The Pretty Psycho (St. Vasili’s Academy #2)

Epilogue

VEGA

One Year Later

I sometimes wish I 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 word tuz , 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. Our little 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.

We took a sharp turn to the right as we went slightly uphill, ending up on the gravelly road, passing by a couple of houses next to the road, until we reached another, smaller turn.

"Are you ready?" Adrian asked, waiting with the car turned on.

Was I? "Not even close." I chuckled sadly as I looked at him. "But I will never be ready. At least, not fully, and we're here. I want to know them. I want to know more about her."

"I'm here, okay? You're not alone."

"I know." I squeezed his hand. "But I think you should take the turn and take us to their house before I change my mind."

Adrian pressed on the gas slowly and shifted gears, and as we started going down the narrow road, I could already see somebody sitting in front of what looked like a garage. It took us less than a couple of seconds to come in front of an object, and as we did, I realized it was a man looking at our car with a furrowed brow.

His silver hair was neatly slicked back and the blue eyes I could see even from inside the car were filled with questions.

He slowly stood up, stretching his legs and pulling on the red hat in his hand over his head. My hands trembled as I unbuckled my seat belt, and before I could come out, Adrian was already out of his seat, standing outside with his door open.

"Zdravo." Adrian said just about the only word he could properly remember in Bosnian, and before the man could speak, I gathered all my courage and opened my door.

He looked almost the same as he did in the picture we got from the private investigator Adrian had hired, but the moment those blue eyes landed on me, we both knew.

I knew his first and last name.

I knew that he had two daughters.

I knew that he worked for some big company here before retiring, but he wasn't a complicated man. He appreciated honesty above everything, no matter what, and I know that life wasn't too kind to him.

I knew that he worked on this farm of his since before my mom came along and I knew that he took her in when she showed up at his doorstep begging for just a piece of bread.

But I had no idea if he would want to see me, or if he hated my mom for leaving.

"O Bo?e," he said, taking a step toward us. His eyes got wider and wider the closer he came to me, and before he could reach the car, I stepped aside, closing the door behind me and standing in front of him. "Y-You're," he stammered, speaking in Bosnian.

"My name is Vega," I said instead of waiting for him to recover from his shock. "But my mom named me?—"

"Azra," he finished for me. "She named you Azra because she loved the song “Azra” by Vajta. She always wanted to name her daughter Azra. S-She… Are you?—"

"I am the daughter she wanted to name Azra," I said as we both closed the distance between us. "I am Elvira's daughter," I murmured once I finally stood in front of him, craning my neck to look into his eyes. "It is nice to meet you."

It felt as if a millennium had passed, but as his eyes filled with tears, mine did as well, and before I could turn around and try to run, he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into a bear hug.

"You look just like her. She was maybe your age when she came here. She… You have her eyes. You have her hair. You… My dear God." He pulled back, keeping his hands on my shoulders. "You're my granddaughter." The moment those words came from him, it was as if the dam had opened, and all the tears, all the pain and fear and anxiety I'd been trying to hide had erupted from me, letting me wash them away with tears.

"I am."

Hasan Bekti? was a proud man, that much I knew from the documents we got, but he was also a kind man. The type of man I would want in my corner.

And he wanted me.

He didn't push me away.

"Elvira," he cleared his throat. "Is she?—"

I didn't have it in me to tell him what happened, so instead I just shook my head. She wasn't with us, not physically, but something told me she was watching. As a matter of fact, something told me she was always watching. It just took me too long to figure that out.

"I hope we're not bothering you," I said as Adrian approached us, staying just slightly behind me. "I didn't know if you would want to see me, and, well," I shrugged, "I didn't want to assume."

"No, no." His watery smile told me everything I needed to know. "This is a gift for me. I have looked for her, waited, but after a while I realized she wasn't here anymore. Judging by your accent, you weren't born anywhere on the Balkans."

"No." I shook my head as Adrian placed his hands on top of my shoulders. "I was born in the US, but she taught me Bosnian. She thought it was important."

"Good." He nodded. "It is. It's important knowing where you came from. And who is this young man?" Hasan, my grandfather, looked at the man I loved.

"This is Adrian," I said, smiling from ear to ear. "He's…" I turned toward him. "He's mine, and he was the one that kind of made me come."

"Well," he murmured, coming closer to Adrian. "It is nice to meet you, son." He shook Adrian's hand, who kept looking at me for translations.

"It's all good, babe," I said, wrapping my fingers around his bicep. "It's all perfect now."

"Come on," my, well, grandfather, I guess, said. "There's someone I want you to meet." He started walking toward the small gate attached to the metal fence surrounding the house on our left side, and as he led us inside, with Adrian and me following him, I knew I made the right decision by coming here.

I understood, as something clicked in my chest, how important it was to forgive those we loved even if they made mistakes, because life shouldn't be lived with all this bitterness laying heavily on our chests.

As I took off my shoes and as my grandfather opened the front door of his house, calling for his wife, that bitterness I'd felt for so long had slowly started to dissipate, and the only regret I had was not coming sooner.

Adrian kept a hold of my hand as we took off our shoes, leaving them in front of the house, and as I looked back at him, I understood why wars were waged for love.

"I love you, Adrian Zylla," I murmured. "I hope you know that."

"I do." He smiled, lifting my hand to his lips. "And I hope you know you will forever be my choice, Bambi. I hope you know how much I love you, too."

I finally understood why a war was waged in Troy because of Helena, and why Arwen chose Aragorn over her immortal life.

I understood, because I would do the same. I would move mountains for him.

For the man who was my target.

For the man I was supposed to destroy, but he destroyed me instead, only to put me back together, showing me how beautiful life could be.

He made me whole.