Dominated (Obsessed II)

34.

Richard Dawson Jr.
The Last Card

For the first time in weeks, I woke up with a plan.

It wasn't a good plan. Not yet. It wasn't even complete. But it was something, and after spending weeks watching my life collapse around me, something felt better than nothing. I sat at the kitchen table of my mother's house with a cup of coffee growing cold in front of me, staring at the folder Dominik had left behind. I had spent most of the night going through what I had, comparing names, dates and conversations, trying to understand just how much everyone had been keeping from me. The more I looked, the clearer one thing became: Bianca hadn't done this alone.

I had suspected Dominik for some time, but suspicion was different from proof. The deal we'd made gave me exactly what I needed to keep him close while making him believe I was willing to play by his rules. He thought he had protected himself. Maybe he had, for the moment. But I knew Dominik well enough to understand that men like him never offered anything without expecting something in return.

Neither did I.

I leaned back in the chair and looked toward the window. The city outside was beginning to wake, people heading to work, cars filling the streets, everyone carrying on as though the world hadn't changed. That was the strange thing about losing everything. The world didn't stop for you. It simply continued, completely indifferent to the fact that you had once believed you were important enough to make it stop.

I wasn't finished. I refused to believe that.
The phone on the table vibrated, and I looked down at the screen. It was the number I'd been waiting for. I answered immediately.

"Tell me."

The man on the other end hesitated before speaking.

"We found something."

I sat forward.

"What?"

"You won't believe who's still digging"

"Bianca?" I rolled my eyes since it was the obvious answer.

"No."

That answer caught me off guard.

"Then who?"

There was another pause.

"Jude."

I stared at the table. For a moment, I said nothing. Then I leaned back slowly.

"Explain."

"Where trying to figure out what he's looking for but it's a lot, I'm assuming he's trying to find her though he's being very thorough, he wants everything on her."

My fingers tightened around the phone.

"So he knows something then"

"We don't know exactly what he knows."

I looked toward the folder again.

Jude.

The name had been sitting in the back of my mind for ages, attached to memories I'd preferred not to revisit. He had been there when everything happened. He had loved Bianca before she disappeared even though I would argue that he doesn't, but no one would dare believe anything that came from me, right? But more importantly, he had believed the story I gave him.