Epilogue

Ophelia died. 

But contrary to what everyone would have guessed, and what I dearly wish, I did not kill her.

I felt robbed when I walked into her body on the floor of one of the Kotei’s living rooms, because she should have died by my hands. 

It was the very next day after Kan's death, when, reportedly, the National leader’s guards caught her and dragged her HOME TO DADDY. 

No one would ever know what the man did to her, but her body was bruised all over with tiny cuts dotting her skin. 

She lay there on the floor, her face drawn, and I could only stare at her. 

I had been determined to chase her to hell if I must, and that is why I had dared come into the Kotei, but her father was quicker.

But like I promised her during her lifetime, death would not set her free. 

Someone had to pay for what she did to me.

I exposed her father as soon as his term was over, and stood at the top stairs of the courthouse as I watched the police drag him off to jail after the biggest court case the country had ever seen.

A legal battle that trumped his immunity as the former National leader. But unfortunately, I was still making him pay for Ophelia's murder.

It was a sad day when his wife finally woke up. 

No longer kept in a coma by her husband’s influence, the woman woke up to the horror her family had done in her absence. 

She died only a few weeks later, and Minister Inoue left the country for good after her death.

He apparently had nothing to go on living here for. 

One thing that still puzzles me to date is Kan. 

He was an evil man who loved me. And I should have felt that he got poetic justice by dying the exact same way he planned Blaine’s assassination. An ambush he could not escape, and on the same night.

But I did not. 

Even now, when I think about him, my heart hurts. 

He was a broken man. There was no way he would have turned out alright after all those horrors he experienced from his father as a child. 

And he saved me. He saved me that first night this all began.

Whenever I look back on that night, I realize there was no way I would have continued running.

I would have fallen somewhere on that tarred road and died with Oliver in my belly. 

Even after his death, I still enjoy his protection.

Because we were not officially divorced, my son and I got everything. 

However, I could not bring myself to touch a dime of that money, and gave half of it back to the Sullivans and charity, but Mõshon is fully ours. 

Oliver is a Tucker and the heir to both the Sullivans and Tuckers. 

Now, Mõshon belongs solely to the Tuckers because of Oliver. 

Eleanor left the country. 

I will never sleep with both eyes closed because of that woman, and maybe that is my penance. 

She loved Kan. She really did. 

And if he loved her back, he would not have died. Since she believes I was responsible for him not loving her, even though I only showed up in the last two years of his life, she hates me for it.

And Draco?

I turned away from the journal now to Blaine, sitting on the bed behind me.

“What did you say happened to Draco, my love?” I asked. 

He looked up at me and rolled his eyes. “How many times do I have to go over it?”

“Don't tell me you are ashamed of what you and my father did already?”

“Hell no.” He stood up now and began to walk towards me. “Ophelia was that Italian man's life.” his eyebrows furrowed now as he sat on the desk in front of me. “He would have gone on an all out war against the country for her death, but first he would have killed you.”

I shivered even though it had been years now since the man tried to crush us in that car at the abandoned mechanic's shop. 

“And so you murdered him.”

“YOUR FATHER strangled him.” Blaine gave me a look. 

“While you watched, as a man got strangled in his sleep,” I said, and he shrugged, not looking the least bit sorry. 

“We were at war, baby.”

I looked away from him, now back to the journal that was open on my laptop, and began to clack away again.

We should all be in jail. 

In a world where justice existed, where the powerful were not mostly untouchable, we should all be in jail. 

But the world is not that place. The National leader going to jail was as rare as finding a unicorn, and even then I watched my back for two whole years, till the man died in a failed jail breakout. 

The same day, I decided to start on this journal. 

And it was that week I finally made sense of the night Kan died. 

So, apparently, Akira saved me. 

She could not get through to me on the phone, so she called Kan. And then she trashed the note Ophelia had made her write. 

If she had brought that note with her, this journal would never have existed because my curvy behind would have been rotting in jail.

“Stop reading over my shoulder. “ I turned to shake my head at Blaine. 

He chuckled, but did not move. 

That night, Kan called Eleanor and, like the poor woman was wont to do, she saved the day by bringing higher military officers. 

They were the only ones who would be able to combat Ophelia’s order of shooting me on sight after framing me for Akira's murder. 

“I need your help here now.” I turned back to Blaine. “How did my father know I was in danger?”

Blaine looked away in thought for a few seconds, then said, “I called him when I was unable to reach you. I told him what I heard from mics I had planted on Ophelia.”

I nodded and was turning back to the journal when he said.

“Oliver would hardly believe any of this when he gets older. It all sounds unreal.”

“My girl, Olivia, would at least.” I smiled at the thought of beautiful Olivia. “And I want to think my son should know me well enough to see that I would never lie to him.”

“How do you explain the other people’s P.O.Vs in the journal? You did not write about just yourself.”

“Don't pretend you didn't see me research about them all this time,” I made a mock offended face. “I simply took creative liberty to fill in the details.”

He leaned in now and kissed my head, my nose, my cheeks. 

I was giggling till I felt his lips on my jawline, and knew the night was quickly taking on a new flavor. 

“Come to bed, baby. Close the Journal,” Blaine whispered as his hands found my waist and squeezed. 

And I did. I closed the journal. 

THE END