Page 130 of Priest

“Ain’t that a kick in the balls?” he said, almost delighted. “I always told my kid women were good for nothin’. You just proved it to him.”

Lena sobbed harder. “Please. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Joker murmured. “You are.”

The gunshot didn’t echo the way it does in movies.

It was smaller than that. Closer. A violent crack that split the room and folded back into itself before my mind could catch up.

Lena’s body slackened at once. Her knees buckled, and the rest of her followed, dropping to the floor without resistance, as though whatever had been holding her upright had simply been cut loose.

For a fraction of a second, my mind refused to accept what my eyes were seeing. It searched for movement. A breath. Any sign that this could still be undone.

There was nothing.

The scream that tore through me never made it past the gag. It lodged in my throat, jagged and suffocating, forcing tears down my face as my whole body shook against the ropes. I had seen blood. I had seen trauma. I had stood in emergency rooms where life and death fought over the same breath.

Nothing prepared me for watching a woman I knew collapse in front of me because of choices I still didn’t fully understand.

Sadie sobbed once, clutching her baby tighter. His thin cries rose again, frightened by the violence in the room. She squeezed her eyes shut, her face pale enough to look bloodless, as if refusing to see it could make her less responsible for being there.

Joker stepped back from Lena’s body with the detached irritation of a man moving around spilled trash. He adjusted his grip on the gun and tilted his head.

Listening.

A deep concussion slammed through the building from below.

The floor shuddered beneath my feet. For one wild second, I thought panic had distorted the world around me. Then it came again, followed by gunfire and men shouting over one another. Something heavy gave way with a metallic scream.

Joker’s head snapped toward the floor.

The cries from downstairs shifted. They were no longer only pleas for release. There was movement now. Scrambling feet. Voices barking commands. The hard rhythm of organized force pushing through chaos.

Joker swore viciously. His composure cracked just enough for me to see the calculation underneath.

“They’re here,” he spat. “Brought a damn army. My son couldn’t fight his own battles.”

He grabbed Sadie by the arm hard enough to make her stumble. “Move. We’re out of here.”

“I—Bryce—” she choked, struggling to keep hold of the baby as Joker dragged her toward the back of the office.

There was another door I hadn’t noticed, half-hidden behind a filing cabinet. Joker kicked it open, revealing a narrow hallway beyond with concrete walls and dim emergency lighting. Not an entrance. An escape.

He cast one final look at me, cold and assessing.

“You were gonna make me rich,” he said. “And it was gonna kill him.”

Another crash sounded below.

Joker’s mouth flattened. “Shame. But this isn’t over.”

Then he hauled Sadie through the doorway. The door slammed behind them, leaving me alone with Lena’s body and the distant roar of war rising from the floor below.

The baby shifted again, and a hard, low pain tightened across my stomach. I whimpered against the gag, twisting harder against the ropes. My wrists were slick now, skin torn where I’d fought too hard, but the knots held.

Boots pounded in the hallway outside.

Not Joker’s slow, predatory stride. These were faster. Purposeful.