Page 129 of Joker

I can hear the old phrasing as I say it. The careful way Cal used to wrap control in love and hand it to me like a gift.

It still makes me sick.

“Then he started taking pieces,” I say. “One at a time. Until I looked up and there wasn’t anybody left but him.”

Joker’s face gives me nothing. That should be impossible, considering what I’m saying. But he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pity me. Doesn’t soften into something unrecognizable just because I’m finally giving him the ugly version.

He just absorbs it. Quietly. Terrifyingly.

That might be the only reason I can keep talking.

“He liked cameras,” I say next, and my voice almost fails me there. “Inside the house. Outside. Hallways. Living room. Entryway. He called it security. Said it was because of his job. Said people might come after us because of something he was working.” I shake my head once. “That was bullshit. He wanted to know where I was all the time. What I was doing. Who I talked to when he wasn’t there.”

Joker’s jaw tightens. That’s the first visible thing he gives me. Barely anything.

Still enough.

I press on. “If I fought him on it, he’d make me pay for it later.” My fingers twist together briefly. I force them still. “Sometimes that meant yelling. Sometimes it meant days of him acting like I didn’t exist. Sometimes…”

The word catches.

I close my eyes for one second and finish it anyway. “Sometimes it meant he dealt me out a punishment.”

Silence.

Not empty silence. Not shocked silence. Something darker than that.

I feel Joker go still in a new way. Like even the air around him has changed.

I don’t look at him yet. I don’t think I can.

“He never saw a difference between wanting and taking if the thing he wanted belonged to him.” The words come flatter now, the numbness setting in where the fear used to live. “That’s how he thought. He married me, so in his head that meant I was his. My body, my time, who I talked to, where I went, all of it.”

My throat burns.

I can still hear Cal’s voice if I let myself. The smooth, reasonable tone he used when he was explaining why I was the problem. Why my resistance hurt him. Why every punishment was really my fault for making him do it.

I hate that part the most. That for a long time, I believed him. “Lexi made it worse,” I say, then immediately correct myself. “No. That’s wrong. He made it worse. But after she was born, everything changed.”

Joker doesn’t speak. He’s still just standing there, eyes on me, arms loose at his sides, not moving a fucking inch.

“He loved her in public,” I whisper. “Or acted like it. Enough that if anyone had seen him with her outside the house, they’d think he was…” I laugh once without humor. “Good.”

The word tastes rotten.

“But at home she was leverage. She was pressure. If I pushed back, he’d remind me he could make me look unstable. That he could take her. That nobody would side with a woman who couldn’t keep herself together.”

This time when I look at Joker, he’s already watching me in that same awful, unwavering way. He says nothing.

I have no idea how he’s managing it. I’m half-convinced if our positions were reversed, I’d already be breaking things.

“He hit me,” I say finally.

There it is. The plainest version. The ugliest one because it requires the least interpretation.

“He backhanded me. Threw me into walls. Grabbed hard enough to bruise.” My voice stays strangely even. Detached. “Not every day. That would’ve been easier, in a way. Easier to name. Easier to run from sooner.”

Joker’s eyes close once. Just once. Like he’s locking something down behind them by force. Then he opens them again.