Nicholas: Remember this? It was on here for a while and then I hit a writer's block because I realized that it sucked. This is the revised version. It's more in depth, so here you are loves. You should see some chapters that are almost the same as they were before, so be wary. I still dearly LOVE reviews. The only thing that is different with this chapter is the end. Connor DOES have an affliction

Disclaimer: Same thing as last time I posted this. Don't own anything.

Rating: M...for VERY later chapters...language...romance...violence...fucked-up-ness

To Whom It Never May Concern:

Prologue

Amour aux première vue. Love at first sight is often mistaken for being literally falling in love the first time one lays eyes on their future lover. As fortunate as that is unfortunate, such cliché ways of love are reserved for fairy tales and occasionally the arranged marriage gone right. What the phrase "love at first sight" should actually be translated as is much more complicated. To fall in love the first time one sees a person is completely superficial and ridiculous. The love that forms or grows upon seeing for the first time a side of one's lover that he had not seen before is what is truly meant by "love a first sight."

"Well, yer a new face," the barmaid said as she approached the man who had strategically positioned himself at a table in the shadowed area of the bar. Annabelle O'Riordan stood in her dark, flannel dress that hung comfortably on her shoulders. She naturally put her hands on her hips with an air of strength—though at the moment she was slightly intimidated by the man sitting before her. It had taken her about ten minutes to gather her wits enough to even go over and take his order. She wasn't used to new faces in her little town. "What can I get ya, luv?"

He had been writing in what looked like a journal of some kind, but it was closed quickly when she approached. "I don' actually have any money on me, so unfortunately, nothin' thank ye."

"Now I won' be havin' none o' that." She smiled warmly, feeling a bit at ease just from the familiarity that this man had spoke with. She would be damned if an Irishman would go without at least one drink in his system when he left this bar. "How about I get ya a Guinness, on the house?"

"That'd be kind o' ya," he said with a shy smile. As he sat up, she saw that the state of his clothes was appalling, and his figure wasn't too much better. He looked like he hadn't had a meal, shower or change of clothes in the last five years.

With a smile and flip of her red, curly hair, Anna went to get him his drink. She returned as quickly as she could so that she could once again talk with this interesting man. "Are ye new 'round here?" she asked with honest intrigue.

The first drink he took looked like the first one in a long time and he seemed to think it would be his last. He cleared half of the glass. "Funny story is that I'm not new at all. I was born in this area, just up the street actually…I've just been gone so long, everything changed without me." He reached across the table to shake her hand. "Frankie MacManus."

"Annabelle O'Riordan," she replied, taking his hand with a large smile. "I get off in about half an hour. Could I join ya then?"

"I'd enjoy that, very much."

As much as Annabelle likes to believe that the moment she set eyes upon the lonesome man at the back of the bar she worked in she had fallen in love, she knew it wasn't until later. She didn't truly fall in love with Frankie MacManus until about four days before their wedding when he finally got the balls to go straight to her face and tell her that was on the run from Russia, where he'd been very involved in some crime group that he wouldn't go into detail about. She was so glad that he finally told him, that she didn't care that that meant he might have to suddenly run off without good bye or anything. The marriage went off without a hitch and they moved in together in a quaint house that they could only afford if they both had a job. A week after that, she was pregnant…with twins…boy twins…May the Lord have mercy on Ireland.

Unfortunately, the Lord giveth and He taketh away. Taking home newly born children is supposed to be an exciting experience, but Annabelle MacManus had unhappy tears stinging her eyes. In her arms was a quiet, snoozing boy. He was pale and abnormally thin, but other than that he seemed just fine, sleeping contently in his mother's embrace—his name was Murphy. Frankie had the other package, Connor, who was crying loudly and making a big fuss. The sound of his wailing had a woeful, depressing and eerie tension as if he'd already experienced all of the pain and torment of the world. With a careful hand, Frankie stroked the boy's little cheek to try and calm him. This one was about a minute older than his brother, and his arrival was the scariest thing that both the wife and husband had experienced. Connor's upper lip looked like a huge chunk was missing and a gap that stretched up into his left nostril was there instead. At first, the couple was afraid that the other twin would have a defect too, but now the anguish was over their little boy's affliction.