Page 142 of Priest

“I’ve got to tell him what I can,” I said quietly. “Their son deserves the truth I can give him tonight.”

The words scraped on the way out. I hated asking her to reach back into that room when she had only just fought her way out of it. Hated needing one more thing from her when she was exhausted enough to barely hold herself upright. But grief without answers could turn mean fast, and Ledger was already standing too close to the edge.

Blue looked down at the baby for a second, thumb brushing once over the blanket wrapped around him. When she lifted her eyes again, tears were already slipping down her cheeks.

“I keep seeing it,” she admitted. “Every time I close my eyes.”

My stomach tightened. I reached up and wiped the tears away with my thumb.

“The office,” she said. “Lena.”

I didn’t interrupt. I just stayed still and let her get there in her own time.

“She came in through the hallway behind the office. I don’t think she realized what she was walking into until Joker heard her outside the door.” Blue swallowed hard, her voice scraped thin from labor and everything that had come before it. “He dragged her in by her hair.”

I stared at the blanket over our son because looking straight at Blue while she told me felt like too much and nowhere near enough.

“She tried to lie,” Blue went on. “Said she came to tell him you weren’t at the clubhouse. That you hadn’t gotten his message.”

My jaw tightened.

“She was terrified,” Blue whispered. “And she kept saying she was sorry. She looked at me like she knew it was over.”

I lifted my eyes back to her.

“She said it was all her fault. That she never meant for it to go that far.” Blue’s breath caught, and she looked down at the baby again before forcing herself to continue. “She told me to tell Ledger she was sorry. Said the truth was in a journal locked in the safe in the corner of her closet. She said he knows the code.”

The words landed slow and hard.

“A journal,” I repeated.

Blue nodded. “She said it would explain everything. Then Joker laughed at her.”

Her voice flattened in that dangerous way people’s voices do when they’re trying not to feel what they’re describing.

“He told her she was never the plan. That she was extra. A bonus.” Blue shut her eyes briefly. “He said the intel she gave wasn’t worth much on its own, but that wasn’t the point. The point was proving Dead Man’s Hand could get inside the club. That even your Old Ladies could be pushed into betraying you.”

The hit of that went deep.

Our son shifted in his blanket and made a tiny, irritated sound. Blue looked down immediately, smoothing her hand over his chest until he settled.

Then she looked back at me, eyes bright with exhaustion and grief.

“He said she proved what he always told his kid about women.”

A cold, familiar rage slid through me.

“And then he shot her,” Blue said.

The room held still around us.

I’d known Lena was dead the second Blue told me in the warehouse and I sent men upstairs to her, but hearing it laid out like this made it real in a way the warehouse hadn’t allowed. The warehouse had been noise, blood, and urgency. This was what survived after the noise died down.

I rubbed a hand over my jaw and looked toward the door.

“I’ll be right outside,” I told her.

Her fingers caught my wrist before I could step away. “Don’t tell him everything in the waiting room.”