Page 186 of Joker

“Let me guess,” he says. “She’s got you feeling real special too, huh? Like you’re the first man who ever made her feel safe. Like you’re different.” He laughs softly. “She’s good at that.”

I smile. Actually smile. Because he’s made a mistake.

A big one.

He thinks if he talks about her like she’s manipulative, weak, damaged, or deceitful, I’ll doubt her. He still doesn’t understand the kind of man he called.

“She never had to convince me,” I say.

The confidence in my voice must throw him because he goes quiet again.

I keep going. “She didn’t need to sell me a damn thing. I took one look at her and knew exactly what kind of man you are.”

His breath changes on the line. Subtle. Tighter.

Good. Now we’re getting somewhere.

“You don’t know me,” he says.

“No,” I agree. “I know enough.”

He lets out a short breath through his nose. “And what’s enough, exactly?”

I shift my grip on the phone and glance once toward the common room where I know Raven and Lexi are still inside this building, still safe, still breathing.

Then I answer him honestly. “Enough to know she ran from you bleeding.”

The line goes dead fucking silent. Not because the call dropped.

Because I hit the truth hard enough to split whatever mask he was wearing clean down the middle.

And when he finally speaks again, the civility is gone. What’s left is colder. Sharper. A lot more dangerous. “She’s still my wife.”

“No,” I say. “She’s the woman you’re never touching again.”

His laugh this time is all teeth. “We’ll see.”

“No,” I tell him, voice dropping lower. “You won’t.”

That lands.

I know it does because his breathing shifts again, just enough to tell me the call isn’t going the way he thought it would. Let him feel wrong-footed. Let him feel threatened. Let him understand he didn’t call some random brother who’s gonna posture and fold.

He called me. And I’ve buried less for less. Then he says the thing that seals his fate so completely I almost feel sorry for him.

Almost.

“You know what I miss most?” he says, voice turning ugly-sweet again. “Either the way she sounds right before I’d take her without asking or the way she sounds when she realizes fighting’s only gonna make it worse.”

Everything in me goes black around the edges.

There it is.

The thing he wanted to say from the start. The thing he called to say. The thing he wanted me to hear so I’d picture it.

Raven scared.

Raven cornered.