THE INITIATION: Secret Society Dark Romance (4Horsemen Series Book 1)

by Elena Monroe

The only card I could play would be her maybe being pregnant, but it wasn’t a card I was willing to show yet. Protecting her was a fucking dance—one where I took steps forward to only take them back.

  Walking out of the room mid-conversation wasn’t going to go well. Slamming the door behind me, well, that was pure adrenaline slapping against the anger. It always sounded like wood splitting.

  The crowd of partygoers gathered in the one area moved on, exploring and enjoying a party exclusively for them. It came as no shock when I noticed even Khaos and Abigail had moved on to enjoying the party.

  I had to find a fucking loophole other than the one Khaos suggested. My parents were in charge; they weren’t going to bend because I wanted them to. They wouldn’t think twice about killing Abigail, carrying my child or not.

  I needed to go drastic. Fake her death. Send her to Paris. Make nice with Jessica. Something that looked and felt real.

  More real than what I was feeling for her by continuing with this suicide mission.

  In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to use our unborn child as our ticket out of this. It might not be enough, and I could be risking it all. The Clave is cutthroat.

  Searching for Khaos, easier to spot, I wandered around trying to find them. When I said keep an eye on her, I meant for him to stay close by, but Khaos wasn’t a great listener. I found the rest of the party goers mingling downstairs with the traditional punch I’ve avoided for years, Jessica flirting with everyone with a pulse, probably to make me jealous, and no Abigail in sight. I even looked around for Oscar, just for good measure. Finally giving up, I pulled my phone out, sending Khaos a text when Bo scared the shit out of me.

  “She ran off, and Khaos followed upstairs,” his voice was tainted with suspicion.

  Read the room. He’s always suspicious.

  “You should wear a fucking bell. I didn’t even hear you walk up.”

  “Seen and not heard, basically the motto of the Clave.”

  I could see his eyes through the distorted skeleton mask, made out of jewels and something out of Egyptian culture, peering at me like he could sense all the shit no one was telling him.

  Bo was the last person I needed involved.

  “Doesn’t make it any less creepy coming from your mouth.”

  “Creepy is kind of my thing. Shit gets fucked up when our parents decide who we’ll be before they even know us.”

  He drew in all of my attention when I faced him needing him to rewind. “What does that mean?”

  “They picked which horsemen we’ll be before they sent us to Servants. I’m creepy, stealth, have no issue killing what needs to be dead… unlike you. I should have been death, but they got to choose.”

  Bo was suggesting our parents knew, planned, and determined our fucked up lives before we even got sent to Servants. I blamed them for creating the monster living in my head, but this was a new level of puppeteering, even for them. They weren’t throwing me to the flames, hoping for the best, and I just happened to be this person. They did this to all four of us.

  I didn’t have to be death.

  I didn’t have to be a monster.

  I didn’t have to abandon Jason.

  Leaving him to do whatever the fuck he does, stalk and creep around the party. I headed up the stairs, still on the same mission to find Abigail. I was pushed right up against a wall with the feeling of being powerless pinning me to it.

  KHAOS

  “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid… it tastes like cult vibes,” I said with a smirk, because I knew she was doomed either way.

  She drank up Grimm with her damn eyes, and now look at her, head over heels for the one person we warned against falling for. The world warned you against guys like us: damaged goods.

  “Khaos?” She looked at me harder from behind a pair of big glasses with magnified eyes pinned to the back, making it a mask. “Why? It’s just punch. You wouldn’t poison your own.”

  Her eyebrows wrinkled together in confusion above the piece of tulle and lace covering her eyes. In her hand was the glass of red punch that she didn’t actually know had a drop of everyone’s blood in it. It was tradition. One we couldn’t avoid, and one my mom had a lady boner for. She was big into the occult and wanted some kind of contingency plan if things imploded.

  “Nothing is what it seems. Haven’t you learned that yet?”

  She sipped from the tiny clear cup in her fingers, and I could see why Grimm liked her so much. She was drinking punch dosed with our blood with a curt fucking smile on her face.

  Might as well have been my jizz.

  Fuck me.

  Illegitimate children would only make my family more hated. We were liberal to a fucking fault. My French mom was a hippie who preferred to be naked and kept crystals all around her house, while my dad grew up in the Clave but somehow managed to get his way when it came to my mom.

  Krosby DuPonte always got his way. Most people chalk that up to my mom’s witchy ways.

  I watched Abigail look around the room at all the people wearing masks, another custom we couldn’t avoid.

  Oscar, someone I never used to mind associating with, sauntered over like he was walking on water. If you didn’t know him, you would think his glassy eyes and inability to give a fuck was him tripping, when the sad reality was that he was just a rich asshole—one I had to mind now that Grimm made it clear what side of things he landed on. If you chose wrong, consider him your enemy too.

  Slapping Oscar’s cheek with an open hand in a playful way, I asked him, “How's the face, pretty boy?”

  There was no denying the guy was fucking pretty in that never-got-his-hands-dirty way. That’s what we had in common: clean hands.

  “Shut the fuck up, DuPonte.”

  He refused to use the nickname I took on at twelve, Khaos; instead, he used our last names. Probably to remind himself he was on the outside looking in. We were kings of the Clave.

  Untouchable.

  Undisputed.

  Unruffled by the people that didn’t sport one of the four names.

  “Now, now, don’t be a bitch, Oscar. I’m sure you have enough dumbass ideas to win them over next time.”

  Abigail stilled and stiffened, with her skin paler than normal with Oscar around. I could chalk up by the response that she either had her own sour experiences or Grimm was not a sharer. Side stepping ever-so-casually to block her from his view. I felt responsible for her only by proxy. If something happened and I did nothing, I might as well have done that shit myself.

  If I was taking the blame, I was getting the rush of the fucking crime.

  Oscar mumbled under his breath and took off. Being focused on him, I couldn’t see anything else around us, only being the wall between him and what was Grimm’s.

  The Rothschild’s Surrealist Ball is a fucked up LSD trip without having to take anything.

  I was grateful. The last time I took LSD I got into a motorcycle crash trying to burn rubber against a roof and land in the pool. Well, I overshot the pool and broke my arm.

  LSD is on my shit list.

  The masks were extravagant and the stuff of nightmares. Monsters, fabric covering their faces, paint, anything to cover up the humanity. Tonight was a party for all the bad in each of us. Our demons were at play, not us.

  “How much do you know? Answer carefully.” All the energy drained from my voice, hoping she would continue to seem scared. She needed to be scared enough to run the fuck away from us.

  “Everything, horsemen.”

  Well, Grimm really fucked me in this ass this time.

  Now I was even deeper in the role accomplice.

  Abigail was a mind fuck. She looked fragile from the outside, when in reality it was just her control problems taking your perception and fucking it until you couldn’t see straight.

  I watched her walk away, not even waiting to try to pump me for information, confirm, or deny anything. She just knew.

  “I’m supposed to be watching you!” I shouted in her di
rection, even though it was useless.

  My eyes followed Abigail, until they stopped on a blonde wearing a mask with tall, straight, bunny ears standing from the crown of her head. She was hard to miss, even with most of her features covered up. Bunny pulled me in like a magnet. My feet were moving in her direction before I knew it.

  Stopping right next to Bunny in the fitted corset and leather pants, I said, “I’m Khaos. I gotta run, but don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  Pulling a hit-and-run on the mystery blonde with big curls, I jogged down the hall, trying to catch up to Abigail after using up a few minutes to make sure I was in the forefront of Bunny’s mind.

  This place was massive, and the hallways were lined with doors, making it easy to lose people, things, inhibitions…

  “Abigail?!” I shouted her name, but of course no one responded. We weren’t even supposed to be using our names. With the masks firmly attached to our faces, we weren’t ourselves here, not tonight at least. Here we were whatever we wanted to be.

  “Abigail?”

  Fuck me.

  Grimm was dragged off by his parents clearing their throats as soon as they realized the girl on his arm was a brunette not the blonde they picked for him. And here I was failing at keeping her safe and sound.

  After a few more minutes, going deeper and deeper down the hallway, I heard the faint sound of throwing up.

  The punch isn’t that bad.

  Pushing the door open, I witnessed Abigail kneeling over a toilet dry heaving and coughing a lung up. Gripping the sides of the toilet, she didn’t make any attempts to move. She just sat there, waiting for whatever bile teasing her throat to come up.

  “He really fucked up, didn’t he, Abigail?”

  Fuckity fuck, fuck.

  She sat on the floor, letting her back lean into the wall with her mask in her lap. “What gave it away? My love affair with the toilet?”

  Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, I was still putting pieces together in my head. Grimm didn’t just save someone and send them to another country this time. No, instead he got a girl pregnant, one he had no business being involved with in the first place.

  Accomplice. Obstructing justice. A giant middle finger to the Clave. All things I was conditioned for. All things that ensured chaos would fucking ensue.

  “Who knows?”

  If he was smart, no one.

  I knew the minute he cared about some priest having too much fun torturing her that we were all fucked.

  “No one. Just you.” Standing up, she moved to the sink, cupping water and rinsing out her mouth. “We should go back to the party.”

  “I think you’re done partying. Come on. I’ll take you to Grimm’s room.”

  Fishing out some wrapped starbursts from inside my jacket pocket, I handed her the candy to help tone down any stench of tossing up our contaminated punch before heading down another mysterious hallway.

  I felt like one of those guards walking the prisoner to their execution. That’s what she is… a prisoner. One that had earned a death sentence—pregnant or not.

  Even with us holding the power, to stop the entity known as the Clave would take all four of us being on the same page. None of us were on the same page and hadn’t been since high school. Fuck, we weren’t even in the same damn bookstore. We all did our jobs and led our own lives, and Grimm was the most disconnected from the Clave lifestyle.

  Pushing the door open into Grimm’s world gave me goosebumps. He barely left a fingerprint on this room, but all doors were hiding pieces of ourselves behind them.

  Black walls and too clean for a room that probably hadn’t seen any signs of life since he was 14, I ushered Abigail inside. I watched her take in the room with blinders on, swallowing his darkness whole and smiling to herself like it tasted sweet.

  Abigail was certainly more than met the eye, if she could accept our Grimm for every ounce without flinching. I wasn’t loving how much she was making me believe she could be the catalyst to something big: maybe hope for the four of us stuck in thinking we were the apocalypse in our own lives.

  Once Abigail sat down on his bed, I threw her a, “I’ll let Grimm know you’re resting. Come out when you’re ready.” Closing the door behind me, I headed back down to the party, back to my own distraction, properly named Bunny.

  I took a few glances around the room for Grimm, but I quickly gave up when I saw some guy chatting up Bunny that I had already claimed a stake in.

  Heading right to her, I swung my arm around her, pulling her close and pretending the blonde guy with his hair in an actually fucking ponytail wasn’t there.

  “Sorry, I had to handle some drama. You look fucking gorgeous, babe.” Pretending to only just notice him, I added, “Is this guy bothering you?”

  She didn’t even skip a beat when her hand squeezed my forearm and her British accent crept from her full lips covered in slick lip gloss.

  “I’m Kate,” she offered.

  Her accent was trying to be Received Pronunciation, but it was rolling off her tongue as Estuary, not nearly as refined.

  She wasn’t the only one pretending to be something she wasn’t, and that made me even more curious.

  “Down the rabbit hole, aren’t you?”

  VIC

  Running late wasn’t something I did often. When I did, it was only at the hands of particular problems that couldn’t be ignored.

  Being conquest, war, and strategy, I had certain triggers put on our employees. Every time someone posted on social media, every time someone swiped their card, every time someone made a call, I could see it.

  I was the all-seeing eye, constantly ready for battle.

  Abigail’s card was swiped at a drugstore purchasing pregnancy tests when I got the email.

  Oscar was Clave by proxy, and Abigail was Clave’s employee. This mess created conflicts I wasn’t willing to overlook.

  Some digging turned into a deep dark hole that I fell into that made me late for the Surreal Ball. I practically tossed my keys at the guy with the clipboard, who was trying to seem important when he paled in comparison to anyone on the guest list.

  “Trouble,” I barked out the passcode as I pushed past him.

  The puzzle wasn’t hard to figure out.

  Pushing my arms into my jacket and securing my mask, chains all linked together, in place, I entered the oddly quiet house. Everyone had already started to fan out and explore.

  Rounding the corner, I saw Grimm’s mom in her infamous doe mask dripping in diamonds, like it got tangled in a chandelier and this was the punishment. Fucking superiority.

  Still walking towards her in the illusion I would greet her, I saw Oscar pushed into a corner, and her grip on his arm was tight. Nothing about that seemed normal.

  We all humored Oscar by letting him show up to things, but we didn’t give him our direct attention. No one wanted to give him the idea he fit in here.

  Grimm’s mom leaned into Oscar, speaking in a low tone, hoping no one would hear her: “You want the respect of the council? Ruin that girl so Jason doesn’t want her anymore.”

  And just like that I put two and two together.

  Abigail’s pregnancy test and Grimm.

  Well, fuck me. That’s a slow moving target in the middle of the battlefield waiting to be blown to pieces.

  I felt my limbs go up in flames. Every part of me was angry, and I wondered who else knew. We were all connected, regardless if we wanted to be or not. We were only as strong as our weakest link and only as useful as a packaged deal.

  Heading upstairs, I managed to avoid Oscar altogether. I had bigger shit to deal with if Grimm was staking claim to his fucking secretary when he knew the rules.

  His fucking family created them. Each of our families created one rule:

  No distractions (Rothschild).

  All Clave meetings and events are mandatory (DuPonte).

  All marriages are to be arranged (Astor).

  Death before dishonor (Rockefelle
r).

  When someone disrespected the rules, I felt the disloyalty shake my bones alive, like I was only half breathing and lived to catch people fucking up.

  Grimm was the only opponent I’ve had that challenged me. Both of us were smart, calculating, determined, and secretive, making our attacks even that more surprising.

  We used to be friends.

  Used to be.

  Now he was just someone getting in my way and allocating too many resources for my liking. Whatever his mom had planned out as punishment was probably well deserved for going against the Clave so obviously.

  Strategy was key, and this wasn’t the time to make my warfare known. There was a war brewing, and Grimm was going to drag us three into it.

  Four horsemen. Can you hear the chains that bind us? It’s deafening.

  ABIGAIL

  I didn’t remember passing out, but when I came to, I was covered in a light sticky kind of sweat, and the taste of a strawberry Starburst in my mouth was overpowering the yolk colored throw up that came up earlier.

  I was dragging my feet and praying for a period. Confirmation felt a lot like a nail in the coffin on any chance of Grimm and I working out. Catholicism still ran through my veins, making it absolutely impossible to end a life, all because I liked the wrong person, at the wrong time.

  When the cobwebs of how drained and dizzy I felt earlier finally shook off, I felt all my senses come back to life, and I realized I wasn’t alone. Expecting Grimm, I sat up, and a figure walked out of the shadows. His California cool accent rang through me like electroshock therapy.

  “Sleep well? I didn’t think your name would be on the guest list. Guess Grimm doesn’t just beat up your exes, huh?”

  I hadn’t been in the same place as him since fleeing Malibu with the images of nude girls drugged and snatched into Polaroids filling the folds of my mind.

  Being in love with all things related to unsolved and solved crimes, I expected to be better at managing the panic taking over. It was a whole different story when you’re face-to-face with pure fucking evil, with cult ties and a really cold welcome when you arrived.

  I felt alone, despite having Grimm in my corner.