Page 1 of When the Last One Falls
Prologue
Iknew that I was going to hang for this, but I didn’t care. I stopped caring about consequences long ago. I stopped caring about right and wrong long before tonight.
I stared at the body on the floor and at the pool of blood flooding outward, seeping into the grout of the tile. The expensive chair that I was sitting in felt uncomfortable, but the cigarette in my hand felt right. The nicotine filling my lungs felt like a warm blanket, calming me. While a lot of people considered smoking a nasty habit, I hadn’t always been a smoker.
Though my hands had been a shaking mess when I’d lit the offending vice, they weren’t shaking anymore. I felt a calm that I couldn’t remember feeling in a long time. The house was silent, but I welcomed the silence with open arms. This silence was different from the normal tension-filled quiet that used to live in this house. However, I knew that the silence wasn’t going to last long. Soon, the house would be filled with strangers, people asking questions, taking pictures, talking amongst themselves, trying to understand how something like this could happen.
See, no matter what I said, there was no getting around the fact that I’d committed the ultimate sin. In a world where men ruled, I’d done the unthinkable. Wives didn’t disobey their husbands. Wives didn’t have their own opinions. Wives were property, no rights given to them other than what their husbands allowed.
My broken fingers weren’t going to matter to a police force full of men. The bruises and welts that decorated my body weren’t going to make a difference in what happened here tonight. My torn body wasn’t going to change anything because rape didn’t exist between a husband and his wife. The law, something that was also written by men, stated that a man had every right to exercise his husbandly duties, and it was a wife’s duty to submit, no matter how unpleasant or violent.
The proof of my abuse wasn’t going to save me. The horror story of my life wasn’t going to excuse what I’d done. No one on the Portal Lands Police Department was going to make any allowances for this kind of thing. I mean, if they did, someone else’s wife might decide that she didn’t want to take anymore, also.
Still, there was a silver lining to all this, though it couldn’t be seen just yet. It wouldn’t be seen until I was dead, and the reading of the will was shared with my children. There was no doubt that everything would go to the kids, though I couldn’t see them wanting to live here after what happened. I could see them selling off everything, splitting the money evenly, then going about their lives. No matter how extravagant this mansion was, it held nothing but dark memories, and I didn’t blame my children for never coming back to visit.
As the pool of blood widened, surrounding my white high heels, I crossed one leg over the other, the dripping sound of blood being the only sound in the house. Finishing my cigarette, I could only pray that I’d done a good enough job with forging Wilfred’s signature on our will. After all, that was the whole reason for Wilfred lying dead on the floor. Though my dear friend had assured me that it would pass scrutiny, Tenor Ludwig was still a man, and I had almost zero faith in men these days.
I put the cigarette out on the kitchen table, the only time that this house hadn’t been spotless, and it felt good. It felt good to not fear Wilfred attacking me over the house not looking perfect. It felt good not to fear Wilfred attacking me for not anticipating his wants or needs beforehand. It felt good not to fear what might happened next, because I already knew what was going to happen next.
I was going to get arrested for murdering my husband, and I was going to hang for it. Life in prison was not going to be an option for me. A jury full of men were going to see a woman so ungrateful that she murdered her husband. After all, we were the richest people in Portal Lands, so what were a few bruises when I had everything else that anyone could possibly need?
I let out one last nicotine-filled breath and thought about my daughters, Agnes and Meredith. Never would they be at the mercy of a man after tonight. Never would they have to suffer like so many women of our time. In a world that belonged to men, I didn’t feel bad for any future sons that wouldn’t inherit. Being born a male, they would already have the roads of a prosperous future paved for them.
The future Jennings women were going to be able to control their own destinies, hold their own futures in their hands. The mines would never fall into the hands of another husband again, no matter what legal means they tried to impart. My bloodline would finally be free, and it was worth the dead body lying on the floor at my feet.
That freedom was worth dying for.
Chapter 1
Keris~
Alot of people thought that my job was stupid or meaningless, so it was a good thing that I didn’t overly care what other people thought. I’d been able to make a career out of doing what I loved, and I never lost sight of what a blessing that was. Too many people had jobs that they were miserable doing, and I was thankful not to be one of those people.
As the museum curator of Impressions Art Gallery & Museum, I enjoyed showing up to work every day. Expression through art had begun to fascinate me at an early age, and when I’d graduated from high school, it’d been a no-brainer on getting my degree in art. Coming from a wealthy family, I’d been awarded the privilege to pursue a career that I wanted and not one that I’d had to.
My parents were Edmund and Ellen Bishop, and our family’s wealth could be traced back generations. Our money had originated from the maternal side of our family, and it still did. Though my father was wealthy in his own right as owner and CEO of Cinergies Corp., the bulk of our wealth came from the family mines on my mother’s side. Those deep pockets allowed my mother to live her life as one of the great influential socialites of Portal Lands.
The story of the mines was legendary and very true. My great-great-great-grandmother, Josephine Jennings had gone into her marriage with an incredible dowry of money and property, the mines being the crown jewel of her dowry, literally. Her family had always been wealthy, and my great-great-great grandfather’s family had hit the jackpot when they’d gotten engaged.
However, the honeymoon hadn’t lasted long. Like all marriages back in the 1930s, women had belonged to their husbands in the category of property. Husbands had legally owned their wives and everything that had come with them. Women had owned nothing, women had contributed nothing, and quite frankly, women hadbeennothing. Their only purpose had been to provide heirs to their husbands and that had been it. A chilling time, for sure.
Wilfred Jennings had begun beating Josephine soon after the birth of their second daughter, Meredith, blaming Josephine for not providing him with any sons. Science hadn’t mattered back then. No one had cared that it was the man’s sperm that carried the chromosome that made the difference. If a woman hadn’t been able to provide a son for her husband, then she’d been the failure, not him.
So, as punishment for failing to provide a male heir, Wilfred had begun beating and abusing Josephine in the most horrific ways. Rape had been his favorite type of torture, believing that Josephine didn’t deserve to enjoy sex if she couldn’t provide him with a son.
After years of abuse, and after both of her daughters had married and moved on, Josephine had killed Wilfred in a calculated, premeditated, deliberate move that had cost Josephine her life. She had shot her husband dead after he had come home drunk, smelling of whiskey, cigars, and whores, and after raping her for the last time, she had shot him in the head, killing him instantly.
The entire town of Portal Lands had been shocked with the unspeakableness of such an atrocity. After all, as far as they’d known, Wilfred Jennings had been a pillar of the community. He’d been a successful businessman and generous philanthropist. Wilfred and Josephine had been the perfect couple, not a hint of discord anywhere.
While the daughters had been distraught with the tragic events, their father’s murder and their mother’s execution had all made sense when the reading of the family’s will had been read. Somehow, Josephine had amended the will into a trust that was ironclad for the many female generations to come afterwards. It was rumored that Josephine had enlisted the help of a family friend, Tenor Ludwig, to help her with her plan, and almost a hundred years later, the trust was still as ironclad as death and taxes.
My mother owned a small island off the coast of Central America, and it was covered in mines, the island guarded by mercenaries to prevent unlawful trespassing. The mines weren’t currently being excavated, but they didn’t need to be. The original excavation of the mines had produced enough gems to create a healthy enough nest egg to sustain the maternal side of our family for all these generations.
The terms of the trust were simple; the mines could only be owned and controlled by the firstborn daughters of the next generation, never to fall into the hands of any male heirs or spouses. If a daughter wasn’t born to the mother, then the mines would be willed evenly to the seven countries that made up Central America, and no one wanted that. In a world where male heirs were most desired, in our family, daughters held the keys to the kingdom. Once my mother passed, the mines would be mine, so I always made sure that I was just as involved as my mother whenever there was something going on with the mines, even if it was just reading up on the quarterly reports of nothing going on.
So, yes, I’d been able to choose what I’d wanted to do in this life because of my family’s wealth, and I didn’t feel guilty for it. Josephine Jennings had paid a huge price for our family’s legacy, and I honored her sacrifice by living the best life that I could.
As for my younger sister, Lindsey, she’d been of the same mind frame, choosing teaching as her passion in life. Lindsey had gone to college to become a teacher, and she had landed a job at one of the most prestigious colleges in the state as a history professor. She’d been doing well until three years ago, when she’d been diagnosed with epilepsy, a combination of generalized and focal episodes. Though it wasn’t life threatening at this point, Lindsey had enough seizures to render her disabled by law. Lindsey was only thirty, and way too young to live her life like this for the rest of her life. Luckily, she had a fulltime nurse, Pauline Heard, and though she was extremely expensive, she was the best in her field. When an illness hit so close to home, it made a person wonder how the lower-income families managed.
