Dominated (Obsessed II)

Epilogue

Jude Bellingham

For the first few weeks after Bianca was taken away, I kept expecting something to happen. With her, there was always another move waiting somewhere beneath the surface. I expected a phone call in the middle of the night, a message from an unknown number, or some elaborate plan she had put together before anyone realized what she was doing. Every time my phone lit up, I found myself checking the screen before I could stop myself.

Nothing ever came.

The days became weeks, and eventually the weeks became months. I stopped checking every unfamiliar number and stopped wondering whether someone had helped her find a way out. Bianca was no longer in the country, and with the restrictions placed on her, coming back wasn't as simple as buying a ticket and deciding she wanted to start over.

For once, there was nowhere for her to run.

The updates I received came through the proper channels. She was receiving treatment and being monitored. She fought it at first, which didn't surprise me, but eventually she settled into the routine. I heard that she spent some of her free time painting and playing cards with the other patients. I found something strangely comforting about that. Bianca had spent so much of her life needing to control everything around her, and now she was sitting at a table playing cards with people who knew nothing about the life she'd left behind.

Maybe that was the closest thing to normal she'd ever had. I hope she can find peace in that.

Howard wasn't a place people entered knowing exactly when they would leave. The truth was, most never made it out. Some patients stayed for years, others for decades, and those who eventually walked back through its doors as free people were often old and fragile, so far removed from the person who had arrived that the outside world barely recognized them.

I didn't know whether that would be Bianca's future but I heard she's set to spend most of life there.

Maybe that sounded cruel, and maybe it was.
But Bianca had spent years believing she could outrun every consequence, that there was always another door, another person to manipulate, another place to disappear to. For once, there was nowhere left for her to run.

I didn't know whether she'd ever forgive me.
Some part of me hoped she wouldn't.
Forgiveness would have meant she understood why I'd done it, and I wasn't sure I wanted Bianca to understand me that well ever again.

As for Richard Jr.

I had expected losing everything to destroy him. In some ways, it did. His company never recovered, and the empire he'd spent years building to prove himself to a father who had never believed he was good enough eventually became something he spoke about in the past tense. Because he never rebuilt it.

Instead, he opened a small business and began hosting workshops for young entrepreneurs. Amelia eventually joined him, helping organize the workshops, I guess she was his assistant of some sorts. It was an unexpected partnership considering how everything between them had started, but somehow it worked.

I heard he was happy.

Not the kind of happiness he'd spent his life chasing, where everything had to be bigger, more expensive, and more impressive than whatever came before it. His life was smaller now, but it seemed to suit him. He had a business he actually enjoyed, where he could help people and he somehow became respectable for it.