Breakfast is light, which I’m glad for. After getting the news that Sal Francisco was killed along with some other men in his group, Jacob’s been on edge. I’m eager to finish and stay out of his sight. Stanzie, on the other hand, hasn’t been as lucky as me. Her left eye is half-closed from the slap he gave her last night when she supposedly looked at him wrong. I should feel bad for her, but I don’t. I know it’s wrong, I really do, but I’m practically numb to what Jacob does to us now.

The only good thing is that he’s been busy. The hit was messy, according to what the men who’ve come to the mansion have said. They gossip almost constantly whenever they get a chance, filling the time they’re standing around bragging and gossiping. They’re worse than old women that way. There’s a name they keep saying too . . . Ryker. It’s a name I’ve heard more and more over the past few months. Apparently, he’s some sort of street gang leader. They say that he and three of his boys hit the card game that Sal Francisco, Jimmie Clausen, and Julio Gonzales were playing at. From the way they’re talking, Ryker took out at least two of the three men himself. Until the hit on the game, Jacob talked about Ryker like someone would talk about a particularly annoying fly. Not anymore.

“I said after the funeral, I want the best men in town to hunt that motherfucker down and bring me his balls in a silver bowl!” Jacob yells into his phone. He’s pacing back and forth, running his free hand through his silvery gray hair, looking like neither the distinguished tough, bargaining real estate tycoon the law abiding public knows, nor the bad ass mob boss the other side of society knows. Instead, he looks like he’s just this side of unhinged, and a lot older too. “I don’t care if it gets messy! I don’t care if he’s got every street rat from the South Side to the Tracks to the Narrows on his side. I want him dead!”

I cringe and quickly go to my room, seeing that I’ve got about ninety minutes before we need to leave for the funeral. Stanzie joins me soon, but I wave her away. The poor woman has been through enough. She should do like me and stay hidden. “Go rest, Stanzie. Is the house clean?”

“Yes, Mrs. Waters,” she says, her voice quavering. “Thank you.”

Watching her leave breaks my heart. She’s grateful for even this little bit of reprieve, and the first inevitable dark thoughts start to fill my head. Stanzie’s still fighting, but she’s only been around a little while. I wonder how much fight’s going to be left when she’s been here as long as I have.

There’s no escape. I know that, and she will soon too.

He’s done it before, he showed me what he did to his second wife, the one who supposedly disappeared while the two of them were scuba diving in Thailand. They never did find the body.

So what exactly is stopping me? Is it just that I hate him that much?

But hating Jacob is a lot like hating a hurricane. You can hate on it all you want, but there isn’t a hell of a lot you can do to stop it from tearing the roof off your house if it wants to. All you can do is try and get out of the way, and I’m in a situation where I’m not able to even do that.

I start to get dressed, thoughts as dark as my dress swirling around my head, and I’m so deep in thought that when Jacob puts his hand on my shoulder, I’m lucky that I don’t screw up my lipstick.

“You surprised me,” I say softly, putting the lipstick away. “I was thinking about the funeral.”

“I can see that,” Jacob says, looking at me in the mirror. He doesn’t say anything yet, but I can see from the look on his face that he doesn’t approve. Nothing new there.

I look at myself in the mirror, and I don’t think I look bad at all. Sure, the lipstick isn’t deep maroon or something, but it’s not like I’m wearing fire engine red or bubblegum pink. “I just wanted to look pretty today.”

Jacob glares at me in the mirror. “Show some respect. You need to be in mourning. Sal Francisco was more valuable to me than you ever were or ever will be. At least he knew how to be loyal, how to do what his betters demanded. Although . . .”

Jacob grabs me and kisses me hard, smearing my lipstick all around my face and ruining everything. When he pulls back, he laughs. “Now maybe you’ll do it right this time.”

His words should sting. I should be upset. I should be wanting to cry, but for some reason . . . I just can’t.

Five years, four months, and seventeen days is all it took to burn every bit out of me, I guess. He started our wedding night, that was when he ‘got rough’ for the first time as he called it, and since then I’ve had it all burned out of me, all my self image, all my pride, all of it. I’m just an empty puppet doing what I’m told to do. I’ve got nothing left.

Instead of protesting, I look in the mirror, where I can see both of us as Jacob continues his disapproving look. Finally, I look at him directly in his cold, dead eyes. “I’ll be in mourning,” say.

His grimace disappears into a bit of a smile. “Good girl. Well then, I’ll let you finish getting ready. We leave in twenty minutes. Meet me in the foyer.”

He leaves, and I look at my face in the mirror, reaching for the towel next to my makeup kit with robotic arms, not feeling anything at all as I wipe all traces of makeup off my cheeks and mouth before carefully reapplying it. I use a different tone from before, more conservative, more subdued, with nothing for my cheeks at all. I still look beautiful, but I also look like I’m in mourning.

I guess I am, but not for the reason Jacob wants me to be. I’m mourning the woman I could have been. I don’t want to sound too much like Brando, but I could have been somebody. I could have made the transition to legit actress. I had the skills even if I wasn’t going to win any Academy Awards. Even if the typecasting had been too much, I didn’t deserve this. I didn’t deserve five years of abuse. I should have had a loving husband. I could have started a family already. I didn’t deserve this.

I use eighteen of my twenty minutes to try and find a reason to work up tears on the way to the funeral, but I can’t. I can be in mourning. I’m still a decent enough actress to do that, but it’s going to have to be the ‘stunned yet stony-faced mourner’ bit. Works well enough when you don’t know the man being buried beyond him being one of your husband’s business associates and occasional poker buddy.

We get in the limo to ride to the church and after that, the cemetery. We’re about a third of the way there when Jacob looks over, evaluating my face. “Good girl.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, trying to do anything I can to avoid looking at him. “I also have a hat with a veil.”

“Good girl,” Jacob repeats, and I can see a grin form on his face out of the corner of my eyes. A queasy feeling forms in the pit of my stomach. No, dear god no, we’re on our way to a church.

“Jacob…”

He shakes his head, unbuttoning his coat and undoing his belt. “You know what to do.”

Sadly, after all these years, I do. I get on my knees. I don’t protest, I just shut off my mind, knowing that if I’m not already in hell, I’m just this side of it. Thankfully it doesn’t take long, and as I do everything I can to work up enough spit to get his taste out of his mouth, he speaks softly, almost gently to me. “That’s it, baby. See? You listen and things go well.”