From what I saw in her eyes, the woman may come willingly, like a lamb to the slaughter. Not knowing I’m worse than the devil she knows.
Chapter Five
Isabella
I’m not sure how many more hellish days I can have.
I just don’t know how much more I can take.
I want to say today was the day from hell, but every time I think that I remember my handsome stranger from the park. I remember his words.
It can’t be that bad.
That’s what he said, and he thought death was worse. The pain you experience when someone dies.
Having gone through that pain twice, I know what he was saying is truth. Nothing compares to the feeling of loss when you’ve lost someone you love.
Worst, when you watch them die.
I watched my mother die and then I watched Eric die. Both deaths were a result of my father. Both cemented the hatred I have for him.
Hatred that first took root when I watched my father kill my mother.
As far as I know I’m the only one who knows the truth about the way she died. I’m the only one who knows it was him who killed her. He told everyone else it was the Syndicate who killed his wife. That was how he’d gained support from many of the powerful people who ally themselves with him. He lied.
He threatened to kill me if I ever spoke the truth and I was so scared and shocked by what he’d done I didn’t speak for a year.
By then he’d sent me here to live with Nicolai.
I was ten when Mama died, and the world turned upside down. But Eric’s death was different. It showed my father’s power and the depth of the darkness of his heart. My father ordered Eric’s death for loving me.
Nothing can quite describe how it feels to watch someone die, knowing there’s nothing you can do to help them. My father himself held me back with his men to prevent me from doing anything, only releasing me once it was over.
Death is the end.
So… I guess my handsome, Italian stranger was right. What’s going on with me can’t be that bad.
I was crying because Dmitri not only decided he’d take Sacha’s place today and watch me at work, but he also alluded to me quitting my job at the clinic when we got married.
He wants to take away the one thing I’d managed to secure for myself, my career. If that gets stripped away from me there will be nothing left.
I got home about an hour ago and went up to my room to have some privacy.
Dmitri stayed downstairs taking calls while he waited for Sacha to relieve him for the night shift.
Sacha isn’t here yet and I’m a nervous wreck in my own home with this creep who will be my husband in the next few months. I can barely believe it. I can’t even believe I’m thinking those words.
I’ve been updating my work plan to distract myself, hoping Sacha will come soon.
Setting my pen down on the desk, I move over to my bed to rest for a while. I didn’t sleep much last night. With the damn bomb Dad dropped on me I couldn’t. The ghosts from the past haunt me when I sleep.
I used to have reoccurring nightmares every night. Then they became manageable. Last night was the first in a long time I had the nightmare. Last night was about Eric. I saw his death play out like it was happening all over again.
No one knew we were seeing each other, then someone found out. Until this day I don’t know how. Not even Sacha knew, but I always believed he suspected it. Eric was new and not much older than me. This year is four years since it happened. I was eighteen and he was twenty-five.
I’ll never know, but I think it was Dmitri who found out and told my father. He had so much fun beating Eric to death I’m sure it was him.
The man in the park today had a compassionate presence about him that stayed with me. I’ll probably never see him again, but he’s not the kind of man a girl would easily forget.
With those piercing, bright blue eyes, and that longish hair, slightly tussled in the wind. Beautiful, but strong. That’s how I would describe him.
I reach into my bag by my bedside and pull out the origami flower. It