The Salvation of Daniel (The Blue Butterfly Book 2) (26 page)

“Look how pretty it looks in death, Daniel. How very peaceful she is now.” I nodded again, looking up at the poor thing. “It’s something quite spectacular to watch the life drain from a living thing, a thing so full of beauty. Watch as you take its beauty away. Its soul.”

My stomach turned. I hated her when she was like this, she frightened me. Not because of how she would take a creature’s life, but how the day always ended when she was on a high.

She cupped my cheek and I stilled, my body automatically clenching with her soft touch. “You, Daniel, you are beautiful. I often wonder how you will look when your life drains away, how it would make me feel to watch your soul wither in your eyes.”

Her hand glided over my throat, her fingers curling around my neck so she could feel the throb of my pulse, something she always liked to do, something that always excited her, she always said. A sob stuck in my throat when I felt the warm trickle between my legs, the material of my trousers sticking to my privates as my urine soaked me.

Mother tutted, shaking her head in disappointment. “Oh dear, look what you have done.”

I took a step back and grabbed her hand when she fiddled with my belt. “No, Mummy, I’ll do it.”

I cried out when her hand slapped my face. “You never deny me, Daniel. I warrant your respect. Are you an ungrateful wretch?”

“No, Mummy,” I replied automatically, dropping my hands to my side as tears trickled from my eyes.

“You owe me your life, Daniel. Always remember who gave you life, and who can take it away so easily.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And who can take Helen from you,” she whispered.

I squeezed my eyes closed as she pulled down my trousers and pants, my throat closing in as her hands then drifted upwards….

I jolted forward, vomit curling up my throat as I made a dash for the bathroom, my stomach contents hurtling into the toilet.

Splashing my face with water I stormed from the room, refusing to look anymore.

Connie was taking her time. I thought she would have been finished with her father by now. We needed to hurry and find Annie and Helen.

I took one last look at my family as I descended the stairs, knowing it was time to say goodbye. It was finally time to let her go. She couldn’t hurt me any longer. She had degraded me, damaged me, and made me cry time after time when my childhood should have been something to look back on and smile at, but as she had once told me, it had been beautiful to watch the life drain from her eyes, her soul snuffed out so easily. And her death had been the start of many for me. She made me and she ended me.

Pushing the kitchen door open slowly so as not to disturb Connie in the final moments with her father, I walked in quietly.

Time seemed to stop as my heart beat sped up. Blood roared through my veins, its pounding in my ears deafening as the scene before me registered in my brain.

“Hello, Daniel,” my father said. His eyes were cold, so cold. His lip was curled in disgust, his chest heaving with hatred as he pushed the blade into Connie’s shoulder. She hissed at the pain when he screwed it further and further into her flesh. Her legs buckled but he yanked her back up, pushing the knife deeper into her with the movement.

“Father. Stop.”

He laughed. “It’s time to end the game, son.” I flinched when he threw a dice at me. It hit me and dropped to the floor, bouncing along the floor tiles and coming to rest against one of the kitchen cupboards. “Roll.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“Roll,” he repeated. “Odds, she dies. Evens...” He smirked, his eyes lighting with cruelty. “You die.”

“ROLL!” HE BARKED again, making me jump, making the knife sink deeper. “You like to play games, Daniel. So let’s play.”

I couldn’t see a way out of his hold without tearing a hole right through me.

“I’m not playing your stupid fucking games,” Daniel answered. “Let her go and we’ll talk.”

“Talk?” Robert laughed. I moaned as the knife jerked and closed my eyes as everything around me swayed. “What is there to talk about? You? Me? Our relationship? Oh come on, we’ve never really had one, Daniel.”

“What?” Daniel shook his head from side to side. “I did your bidding. I took your orders. I killed for you.”

“No, Daniel. You killed because you enjoyed the hunt, the death of those you held in your hands. Don’t seek redemption for being guilty, seek the truth of who you are.”

“The truth? You have no idea of the truth. You never did. You were a fool, a coward who never looked at what you saw.”

“No. Not this again. I never believed your lies because that’s exactly what they were, lies.”

I clenched my teeth when Daniel took a step towards us and Robert rammed a gun into my temple. “Keep going, son. I’d love to see if her blood is red or black.”

Daniel flicked his eyes to mine. His jaw was clenched so hard I worried for his teeth. He stepped back and lifted his hands. “Fine.” He took a deep breath and snatched up the dice. “And just for the record…
Father
. Our mother wasn’t only a child abuser, she was an adulterer, a liar and the biggest manipulator out there. She fooled you, she fooled Franco.” He turned to me, his painful expression finding mine before returning to Robert. “She fooled Graham. But she was definitely no fool herself. She played you all. The queen of games. And not one of you could see her jumping from one bed to the other… including mine.”

He turned and threw the dice. It skittered along the worktop, rebounding off the cupboard and came to rest beside him, spinning wildly before it dropped on one side. His eyes lowered before rising slowly. He glanced at me, his eyes flicking with an ache I had never seen before. My heart threatened to give me a coronary. My breathing became stunted and I swallowed back the taste of death.

He gave me a soft smile. “I loved her, swan. She was my salvation. Please be sure to tell her that when you join her.”

I gasped, the blood draining from me. Not here, not like this. I wanted to tell Isaac so many things before I died. I wanted to hold him, and make him feel me, make him understand that my heart was his, all his. But as I looked at Daniel, our eyes meeting for the last time, I nodded. “Why the swan?” Strangely it was the only thing I wanted to know in the moments before my death.

His smile grew wider. “Because you’re the most stunning assassin of all living creatures. So beautiful, yet so dangerous beneath it all. You don’t deserve this life, just like Mae didn’t.”

He sighed, holding my eyes for a fraction longer before he slowly lifted his eyes to Robert. “Even,” he whispered.

What? No! My heart stopped when Robert removed the gun from my head and pointed it at Daniel. “Goodbye, son. Well played.”

Daniel stood still as two bullets hit his chest. His eyes widened as his mouth dropped open. Blood seeped from him, marring his clean white shirt, spreading over him so fast my brain couldn’t decipher what it was. His gaze moved to me as his legs stuttered and he dropped to his knees. “Tell her, Connie. Tell her.”

I nodded, my head shaking as a sob forced free from deep within me. “I promise.”

He smiled, falling to his side on the ground. “Let her go, Connie. It’s time to open your heart. To forgive yourself. Set her free, set yourself free… and let go.”

Robert dropped to the floor beside me, a bullet hole appearing in his forehead, weeping blood down over his face as Isaac appeared in the doorway, his gun trained on Robert, his eyes very much holding me.

I couldn’t move. I didn’t know whether to stare at Isaac, his beauty and his love the only thing my eyes wanted, or Daniel, the one my heart was telling me to go to.

My feet finally moved, taking me to Daniel. I dropped to the floor next to him and pulled him to me. “Daniel? Daniel? Hold on.”

He opened his eyes and I gasped at the complete peace behind them. He was staring beyond me, a tender smile lifting his lips, his eyes so full of love. “No,” he choked out. “She’s here. Take care of Annie. I never deserved her. She deserves you. Love her, swan. Love her so hard.” I nodded, drowning in my own tears, the salt stinging my lips, my choked sobs loud in the silence of the room. He lifted his hand, stroking his knuckles over my cheek as his eyes closed. “I was her decimation. She is my salvation.”

His hand fell to my lap, his fingers uncurling to reveal a small blue butterfly as a smile touched his lips and his soul joined its mate.

“Tell her I miss her,” I whispered as I leant down and placed my lips on his head. I curled his fingers back around the butterfly, holding his hand closed around it. “Tell her you love her, Daniel. And listen when she tells you. Because you do deserve her. You do deserve her love.”

Isaac lifted me and pulled me to him tightly, growling when he saw the knife still stuck in my shoulder. “Shit, my love.” I rested my head on his shoulder as he led me out of the room. “I was rather fond of that t-shirt.”

I smiled and looked down to the counter. Stopping Isaac, I stared at the dice. “Oh, Christ.” Stretching my hand out, I ran a finger over the three white dots, the odd number that had issued my death warrant.

Life truly was a cruel game. Death granted at the roll of a dice. But love; well that was what won the game… and sacrifice? That granted salvation.

I WATCHED ISAAC work on Franco, not really registering anything that was happening, not hearing Franco’s torturous screams, or even seeing the pools of blood gathered below where he hung from the chain. Isaac was hard, the brutal suffering he inflicted arousing him. He loved pain, he always had, and in one way, I understood why he had made sure I enjoyed it too. He’d moulded me into his ultimate plaything, a toy that could handle his wild side, and a wife that could give his heart and soul nourishment.

Daniel’s death hit me hard. I couldn’t stop the deep sorrow inside me. What the hell was this world, this life? The only thought granting me peace was that Mae finally had what she had always looked for. Daniel was now with her. I had to believe that, not just for my sanity, but for Annie’s future.

What was I going to tell her? I had broken the promise I’d given her when I had told her I would bring back her daddy. She’d lost both parents, her young innocence taken away so early. But then again, so had I, and I had survived, yet that thought didn’t help, it made my heart sink deeper.