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“Butterfly?” I asked, stepping into the bedroom the next day. She’d agreed to hold off returning to work, but just long enough for me to make arrangements for her security. Due to the conflict with Murphy, men were spread thin.
I needed time to rearrange things and to put her with someone I trusted.
She stood frozen inside the walk-in closet we shared, her eyes transfixed on something she held in her hands.
My heart sank into my throat as my feet carried me across the distance between us. She didn’t turn as I approached, never taking her eyes off the knife she held in her outstretched palms.
I closed my eyes, stepping up behind her and sweeping her hair over her shoulder so I could kiss the bare skin of her neck. Her thumb swept over the engraving on the blade itself, the name cut into the metal a reminder of who had owned that knife.
“Why do you have this?” she asked, her voice trembling. “It’s his, isn’t it?”
“Yes. That night when he called, he left the knife behind,” I told her, leaving out the detail of the dead woman he’d also left as a gift.
There were some things Irina was better off not knowing, keeping her head buried in the sand to avoid the survivor’s guilt that would consume her if she knew the truth of the eight women we’d found dead in the months since we’d rescued her.
All with raven hair.
She nodded, her thumb continuing to stroke over the name on the blade. “O’Brien,” she murmured.
“That’s Darragh’s last name,” I confirmed, gently taking the knife away from her. I returned it to the place I’d stashed it underneath my folded shirts, knowing I’d need to find a new hiding place for it so that Irina wouldn’t fixate.
Something in her face compelled me to take her to bed, lying down on my side and then laying her out facing me as I wrapped my arms around her. “Talk to me, cuore mio,” I murmured, waiting for the moment her gaze found mine.
“Why do you call me Butterfly?” she asked, making my heart sink into my stomach. I’d known the conversation would need to come, felt I was on borrowed time as far as how long she would tolerate the secret. “Who was she?”
She reached up to fiddle with the charm that hung around her neck, the green butterfly pendant resting against the hollow of her throat. My sister had been so young when I’d found it that the chain had hung too low on her chest, tucking beneath her shirt.
I sucked back a deep breath, staring into Irina’s eyes as I prepared to lay myself bare. To tell her the ugly truth of my history and hope that she wouldn’t hate me as much as I’d hated myself for most of my life.
“My sister, Francesca,” I admitted with a sad smile, finally giving Irina her name.
“Scar,” Irina rasped, her throat clogging with emotion as she stared up at me. The emotion I saw there was a direct echo of what I felt staring down at the pendant that Cesca had worn for so many years.
“I’ll never know for sure if it was an accident or intentional, but I have to believe that she wouldn’t have wanted to leave me willingly. I have to assume, for my sanity, it was an accident,” I said.
“And you had to watch me try to kill myself,” Irina said, her face twisting with sorrow. To know what that must have brought up for me, the turmoil it must have caused.
“I wouldn’t change it,” I whispered, leaning down to touch my lips to her forehead. “It made me finally realize that I couldn’t fight this. Couldn’t push you away anymore. We ended up right where we’re supposed to be, Butterfly.”
“I still don’t understand the name,” she said, shaking her head as she tried to shove away the emotions surging inside of her.
“That first day in the club, your eyes were gleaming in the bar lights when you turned to look at me. The green was the same color as the pendant, like this shock of color in a gray world. I gave Cesca that necklace the day we had to flee our parents’ house. She wore it every day until she died,” I said, drawing in a ragged breath. “And there you were, with your emerald eyes shining up at me like she was trying to give me a sign.”
“Scar,” Irina said, her voice catching as she shoved her face into my neck.
“That’s why you scared the fuck out of me from that first day, because I knew. I knew once I had you, I would never be the same. There’d be no more numbness to protect me. I’d be wide open to you. I’m sorry it took me so long.”
“I love you more than death,” she said, cupping my face in her hands. She swiped away the wetness on my cheek, the tear I hadn’t realized I’d shed for the sister who’d given me a gift I didn’t deserve.
For the one who’d led me to my everything.
“And I love you more than life itself, Butterfly. You don’t know how far I’d go to keep you. I would sacrifice anyone, everyone, for you,” I murmured, knowing the words were true.
There was nothing I wouldn’t do for her and the life we would build together. I’d burn the world. Slaughter innocent people.
Betray the family that had given me my vengeance. The life of service that had once been my reason for living didn’t hold the same appeal it once did. I’d always be a loyal Bellandi, but for the rest of my life I’d be Irina’s husband first, last, and always.
Until death.
