Page 67 of Priest

Protected, Priest calls it.

Watched is closer to the truth.

Sadie sits on the edge of the bed with her old property cut folded neatly over the back of the chair, a reminder that she’s here on borrowed grace and everyone knows it. Her hand drifts to her stomach without thought. Not comfort. Not tenderness. Instinct, maybe. Grounding. Proof that there’s still one piece of this mess she can touch and call hers.

The burner phone vibrates once on the metal nightstand.

Once is all Joker ever gives.

She goes into the bathroom, turns on the sink, then the shower. Answers without a greeting, Joker’s voice cuts through the line before she can draw a full breath.

“You’re fallin’ behind.”

No warmth. No pretense. Just pressure.

“They don’t talk, I tried telling you before,” Sadie replies, keeping her voice even because fear has always fed him faster than obedience. “Not about anything that matters. This club’s locked down.”

“That’s ’cause you ain’t where you’re supposed to be,” Joker snaps. “You were sent there to get close to Priest. Not sit in a room waitin’ for somebody to hand you secrets.”

Her jaw tightens. “I am close.”

“You in his bed?”

The question is crude on purpose. It always is with Joker. He likes making people feel dirty before he gives them orders.

“No,” she says, measured enough that it doesn’t sound like a flinch.

Silence stretches over the line.

“That’s a problem,” Joker says finally. “Means you ain’t got leverage.”

“I can’t get into his bed,” Sadie says, bitterness slipping through before she can smooth it away. “The bitch is back.”

That gets his attention. She feels it in the silence, the way it sharpens instead of empties.

“Which bitch?” he asks.

“The one he was fucking,” Sadie says. “The one he broke his rules for. The one who walked out and still owns him.” Her fingers curl into the blanket beside her thigh. “She’s pregnant. Seven months.”

Joker doesn’t answer right away.

Sadie hates that more than the yelling.

“With his baby,” she adds, because if she has to say it, she might as well make it useful. “And he thinks he wants them. Her and the baby both. He told the whole club about her. Claimed the kid. Claimed her as his Old Lady like it was everything he’d ever wanted.”

When Joker speaks again, his voice is calm in a way that makes her spine prickle. “He don’t get that.”

“No,” Sadie says quietly. “He doesn’t.”

“He don’t get to build nothin’ outside me,” Joker continues. “He don’t get permanence. He don’t get a woman, a kid, and a pretty little future like he crawled out from under what I made him.”

Sadie presses her lips together, and for one reckless second, she almost says the thing she shouldn’t. That Priest already did crawl out. That Saints isn’t Dead Man’s Hand with a cleaner floor. That men look at him and follow because he doesn’t need to keep them scared to keep them loyal.

She swallows it.

Joker would hear too much.

“You’re lookin’ at this wrong,” he says. “If he thinks he wants her, then we use her. If he thinks that baby makes him whole, then that’s where he’s soft.”