Page 180 of Unravel Me

THE END

A Short Note from the Author

Can you save someone who doesn’t want to be saved? Unfortunately, no. But in my story, there is a chance to take a different path…

Those of you who hate Rocco, please don’t read his doppelganger’s story. But if you’re curious to find out whether the ‘Shadow’ survived, welcome to the bonus chapter!

BONUS NOVELETTE

Shadow

The day Rocco dies.

I know only one thing: I have to make it in time. My fingers tremble against the back of the airplane seat carrying me toward my destination, a place on the other side of the world from Florida, all the way up in Alaska.

I took a plane from Anchorage, a small local one that rattles through the turbulence, and I stare down into the abyss below me as my time runs out.

What Renato told me keeps echoing in my head: exactly when Rocco dies, I die with him unless… unless HE makes me whole.

He.

My True Mate.

Only he can save me.

From the moment I came into existence, I knew I was only Rocco’s pale shadow, something temporary, something impossible, existing solely because Nature had spoken through Renato and Silvio… a strange second chance for someone who should never have been given one because he had done nothing to deserve it.

I spent those three months half-hidden by him while he tried to shape me, tried to turn me into his replacement, his second self, but of course he could never accomplish that because I lacked the scars Tito had left on him. Renato and Silvio had made sure of that.

That was why I was free, and why I had been able to tell him no that day when he sent me to capture Jared.

It was supposed to be my test, but I had no intention of carrying it out. I had gone there to beg Silvio and Renato to tell me how I could free myself from Rocco because, as the main personality, as the one who had actually lived in this world, he held a certain kind of psychological power over me. He knew what I was doing, he could see what I was seeing…

I begged them to help me break free, but they told me that I was bound to him forever, like two sides of the same coin.

At this point, I know a bit more about what I am.

Some psychologists would describe me as a shadow. But unlike the shadow that ordinary people have, the one where they hide their darkness, repressed desires, anger, resentment, and suppressed instincts, Rocco had an opposite kind of shadow, one that hid everything good that remained in him. His buried guilt, regret, grief, sorrow, remorse, along with all the other softer, gentler, more tender feelings that had ever passed through him.

I’m a strange manifestation of his personality, temporarily given form by my relatives’ magic, by the Silvari…

As long as Rocco exists, I can live a parallel life of my own, making different choices, living a different life…

But only as long as he lives.

They also told me that Fate had already chosen the day Rocco would die, and that I would die at the exact same moment unless… someone gave me a reality of my own.

It was Mauro who took pity on me and gave me the address of the only man who could save me.

Roberto Donatelli.

Rocco’s True Mate.

And mine too…

I know what I need to know about him. Mauro gave me everything he managed to find out about this man.

As a teenager, he lived on the streets as a member of a large gang in Florida, took drugs, and went down a dark path. He killed several people while high and then spent twelve years in prison.