Page 2 of Covenant

“Now, now. I trust you’re all behaving?”

I drag my gaze away from Matthias and force my lips into a smile for my fiancée. “Of course, Jen.”

Matthias smirks, my words amusing him once more. “Wyatt and I were just catching up on old times.”

A small furrow creases Jen’s forehead. “Old times? I thought the two of you only met earlier this year.”

Earlier this year, when Matthias and his brothers bought out the company I work for. I started there as an intern years ago, slowly moving my way up the ladder one painfully excruciating rung at a time.

I’d almost made it, too. Partner had been so close I could have touched it.

However, Matthias—a man who only joined the company three months ago, at the behest of his siblings—was appointed in my stead.

If I didn’t hate him already, I would simply for that.

“We did.” I shoot Matthias a murderous glare, daring him to disagree. “I barely know this man.”

Matthias doesn’t say anything, just watches me as he takes a sip of expensive whiskey. His tailored jacket clings to his muscled frame, a dark lock of hair falling over his forehead. If anything, I wish he’d turned out hideous after everything he put me through, but no, he’s just as handsome as ever.

There’s a beat of awkward silence before Donald, who I forgot was even here, blurts out, “We were talking about The Firm.”

Jen rolls her beautiful blue eyes. “Oh, please. That old myth? Some mystical group who grants wishes to whoever asks? What a load of bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit,” Donald says earnestly. “I knew a guy back in college. He asked them to pay off his student loans and they did.”

I know the man he’s talking about and what happened to him after. Everyone in the small city of St. Dismas knows. “Remind me, what price did he have to pay?”

Donald falters, his skin paling. He must’ve forgotten that part of the story—and the misfortune of every desperate fucker who walks that doomed path through the graveyard of St. Dismas Church to leave their wish under the brick.

The Firm, whoever they are, will grant you whatever you ask for. Money. A perfect score on a test. A promotion. A new identity. Murder. Kidnapping. Whatever you want, they find a way to give it to you.

But it always comes at a price. That’s what they all forget. When you ask for what you want, you don’t know what the cost will be, or when it will come.

Just that it will.

It always comes and you have no say in the matter.

And, if you don’t follow through on your end of the bargain, your life is forfeit.

Donald falls silent, like he finally remembers why The Firm shouldn’t be discussed so openly. They aren’t the mafia.

They are far worse.

They don’t live in the shadows. They are completely invisible.

The assumption is that it’s more than one person, due to the feats they’ve pulled off over the past several decades. But not a single person claims to have ever met any of them. Many have attempted to uncover their identities over the years but failed.

The Firm’s legacy goes back generations and is commonly seen as a myth.

But they are real. Working in law has introduced me to too many of their victims to believe they live only in legend.

One thing is certain—The Firm runs St. Dismas. There isn’t a soul within the city limits who can outrun or outsmart them. Especially when so many continually seek their unique services.

I pity those people. Desperate fools willing to gamble it all away. Even at my lowest, during that fateful night all those years ago, I didn’t consider it.

It’s not worth it. The things they can demand of you, the cost they might ask you for…nothing should make you that desperate. You’d have to be so very weak to succumb, and I would never.

I’m not fucking weak.

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