Page 68 of Priest

Sadie’s stomach turns. “This wasn’t the plan.”

Joker chuckles, low and humorless. “Plans change when people forget who owns the board. You stay where you are. You learn everything you can about her. Her routines. Her friends. Who watches her. Who Priest sends when he can’t go himself.”

Her hand tightens over her stomach. “Ghost and Ink are already suspicious of me.”

“Then stop actin’ suspicious.”

“They’re not like the others,” she snaps, then instantly regrets letting that much heat into her voice. She lowers it before he can pounce. “They don’t miss things. Ghost watches everything without looking like he’s watching. Ink hears what people don’t say. They aren’t welcoming, and they’re the two most dangerous ones to have looking at me wrong.”

“Then do a better damn job,” Joker says, his voice dropping hard enough to make her go still. “You know what’s at stake for you.”

The words land exactly where he aims them.

The baby in her belly.

Her future.

The thin, fragile lie that she has any choices left.

Sadie closes her eyes for a second. “What do you need?”

“When Priest is distracted with his bitch, you slip in where you can,” Joker says. “I want routes. Accounts. Names. Who’s loyal, who’s pissed, who’s talkin’ too much. I want whatever Saints is hidin’, and I want it before that boy remembers he was raised by me.”

“He’s not a boy anymore.”

The words come out before she can stop them.

The silence that follows is vicious.

“No,” Joker says softly. “He’s worse. He’s a man who thinks he can pretend blood don’t matter.” A pause. Then his voice turns lazy again, which is somehow uglier. “You stay close, Sadie. You keep him lookin’ at her, and while he’s busy tryin’ to play house, you get me what I need.”

“And if I can’t?”

“You can.”

That’s all he says, and it isn’t encouragement.

It’s a threat.

Sadie looks toward the closed bathroom door, knowing behind it are the muffled sounds of the clubhouse beyond it. Men laughing somewhere down the hall. Boots passing. A life moving around her that she’s supposed to infiltrate and somehow survive.

“You’re useful because you’re inside,” Joker adds. “Don’t start forgettin’ that useful things can be replaced.”

Her throat tightens. “Yes.”

The line goes dead.

Sadie lowers the phone slowly, the quiet of the room pressing in around her. She’d told herself she could manage him. Feed him scraps. Keep the real damage contained. Maybe even steer him away from whatever would bring him too close to her door.

But Joker doesn’t want pieces.

He wants erasure.

She stands and smooths her expression before she catches herself doing it. Old habit. Old survival. Then she hangs the cut back where it belongs, letting her fingers linger on the leather a second too long.

She’ll stay close. She’ll watch. She’ll learn what Blue has that makes Priest look at the world like he might be able to keep something good in it.

And when Priest is distracted, she’ll find a way to give Joker enough to keep him patient.