Chapter 30 · Still First

"You're bleeding on my floor." I said it before he even got the door shut, before the rain off his coat finished hitting the tile.

Dimitri didn't answer right away. He just leaned there, soaked through, one hand pressed flat against his ribs like that would hold anything in. Blood was coming through his fingers anyway, dark and fast.

"Missed a rib," he said. "Barely."

"Barely." I crossed the room and grabbed the front of his shirt, and he let me, which told me exactly how bad it was. Dimitri Volkov did not let people grab him. Not even me. Not usually. "Sit down before you fall down and make me watch."

"You'd like that. One less name on your payroll."

"Shut up and sit."

He sat. I got the kit off the shelf, the same one I'd used on him a dozen times since the contract started — since I stopped being his prisoner and started being the one who signed his checks. Funny how that flipped. Funnier that neither of us talked about it straight.

I cut his shirt open with the shears.