The Beginning of Connie and Isaac (The Blue Butterfly #3)

by D H Sidebottom

  “Untie her,” Master demanded.

  Handing the umbrella to Frederik, Panther stepped forward and yanked at the knots in the rope. “I love you, sister,” he whispered as I fell to the ground on my knees, my aching arms unable to support me when I slapped my hands into the mud.

  “Get up,” Frederik barked.

  Attempting to stand, I fell forwards. I considered just laying still, hoping that he would promptly end my suffering for denying his order but pride made me try and when I eventually came to stand before him, the exhaustion debilitated my weary body and I could take no more. I dropped to my knees again, wet mud adding a layer to the dry mud that caked my legs.

  I no longer registered the pain, only numbness and an overwhelming need to die.

  “Get up,” Frederik hissed. I cried out, surprising even myself at the strength my body found to voice my anguish when he brought the whip across my back in punishment. I didn’t howl at the agony, only the despair.

  “I can’t, Master,” I managed to croak out, even though my body defied my words and I palmed the ground again to push myself upright. My hand slid in the sludge and I fell forwards, my cheek gliding over the dirt, some of the earth slithering up one of my nostrils. The rain that beat down on me made my skin heavier, making standing even more excruciating. Even the Gods hated me, apparently.

  The slurry of dirt picked up by the leather of the whip fed my flesh when my skin split with yet another thrash from my master. “Get up, Shadow!”

  Swallowing slowly, I urged myself to stand, the rain laughing at me when its strength mocked me and made the task almost impossible. I didn’t care that my bare arse stuck up in the air, I didn’t care that blood and mud were now my clothes, I didn’t care that my beautiful long black hair had been hacked off, nor did I care that my skin hung off my protruding ribs. The only thing I cared about was my sister, and how my pain and agony gave her peace and happiness. And that in itself gave me the determination to stand once more.

  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 7th 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.

  March 2013. Aged 22.

  THE MIST APPEARED to be crawling towards me. I didn’t move, refusing to let it push me away. I’d been pushed away too many times and I wouldn’t allow anyone or anything to do it again.

  My heart ached as I stood under the cover of the trees, their heavily laden branches providing a secluded hideaway as I watched the small congregation gather by the graveside. A couple of people opened umbrellas when the rain began to fall heavier, immediately dampening down the curling fog.

  I recognised most of them. I was surprised Tammy had come; she’d always bullied Mae at school. And Bonnie, another two-faced bitch my sister and I had avoided like the plague.

  I swiped at the tears that flooded down my cheeks. A part of me had gone, evaporated from inside me. My soul felt incomplete, my heart had split down the middle.

  I couldn’t decipher what the vicar was saying from so far away but I didn’t need his words. They wouldn’t comfort me, nor would they take away the ache or the guilt. Bonnie wailed when the vicar threw a lump of soil on top of Mae. What the fuck? Dramatic skank.

  My eyes widened when a tall, dark-haired man stepped out from behind a woman with a large umbrella. I hadn’t noticed him before, and from the sheer size of him I wondered why. His long black coat was drenched, his dark brown hair slicked across his forehead as streams of rain ran down his face. I could see the drops dripping from his long eyelashes even from the distance between us.

  He stood by the edge of the hole, looking down into it with a severe frown. He looked angry; angry at Mae for dying, possibly. I understood because I felt it too. The rage that had engulfed me when one of my contacts notified me of her death had been the most unreal feeling I had ever felt, even greater than the grief of losing my parents… or rather my mother.

  I cocked my head in puzzlement when he dropped a single deep red rose onto her coffin. His fists clenched before he brought one up to his lips and kissed it then tossed something else into the grave.

  Loud sobs filtered across the cemetery, the driving rain doing nothing to stop the weeping as people wandered off.

  Waiting until everyone had left, I trudged across the muddy ground and stopped beside my sister’s final resting place.

  “Hey,” I whispered as I brought my gaze down to the wooden box that held Mae. A deep tightening in my chest brought on a gasp of pain and I closed my eyes for a moment. The rain beat down on me, punishing me for the sins I had committed against my own flesh and blood. “I’m so sorry, Mae.”

  The silence tore at me until the pain became too much and I stepped back to leave. A splash of white from the coffin caught my attention. It was obviously what the tall guy had thrown in. I squinted, trying to focus on what it was but I couldn’t make it out.

  Pulling my phone from my inside pocket, I quickly snapped a shot of the object. Opening up the camera album, I swiped at the screen as the rain beaded, distorting the image before I zoomed in and stared in shock.

  I stumbled backwards, losing my footing, my heart thudding loudly in my ears, and my arse landing in the mud when a two-year-old us stared back at me. However, this wasn’t one of us, this was the essence of Mae. It was a new photo, the clothes the child wore were modern. She was sitting on the bonnet of a car, smiling widely for the shot. Her long black hair was in pigtails, and her bright blue eyes - Mae’s eyes, my eyes - twinkled brightly. This year’s registration on the car confirmed my thoughts.

  Holy fuck.

  Mae had a family. I had a niece. And the guy who had dropped in the photo was obviously her husband.

  My heart burst for her, my sorrow lifting before intensifying when the reality of what she had to leave behind consumed me. She had found the very thing she had always wanted. Relief coursed through me, any taste of happiness she could have lived before passing should be celebrated. I thought I had broken her when I… when I left. Thought I had given her more of a reason to want to leave this dismal place and join our parents. And the fact that she was now with him agonised me.

  He shouldn’t be granted time with his daughter in the afterlife, he didn’t deserve that. The only hope I held onto was that the devil had claimed his rotten soul, and refused him sanctuary with my mother and sister.

  I brushed m
y thumb over the happy picture, saving it to my phone as wallpaper and smiled. I wasn’t alone anymore. There wasn’t only me that remained of the Swift family.

  I needed to find them, both her and Mae’s husband.

  But it turned out that he wasn’t Mae’s husband. He wasn’t even her lover. It was over the following months that I found out exactly who Daniel Shepherd really was.

  And exactly who I was.

  November 2013.

  BULLET CURLED UP in my bed yet again and I sighed sadly and cuddled her to me. “You okay, sister?”

  She remained silent but nodded. My heart went out to my best friend. She’d been in love with Panther for years and as much as I encouraged her to tell him, she refused. Isaac had thrown another famous Phantom party, and after battling with an excruciating headache all day, I was hiding away in my room. Although Isaac and I were married, we still had our own separate rooms where we could just relax and be ourselves. I loved Isaac, I did, but I was still very much isolated in my own life. We shared rings, we shared bodies and sometimes, occasionally, we shared thoughts but aside from that, we were still our own people. And it suited us both.

  “Panther got a friend over for the night again?”

  She turned into me, burying her face into my chest as she broke out into a sob. “I want to stab her,” she growled.

  “Who?”

  “Whoever the skank is in his fucking bed.”

  “Bullet just tell him, for Christ’s sake. You never know…”

  “No!” She shook her head firmly. “I have to work with him, Shadow. If he knows how I feel about him it will compromise all our…”

  “I have to go away for a while,” I cut in. I’d been dreading telling her and for some strange reason I found blurting it out in the middle of her sentence easier to do.

  Her eyes lifted to me as she pulled back so she could see the whole of my face. “Is this to do with Annie?”