckers who killed your mother. I know he was part of the Founders family, but he’s not a representation of the rest of them. Look at Andres, our shitty, abusive pig of a father traded us for his protection. Andres raised us as his own and gave us the means
to be in the same tax bracket as him. We didn’t deserve it but he didn’t act like we couldn’t have it either,” I remind my brother.

  “I know, motherfucker. I know. I’ll always be grateful and loyal to Andres and Ainslee. They’re my world including you but I will annihilate every man that has a hand in killing my mother. You know that and so does Andre,.” he says with conviction. He’s getting pissed.

  “Ry…” I call his name out. “Ry! Mikonos!” I yell out.

  He grunts again, this time his breathing becoming harsher. “What!” He yells.

  Ah fuck. “I’m coming!” I hang up.

  I’ve never been so happy to live in the same penthouse as my brother before. I rush out my bedroom, running to the elevator. He’s going to lose his shit and there’s only one way out of that place with Orion. Fighting.

  Once I get to Orion’s penthouse the elevator opens up and I run in. I see him seething at the kitchen Island. I look around and spot Guinevere in the corner. She’s not exactly terrified but she is smart enough to not do something as stupid as approach him.

  “Go in the room,” I tell her calmly. I’m not a complete asshat, so I know I won’t spook her.

  “You need something?” Orion says to me. He doesn’t turn to face me either. Guinevere makes herself scarce.

  “Do you, motherfucker? Let’s do this, I’ve got somewhere I need to be. Avoid my face, will you?” I taunt him. “You want to stop being a bitch and in your feelings or will you keep moping like the child you are? Leave the childish shit for my niece and nephew.”