Chapter 17 · Thread Count

"Let go of my arm." Levi's voice comes out flat, but the blood soaking through his cuff says different.

I don't let go. I've got two fingers hooked into his sleeve and I can feel his pulse jackhammering under the fabric, way faster than a man who's fine. "You're leaking through a two-hundred-dollar shirt in a federal drug-test corridor. Sit down."

"I have a hearing in nine hours."

"You'll have a stump if that reopens."

He yanks. I don't move. He's strong, but I've had my hands wrapped around worse men than him mid-fight, holding split eyebrows shut with two fingers and a prayer. Levi Grant is a commissioner with soft hands and a mean mouth. That's not the same thing as strong.

"Get off," he says, and there's real heat in it now, not the courtroom kind.

"Corridor camera's on you right now, bleeding, refusing treatment from the certified cutman standing right here." I tip my chin at the little red light blinking over the drug-test door. "That's a nice detail for your ethics panel.