#its everything else

MC spends very little important time with Mona in terms of the actual meat of the plot. Mona isn’t introduced until after the sideshow and time spent with her is usually time you could spend with the other LIs or side plots that don’t really turn into anything, like getting rid of the classic car for the Brotherhood. Nobody in the book has remotely anywhere near as many diamond scenes as Logan does. It’s really not funny. Colt and Mona’s scenes combined are fewer than Logan’s. I counted. Logan has fifteen scenes, Colt has seven, and Mona has six. That is where Mona is done dirty, not in the recent plot development that fits her narrative and actually brings her central to the plot.

First of all, let’s discuss what actually happened with Mona after parting ways after Ardizzone (which is quite an interesting west coast organized crime reference btw PB). Mona is tracked down by the Brotherhood since it seems like she didn’t actually leave town, potentially none of the crew has left town because we know the three LIs didn’t. She’s threatened by them and she “joins” them because she tells them she’ll help them lure out and get their hands on MC and the rest of the crew. On the night of the prom, she “helps” the Brotherhood with their attack, only she foils it entirely by helping MC and their LI (if it isn’t her) escape.

There’s some important things she says here. That they caught her. That she’s doing this to stay alive. And that the longer Logan/Colt/the crew/MC manage to stay alive, the longer she’ll be alive. This is peak self-preservation and it’s absolutely in line with Mona’s character. Do I need to remind you that Mona isn’t even her real fucking name? She’s been running with this crew for a while and won’t even tell them her real name. Yes she was betrayed in the past, she did time for it, and she’s grateful to Kaneko for the freedom he afforded her. She values that freedom and she straight up gives it away for the MC. Mona falls hard and it makes her do kind of stupid shit when she does (as seen with her backstory).

She’s working this whole thing as a double agent, deliberately keeping the Brotherhood one step behind the MPC, because the longer the rest of Mercy Park is running free the longer she is safe. It’s almost poetic for her to be manipulating a betrayal in her favor like this after what happened to her. It brings her central to the plot and honestly it fits no other LI but her.

Colt is who he is, Kaneko’s son and a fucking maladjusted basket case, and if the Brotherhood doesn’t kill him on sight he wouldn’t last through his first meeting with them because he’s filled with so much vitriol that he would try to kill them the first moment he got. Logan is whipped for MC, he might be a good candidate for this twist, but he’s already played such a pivotal role in the story and he’s a terrible liar. Imagine Logan trying to lie to the Brotherhood about having helped MC out the back at prom all dismissive and avoiding eye contact, the boy would be dead. It has to be Mona and it works so well to be Mona.