Page 185 of Joker

“You always this stupid?”

That gets a little laugh out of him too. Then his voice shifts just enough to lose some of the false warmth. “She embarrasses me,” he says. The words are quiet. Matter-of-fact. And somehow that’s worse than yelling ever could’ve been. “She runs off with my kid, hides behind criminals, makes me waste time and resources tracking down a woman who should’ve known better than to make this difficult.”

My entire body goes still again. Not because I’m calm. Because rage just moved from hot to lethal.

My kid.

There it is.

That ownership. That entitlement. That disgusting, casual way he says it like Lexi is a stolen wallet and not a little girl with nightmares and a stuffed bunny and a laugh that sounds like the first good thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

When I speak again, there’s enough violence in my voice to strip paint. “You ever call Lexi yours like that again, I’ll cut your fucking tongue out.”

Silence.

Not long. Just long enough that I know I hit something.

Then Cal laughs again, but it’s thinner this time. Meaner. “Touch a nerve?”

“You don’t get to talk about her.”

“I made her.”

That one.

That one almost does it.

My hand flexes once around the phone, knuckles white enough to ache. I want him in front of me so badly it’s making my teeth hurt.

“She cries for me sometimes,” he says conversationally, like he’s discussing weather. “Did Raven tell you that? Little girl gets upset and starts asking for Daddy when she’s scared enough.”

That is such a filthy fucking lie I almost black out for half a second. Not because I believe him. Because he would say it anyway. Because he knows exactly where to aim. Because he wants me imagining Lexi crying and confused and reaching for the wrong man just so he can feel like he still has some kind of hold over them.

He doesn’t. He never fucking will again.

“She doesn’t remember you,” I say, every word sharpened to a point. “And if she did, she’d learn fear before she learned your face.”

The line goes quiet for a beat. Then his tone changes completely. The smile drops out of it. The warmth disappears. What’s left is something colder. Something more honest. “Careful,” he says softly. “You’re getting awfully attached to things that don’t belong to you.”

That almost makes me laugh.

Almost.

Because if this pathetic bastard thinks belonging is still something he gets to decide, he’s dumber than I gave him credit for.

I lower my voice. Make it mean. “She belongs to herself,” I tell him. “That little girl belongs to herself. And the only thing either of them has from me is protection.”

He scoffs. “Protection?” Then he chuckles under his breath like he’s picturing something funny. “Is that what she told you? That she needed saving?”

I don’t answer. I don’t need to.

He takes my silence as permission to keep digging. “She always did know how to make herself look soft when she wanted something,” he says. “Big eyes. Quiet voice. A couple bruises in the right light and suddenly every idiot with a hero complex starts thinking she needs rescuing.”

My vision narrows so fast and so hard I can hear my own pulse in my ears.

If he was standing in front of me right now, he’d be dead already.

Not maybe. Not eventually. Already. And I think he hears some version of that in the silence because he keeps going, voice slick and ugly with self-satisfaction.