Page 6 of Just One Little Bargain

A sharp knock on the stone archway behind me cuts through my thoughts. I jerk and bang my knee on the underside of the desk.

One of Hell’s messenger demons stands in the archway with his arms crossed, expression blank. They’re trained that way. Can’t tell if they’re delivering good news or a death sentence until they speak.

“Varkhael wants to see you.”

Oh no.

Every pair of eyes within hearing distance locks onto me, and my stomach drops so violently I’m concerned it might fall out. That happens to demons sometimes. Stress-induced organ displacement.

“Now?” It comes out embarrassingly squeaky.

The messenger doesn’t answer. He turns and walks away like he didn’t ruin my entire day with four words.

Someone whistles low from a few desks over. Zerakel. He’s enjoying this too much.

I stand and smooth down the front of my shirt.

Krell smirks as I pass him. “Good luck.”

He doesn’t mean it. Obviously. Krell has never wished me good luck in his entire existence. He’s wishing me spectacular failure.

The department falls away behind me as I move deeper into the administrative wing where the successful demons work. The ones with private offices, legendary contracts, and sons who don’t disappoint them constantly.

Black stone walls close in around me, swallowing the light except for torch flames jittering across the floor. Offices loom on either side, each arched doorway trimmed in bone or metal, their nameplates getting fancier and more illegible the further I go. Every so often, a muffled scream or laugh seeps from behind a closed door.

My father’s office is at the end of the hall. Past the mid-level brokers and the senior acquisitions team. All the way up where the real power sits.

The door is heavy obsidian, with an inscription I can’t read because the lettering is in Old Infernal and I never learned it properly. I asked my father once what it said. He told me if I had to ask then I didn’t deserve to know.

Cool. Great. Very encouraging parenting style.

I stop in front of the door, wipe my palms on my slacks, and knock before my nerve gives out.

“Enter.”

The door swings open on what’s going to be the worst conversation of my extremely long existence.

Chapter 3

Zavian (Milo)

I’ve been inside my father’s office twelve times in my life. Every single time, I walked out feeling worse than when I entered.

This is lucky number thirteen.

The worst part isn’t the heat, or the suffocating quiet, or even the stone desk that makes you feel like you’re awaiting sentencing. It’s the walls.

Framed contracts cover every surface, mounted behind protective glass. Legendary bargains. A politician who surrendered his soul for a presidency that reshaped a nation. An artist who traded eternity for one flawless masterpiece that still hangs in museums. A scientist who gave up everything for a discovery that rewrote humanity’s understanding of existence.

All of them signed in blood.

I’ve studied these contracts endlessly, trying to decode what my father accomplished that keeps eluding me. The answer is to be competent, but I keep hoping it’s more complex.

It isn’t.

A processing cart sits near the door, loaded with three new vessels waiting to be transferred to Hell’s main holding facility. Fresh acquisitions from this week alone. My father’s most recent work.

He sits behind his massive stone desk doing absolutely nothing, which is scientifically the worst possible sign. The enchanted ledger in front of him glows with distant contracts he isn’t reading. The light pulses, tracking bargains across the mortal realm as they’re made, and he doesn’t even glance at it.