Epilogue - Bonnie
Eighteen years is a long time to live with no one by your side. No constant, no family, no love.
Eighteen years is almost impossible to live without any of it.
It’s also a long time to live, when the few people in the world who know you think you’re dead.
But you know what makes it possible? The urge to protect, the urge for revenge, the urge for survival.
Eighteen years ago, Carlo shot me in the shoulder. I passed out, my world going to black, and instead of disappearing through the pearly white gates of heaven, which after eighteen years I’m struggling to believe exist, I woke up in an unknown location, surrounded by unknown people, and some months after that, I gave birth to a baby boy.
He was ripped out of my hands the moment he left my body and straight into the arms of Carlo Rhivers.
I have no idea where he is, or what has happened to him.
All I know is that I survived.
Sure, survival is one word for a life on the run that I’ve been forced to live for eighteen years.
But no matter how I got here, or why Carlo didn’t kill me the second my baby was born, are questions I’ll have to continue to hold on to.
I want my family back.
I want to find my baby, I want to find King and Dax, and I want to find Puck.
I just want my family back.
And I will do everything in my power to protect them once I do.
To protect someone isn’t to shield them from harm, or ensure nothing bad can come to them. Because, for a human being, that’s impossible. So it might look like we failed. That me and Puck failed to protect each other.
But we didn’t.
I know Puck protected me at all costs, even to the last second, because that’s what he was to me. My protector. I know he’s out there, still trying to avenge me.
It was inevitable I’d end up off the playing board. Not all players get to stay in the game, and we knew from the very beginning that my game was going to be shorter than everyone else”s.
But no matter the rules, no matter the length of time, Puck protected me in the only way he could.
With love, with passion, and with every breath he took.
I know he’ll still be searching for me.
And I intend to do the same.
THE END