The Beginning of Connie and Isaac: Blue Butterfly Series (The Blue Butterfly Book 3) (23 page)

Once I was upright, Frederik walked around me, coming to a halt in front of me. Rain poured from the umbrella Panther held above his head, and cascaded down my face but I knew better than to move from its torrent. I stood still, my eyes blinking furiously as the river lashed over my eyelashes and instinct attempted to close them. I didn’t even have the energy to close my mouth as it hung open, the only available input and outpour for air now the mud blocked my nose.

He stepped forward, his foot skidding in the wet earth and his body surging forwards. Panther snatched his hand out and grabbed hold of him. I secretly wished he hadn’t done that.

He curled his fingers around my throat and I sagged in his hold, thankful at the support for a brief moment. “What the fuck Isaac sees in you is beyond me. You are weak. A disabled irritant in an existence only for warriors and fighters.” His hold on me tightened. I couldn’t fight him anymore, I didn’t have the energy. I wanted to die; I craved for it.

I dropped to the ground when he opened his hand, screaming at the pain that erupted through my kneecaps when they smashed on the concrete below the cross. I knew I had shattered one, my malnutrition made them brittle and fragile. The agony made my body jerk and vomit spew from my belly. I was surprised there was anything to throw up. I hadn’t eaten for days and I was concerned it was my stomach lining that had torn away when a spray of blood coated Frederik’s legs.

He tutted, his cold stare locking on what painted him. My body instinctively curled in on itself when the heel of his boot slammed into my stomach. I had thought the pain before that had been unbearable but this was something altogether worse. Yet it wasn’t the pain from his kick that ripped my soul from me, it was the fact that I knew his cruelness had just killed the tiny person that was growing inside me.

A wail shattered the air around us when I immediately felt the warm rush between my legs, the torturous sound only a mother losing her child could make.

“What the hell?” Frederik barked when his eyes dropped to the rush of blood flowing over my thighs.

“No!” His scream was both agonising and welcoming. My eyes lifted in time to see Isaac race from the house and plunge the knife straight through Frederik’s gut, his rage twisting it cruelly, his wrath dragging it back out so he could stab the bastard in the heart over and over again.

Frederik’s body dropped beside me, his dead open eyes fixed on me. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and merged with my own.

“No!” Isaac wailed as he lifted me gently in his arms. Panther stood, his mouth agape, his eyes wide and flicking between Frederik and Isaac. “Contact the medic, and have her meet me in the infirmary!” Isaac barked as he rushed through the courtyard with me. “Panther!”

The world was leaving me, heaven closing in, the angels tempting me with serenity as they welcomed my baby into their arms.

“Stay with me, my love. Don’t you dare close those beautiful eyes,” Isaac whispered as he ran. “Look at me, Connie.” The fact that he used my name made me slowly open my eyes.

His feet slipped in the wet mud but he kept going, his vigour and strength the only thing keeping me from death. “I’m going to fix you, I promise. I’m going to fix this.” He lifted his hand to my face, his power and my frailty allowing him to carry me with one arm whilst he continued to move fluidly through the house. “I love you,” he stated matter-of-factly. “I love you, Connie. We’ll get through this. I promise.”

I stared at him. Using what little energy I had left, I lifted my own hand slowly to his handsome face. I didn’t have the ability to voice my own declaration but as I pressed my hand into his wet cheek, I managed a faint smile.

He sucked on his lips, his despair showing a side to him I had never seen. The death of our child not only gutted him, but gave him the strength to voice his emotions. Isaac didn’t ever allow his feelings to control him, yet in that moment, he understood as did I, that any hope I had ever had of having children had been snatched from me. And I would never be the same girl again.

Hardness overtook my heart. Detachment overruled my spirit. And grief tortured my soul as I slipped away from the cruel world and begged for peace as the darkness welcomed me.

IT HAD BEEN
ten days since my child and my father had died within minutes of each other. Grief couldn’t overpower the feeling of uselessness inside me when, upon hunting for Connie after she’d been released from the infirmary, I found her knelt at the cross, her gaze fixed on the place our baby had died.

“Hey.” I spoke quietly as I went to sit beside her.

She was so pale, the toll of the last month showing so evidently on her broken skin. She’d lost so much weight, but more than that, she’d lost her spirit and that was the very thing that broke me too. I’d been sorting things with Artur in Russia, reporting back to him my findings over the last six months. He’d finally given me the go ahead to terminate my father’s rule, but as usual I had been too late. Just ten minutes earlier and I could have saved our baby.

Connie blinked slowly at me, the sadness in her eyes making my gut tighten. “I can’t do this anymore, Isaac. I don’t want to. I want to go with her.”

“Her?”

Instinctively, she nuzzled into my touch when I placed my palm against her face. “Isabella Mae,” she whispered.

The lump in my throat and heart was proving too difficult to breathe through and I swallowed in attempt to relieve the pressure. “We were having a girl?”

She nodded, dropping her gaze to the brown patch that offered a memorial for our daughter. “Yes. Valerie scanned me secretly a couple of weeks ago.” Valerie was the nurse in the Phantom infirmary. I made a mental note to praise her for keeping our secret.

Shuffling around so my body was in front of her I grabbed her hands in my own. “It’s over Connie. Frederik is gone.”

She smiled but it was so full of sorrow. “It will never be over, Isaac. I’ve lost my sister, my parents, my friends and now my daughter. They will never set me free from the ache inside. And to be honest, I don’t want to be set free. I want to feel this anger, this pain because it makes them real, it keeps them alive. But I’m not sure I can live with the agony either. It’s torturous.”

Her head fell forwards and she rested her forehead against mine. Tears dripped from her eyes, her sparkling blues now a mere dull grey as her soul wept with her and revealed to me its turmoil. “Please, Isaac.”

I frowned, not grasping what she was asking. “Anything. I’ll do anything but I don’t know what to do, Connie.”

“I want you to end it for me.”

My heart dropped into my stomach and I reared back. Unthinking, I hit out and slapped her hard across her pale cheek. The blood rushed to the surface, tinting her whiteness rosy red as she crumpled before me and the most horrific wail tore from her as her grief burst to the surface. “Please,” she begged. “I want to go. I’m so tired. I’m afraid of being afraid, Isaac. I don’t want to breathe anymore…”

“Connie!” She whimpered at my stern growl. “You know I would do anything for you. Anything. But I will never,
never
, allow you to leave me.”

Her mouth fell open as her eyes widened. “What?”

I shook my head in frustration. “I love you, damn it. You, you’re the only thing that keeps me breathing. I can’t do this shit without you. I’m the master now, Connie. And damn it, I need you with me. I need you to hold me up when it all sinks to shit. I need you to keep me warm at night. I need your body to pleasure mine. And I need you beside me, keeping the Phantoms going.”

She blinked at me before her eyes widened in shock. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying it’s about time you became Mrs Connie Marinov.” She froze, her eyes growing larger by the second, her mouth falling farther open the more I stared her out. She gulped loudly when I ran my finger delicately along her lip. “No one will ever hurt you again. Shadow is a Phantom. But you, Connie Swift, are mine, to have and to hold, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in…”

I groaned when she crushed her mouth to mine, her sob echoing into my mouth as her tongue fought for the comfort of mine. Her tiny hands grabbed at my hair as her passionate assault stole both our breaths.

“I love you,” she whispered when she broke away.

And she did. So very much. Nearly as much as I loved her.

We married on the 7
th
May, 2008. Connie wore a bright red dress, her new short hair pinned back with tiny diamond pins. She looked stunning and her smile was the only thing that got me through the formality of the day.

We were happy, so very happy. Our sex life went from strength to strength, both of us enjoying various partners as we both needed the escape of a varied sex life. But as much as we fucked others, we were never intimate with anyone other than each other.

I ruled the Phantoms with a stern control, but I considered myself fair. No longer did we kidnap and torture soldiers into becoming something they didn’t want. We only took on those that wanted to be with us, those who wanted to earn good money while they each took contracts they wanted. Although some rules I kept in place to keep the establishment running smoothly, torture no longer became a part of training. We refused to hurt anyone under the age of eighteen, and if a contract came in where it required just that, then the child would be given a new identity and adopted out to homes that went through thorough checks by specialists. The government, the police force and even the army all accepted our existence, after all, the Phantoms on a few occasions helped out with matters that they felt were a little too delicate for them to be associated with.

We all lived happily ever after.

Then, in March 2013, a month after her twenty-second birthday, Connie learned of her sister’s death. And our lives changed forever.