Chapter 7 · He Counts

"Six." Levi didn't look up from the ledger. "That's how many times you've touched the door handle since you walked in. You want to leave, Volkov, or you want to ask me something?"

I took my hand off the handle like it had burned me. "I don't need to ask you anything."

"You've been standing in my doorway for four minutes." He turned a page. Didn't even bother looking up. "That's not a man who doesn't need anything. That's a man counting exits."

"Maybe I'm counting how many ways this room could go wrong."

That got his eyes on me. Gray, flat, unreadable — the same eyes that watched a squad of his own men march me toward a wall three days ago and didn't blink until the exact second it mattered. "And?"

"Three," I said. "You've got a knife under that ledger, a man outside the door who isn't half as quiet as he thinks, and me."

"You're not a way it could go wrong." He almost smiled. Almost. "You're the contract that says it won't."

I hated how true that was.