Chapter Six: Exceptions and Honesty

“I’m hardly late-” I began to try and defend myself but with one withering glance the words dried on the tip of my tongue and I pushed back a scowl.

“And if you were a doctor, and you were even a minute late, and a patient died as a result would you say the same?”

“I-What?” I stuttered, but his eyes said he was dead serious. I mean, being 30 seconds late to an office job where no one was in danger of dying was not the same as whatever scenario he had just pushed onto me, “It’s not the same. This isn’t life and death.”

His eyes raked over my body, in a splintering look that made me want to curl into myself, throw my jacket over his eyes so I didn’t have to see them assessing me, analysing me as though I was pieces of hardware, that had gone haywire.

“Maybe you didn’t know Niklaus Artymov as well as you thought then,” the comment was somewhere between offhanded and the most important information ever. A confusing mess of something to process.

“You’re telling me this revenge you want to