Page 102 of The Pretty Psycho

EPILOGUE

VEGA

One Year Later

I sometimes wishI could go back in time and change everything that has ever messed up my life, but every time I even think of that I remember I wouldn't have had a chance to meet Adrian. I wouldn't have had a chance to experience this kind of love, and all the pain, all the fear I experienced throughout the years before him feels like it was worth it.

It feels as if the universe was sometimes testing me, because it knew I would need an infinite amount of patience to deal with him, especially when he liked to pretend he could drive better than me, when in all honesty, he could not. Especially in foreign countries he had never visited, with their own rules—which were basically nonexistent—and not a single super fancy car like what he was used to. Adrian was, for the lack of a better word, spoiled in some ways, and while he grew exponentially over the past year as the leader of The Brotherhood and the leader of the Zylla Empire, he still had a lot to learn.

"I told you," I grumbled. "You should've let me drive."

"I get it, Bambi. You're a better driver and so on and so on, but that whole attitude won't help us when this stupid GPS doesn't seem to be working here!" He was getting pissed, which only made me laugh. I should've told him that while GPS worked perfectly in the majority of the places in Bosnia, it didn't always work for smaller villages.

And that's where we actually were.

I thought he was insane when he came to me to tell me he had managed to find my mother's adoptive father, the man who saved her when everyone else turned their back on her. The man who turned out to have been waiting for her all these years after she had to run away, and the man who never stopped looking and talking about her.

Maybe it was insane wanting to see this place, to see this country, but every single corner of the city she grew up in made me think of all the things she did there when she lived here.

The tour guide told us that the city got the name because of the salt mines the Romans and later on Ottomans had exploited. It started as Salines and turned into Tuzla, from the wordtuz, which meant salt. Now it housed three man-made salt lakes that welcomed thousands every single year. I wasn't sure if the salt lakes existed when my mother had lived here, but I liked to imagine that she was one of the teenagers coming to visit them with her friends, laughing and loving life when she went through that age.

I was terrified of coming here, because I knew I still held on to so much pain and sorrow, because I never got that closure. I never got to see her. I didn't get to ask her why she did all of those things. I didn't get to ask her why she didn't tell me, no matter how stupid that question was.

She was protecting me from Oleksandr, but I always wondered if I still had family somewhere in this world. If there was someone I could call my own before Adrian came along. Ourlittle group of misfits kept on growing, and I hoped that all the shit we were dealing with this past year would finally come to an end, but for now, for just a couple of weeks, Adrian took me away, giving me a piece of my mother.

I always wanted to visit Bosnia and Herzegovina, her birthplace, but I never got to it. It was as if a part of me still ran, just how I did when I was a kid when that man came. In a way I was still stuck in that period, waiting for my mom, hoping she would come to pick me up. But she never came, and the last time I saw her she told me to run.

But I wasn't running anymore, and I wanted to know more about her.

"Aha!" Adrian exclaimed, pushing himself off of the car. The late afternoon sun shone brightly above us, burning me slowly, but for some reason, I liked it. I didn't mind standing here on the side of the road while he tried to figure out the map. To say that the maps made no sense for some reason, would be an understatement of the century. Our tour guide suggested having the old-fashioned maps with us if we wanted to go on a longer trip with the car we'd hired, but Adrian refused to buy one, thinking he could figure it out.

One thing he completely missed was the fact that the majority of the people in these smaller villages didn't speak English, so he had to rely on my Bosnian vocabulary to actually ask for directions. And boy oh boy, did he not like it.

"I got it." He started moving toward the driver's side. "Come on," he called out. "I told you it was this turn."

I started chuckling as I opened my door and sat inside, my eyes running over the two houses on each side of the road that seemed to go downward, and as Adrian turned an ignition on and started turning, my stomach climbed inside my throat, making me squeeze my thigh to stop myself from jumping out.

I could feel Adrian's eyes on the side of my face, but I couldn't look at him. I figured that we weren't too far away from the house where my mom seemingly grew up, and even though we'd been here for almost three days, today was the first day we were going this way.

And I was scared.

Terrified, actually.

I wanted them to be good people. I also wanted them to, I don't know, want me, I guess. I wanted them to look at me and realize how much they wanted me in their lives. Maybe it was childish thinking like this, but it was stronger than me.

So that's why I was terrified. That's why the mere thought of meeting my mom's adoptive father filled me with such anxiety that I was five minutes away from telling Adrian to just turn around. But I could do this.

I had to do this for myself.

Adrian wrapped his long fingers around my hand, pulling it until our entwined hands rested on his thigh. He didn't say a thing, but he didn't have to.

He was giving me his strength when I needed it, just like I did for him almost exactly one year ago.

After the death of his father, Adrian became… lost, in a way. He knew what he needed to do, but he couldn't get himself to do it, and whoever had said that it was easy losing a parent who wasn't really a parent has never had to go through a similar situation. So I was his strength.

I was his armor, his shield, his sword, until his mind allowed him to come back to us. Until he was ready to take the mantle and to lead as he was always supposed to. We were heading back to Germany after this trip for our annual meeting, and I couldn't wait to see every single one of them.

I especially couldn't wait to see Jax and his missus. I'm sure there would be a lot of explanations from all sides, but still—I missed them.

---