COVENANT — Matt Murdock x Reader
Chapter 1
𑣲⋆ Synopsis: The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. If corruption is paid by the poor, you’re just glad the crisp surface of Benjamin Franklin’s jowly face has seen the shit between your ass cheeks one too many times. There’s no better, more emotionally constipated vigilante with a moral compass suffocating enough to kill Satan’s life support than the likes of Matt Murdock. However, he’s far from a match for a woman who would rather burn her own house down than give anyone else the keys.
𝜗ৎ Warnings: Reader is AFAB with she/her pronouns, story takes place during season 3 of Daredevil, canon-adjacent (Matt will be practicing law while being a vigilante for the sake of the story), mildly unreliable reader, girlflop reader, reader is thirty-five years old, swearing, unprescribed drug use, vague mentions of step-cest, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and rape, reader is extremely unlikable and makes poor decisions (but you know what? I love her. Cersei Lannister would love her. Shiv Roy would love her. Shauna Shipman would love her. That’s good enough for me). Alcoholism, abuse of power, public urination, internalized misogyny, reader is envious and thinks everyone is out to get her, reader thinks she’s smarter than she actually is, two cases of infidelity, sexual harassment, reader is deeply traumatized, first chapter is primarily reader-focused.
⋆𐙚 WC: 6,304
₊˚⊹౨ৎ ₊˚⊹
During His public ministry, Jesus once said, “You cannot serve both God and money.” He’d delivered the teaching to His disciples and followers during the Sermon on the Mount, His goal having been to warn them that human beings couldn’t have two masters demanding supreme loyalty. Serving money as a primary goal—whether it was greed, hoarding, or selling pictures of pedicured toes and bleached heels on FeetFinder to middle-aged men who couldn’t see their minuscule erections past their beer bellies and Tarzanian happy trails—conflicted with obeying God. Divided loyalty would always lead to spiritual compromise.
But then again, Jesus had been nailed to a cross by Roman soldiers without getting the chance to run his fingers through Christian Dior’s form-fitting silk, so what the fuck did he know?
It was probably because he was too busy dying for everybody’s sins. Not that anyone asked him to. Besides, you’d have died for everybody’s sins, too. Maybe not for the likes of God—probably for a dirty martini that actually tasted like stuffed olives and not the Ahvaz Field, but did it matter? Everyone was a slave to something.
Hell’s Kitchen was the epitome of mediocre. Gritty and dingy. Unforgiving. The moody, neo-noir atmosphere it had going on made it the perfect playground for vindictive vigilantes and cliché businessmen with corruption running through their veins. It was exhausting, hearing the same two names over and over again. Daredevil, this. Wilson Fisk, that. The only people who cared about whether the former was a hero or a life-threatening terrorist were the ones bored with their own mundane lives.
You did not fall into that category.
Manhattan was classy. Manhattan was sleek, sexy, and devoid of meaningless nothings. Tall skyscrapers, city lights, and skyline views from above. A forest of steel and glass where sun-drenched avenues acted only as rivers of light, and Art Deco spires stretched upward to catch the clouds. The Empire State Building. Central Park. The most annoying tourists you’ll ever have the displeasure of stumbling upon arguing about which one of them was Chandler Bing (spoiler alert: none of them).
But nothing compared to Blackwood.
A jagged, fifty-story monolith of midnight-tinted structural glass and brushed titanium that seemed to absorb the gray New York light instead of reflecting it, towering over the corner of Wall Street and Water Street in the heart of Lower Manhattan’s Financial District. A vertical fortress designed with the sole purpose to remind to the rest of the street that the woman running it was a deranged bitch with absolutely nothing to lose and everything to conquer.
The inside was cold, sterile, and aggressively expensive. Ring a bell? The three-story atrium lobby was lined with slabs of book-matched Nero Marquina marble, its deep black surface fractured by prominent white veins akin to lightning trapped in stone. A massive, floating geometric staircase crafted from darkened steel and reinforced glass suspended itself over a minimalist water feature, the faint, rhythmic trickling of the water providing the only acoustic mask for the sharp click of red-soled Louboutin heels echoing across the polished floors. No warm tones. No welcoming textures. No art on the walls. It existed as a palace built out of pure, unadulterated hubris, funded entirely by two billion dollars of toxic, volatile debt.
The first day you’d brought a team together had to have been no less than fifteen years ago. At the time, you were twenty. Aside from younger features and brighter lipstick, not much had changed since then. You remembered walking into the conference room to host the company’s first official meeting, trying your best not to let out the world’s most exaggerated groan at the sight of the people meant to work for you.
You swore up and down they hadn’t been this ugly when you hired them.
You didn’t say a thing out loud, because you didn’t need to. Despite your best efforts, the way your manicured brows had pinched together in visible distaste said far more than words ever could. Twenty of you were in the room—twenty of you overseeing buying up distressed, war-torn properties in Hell’s Kitchen following the the Avengers’ Battle of New York. Twenty too many. You could remember the stench of a tuna sandwich assaulting your senses, alongside a ruthless mixture of poorly-applied lipstick and the smell of cologne so disgustingly pungent, you’d scheduled an appointment with your gynecologist to make sure your ovaries hadn’t dried up like prunes.
And to be completely fair? Although they couldn’t call you ugly or poor, your employees weren’t exactly your biggest fans either.
At the time, they’d all been seated for individual meetings with HR, solely to share their opinions on their first day working for you. The results were... of a colorful variety.
The only person that’d been smiling that day was your best friend, Stacey Reeves. The two of you had known each other since high school; the only person to truly know you before your many accomplishments. You’d shared beds and rooftops together, tennis courts and discreet vodka flasks for prom night. Stacey was a good woman. Beautiful, no less. Black hair and brown doe eyes.
“How do I feel about working under her?” she repeated the question, glossy lips twitching as her gaze flickered between the head of HR and the camera being used for video evidence. She pretended to think for a moment, brows furrowing, until her smile gave her away. “I mean, come on. Are you serious? She’s my best friend. But I’ll be unbiased for the sake of business.”
She paused to shrug, shaking her head with a grin. “It’s amazing,” she concluded, tone thick with conviction, because she wasn’t saying it in order to nuzzle her nose into your ass for a bonus or extra vacation days. She’d meant every word. “In the office, there are boundaries. She’s my boss just as much as anybody else’s, and honestly? I like it. She’s in her element. She knows what she’s doing. She works the best when she has total and utter control over everything. That’s how you know Blackwood won’t be taking any hits anytime soon.”
“Miss Reeves, does this commentary stem from the implication of control issues?”
“No! Of course not, uh... is this—is this off-the-record?”
She had done her best, at the very least. But it begged the question, would poor, sweet Stacey have been so adamant on defending your honor if she’d known that you’d been fucking her boyfriend the last six months in the confines of dingy motel rooms rented under fake IDs? It was a tough call. Stacey was the kind of woman who was too forgiving for her own good. Whereas she claimed that it was her best quality, it made you want to slit her open from chin to anus like a pesky garden rabbit, but you didn’t. Because that was murder, and murder was illegal, so the next best option was to fuck the brains out of her boyfriend and introduce him to flavors beyond vanilla.
There was no malice towards Stacey to explain why you had done it—why you had initiated it. There was no malice towards your boyfriend either. The one you’d been dating the last three years. The one who’d spent the last three years packing your lunches, folding your clothes, and holding his tongue when you came home smelling of Cosmopolitans and sweat that had far too little to do with the sun. Truly, you didn’t resent either of them.
You did it because you could. It was as simple as that. Control was a finite resource in a city of eight million people, and if you didn't take it by the throat, it would take you.
If only the remaining interviews had gone as smoothly as Stacey’s. The man who’d followed after went by Arthur Vance. Head of Global Acquisitions. Silver hair. Gold cufflinks. A two-buttoned monument to daddy’s liquidity, and overall? A pedigree-obsessed suck-up with zero margin for error as his way of locking his lips around Machiavelli’s balls. In other words, you didn’t like him. That said a lot.
And he’d sat down fuming.
“I abstain from participating in this the traditional way,” had been the first words to come out of his mouth upon sitting down, fixing the head of HR with a glare sharp enough to cut glass, cheeks flushed with the side effects of public humiliations. “You want my thoughts on her? My professional opinion? She’s a fucking cunt with her head shoved up her own ass far enough to give herself a rimjob, and I fucking quit.”
The head of HR, to his credit, didn’t seem all that taken aback. Michael had known you ever since you’d first started the company. He’d grown well-adjusted to outbursts, tantrums, and the last of the average man’s patience withering into nothingness. “Mister Vance, if you would just take a moment to provide some context, please.”
It had started during the meeting. Your assistant—a fresh-faced NYU graduate whose name you hadn't bothered to learn, holding an iPad like a shield and sweating through a synthetic-blend blouse that practically screamed subletting in Queens—had given you twenty seconds to the presentation. The chatter had died when you’d walked in, Stacey taking her seat next to you.
For a moment, there had been nothing. Just the sound of your stilettos clicking against the floor like a particularly expensive omen, the smell of Dior clinging to your pulse points as you took your seat, smoothing down the fabric of your pencil skirt with precision that would always be more crafted than natural. Not that it mattered. They were beneath you and they knew it.
“We’ll start with Hell’s Kitchen,” you had commanded, leaning back and crossing one red-soled heel over the other. The smile on your face was sealed in matte, your gaze friendly and inviting. You’d wanted a casual atmosphere. Not because it was good for the company, but because you’d wanted it. “Vance, tell me we’ve secured the block on 45th and Tenth. If I find out Wilson Fisk’s front companies outbid us because you were too busy getting your prostate checked, I might have to use your neck as a tie rack.”
A few nervous titters had rippled through the room. Vance found no amusement in what he believed to be disrespect. Disrespect he had no interest in taking, not even from the CEO. He’d cleared his throat, adjusting his gold cufflinks with the kind of arrogance that immediately made the skin on the back of your neck prickle. He’d looked around the table, garnering silent support from the other aging directors before his eyes settled on yours.
“The numbers are tight, Miss Blackwood,” he’d said, his tone dripping with the kind of patronizing, paternal warmth that usually preceded a lecture on why women shouldn’t handle corporate credit cards. Sure, men were the ones running the world into the ground with wars, femicide, and genocide, but PMS was the real problem. “The market volatility after the Incident has everyone spooked. With all due respect, perhaps a more conservative approach is warranted. A company of this size shouldn't be run on manic impulse. It requires a certain firmness at the helm. A steady hand. Not emotional fluctuations.”
The room went so quiet, you could hear the faint, rhythmic trickling of the water three floors below. Stacey had stiffened next to you, her pen halting. Everyone else found themselves immobilized, actively holding their breath, realizing Vance had just crossed a line into territory that usually resulted in corporate executions. He was testing you, that was the conclusion you’d come to. He thought the way you handled things made you weak. He thought a girl from a trailer park would fold if he reminded the room of the cunt between her legs.
You hadn’t blinked. In fact, a smile had touched your face as you leaned forward until your elbows rested on the polished wood. There were levels to this. Levels that went beyond the fantasies in your head, ones that primarily consisted of Arthur Vance biting a curb with the help of your foot on the back of his head. He had actively challenged your authority, branding himself your enemy. He was just another man trying to take from you.
“Arthur,” you had said softly, your voice a purr that cut through the silence like a scalpel. “That was a very long, very exhausting way of telling everybody in this room that your balls haven’t dropped since 1984. Do you think because I let you sit at this table, you get to comment on the plates?”
Vance’s face had flushed a deep, ugly crimson. “I’m merely bringing to light practical—”
“No, you're vibrating at a frequency that’s giving me a fucking headache,” you had interrupted, your voice dropping an octave, becoming cold enough to freeze water. “Here’s a practical fact for you. I built Blackwood while you were still trying to figure out how to use a PDF. If you think my sopping wet vagina makes me emotional, let’s do a little experiment in corporate transparency.”
You hadn’t given him much of a chance to respond, standing up and adjusting the sleeves of your blouse. Your gaze, however, remained firmly on Arthur Vance, as if he were a mere bug you were deciding whether or not to crush with your heel.
“Take your cock out.”
The boardroom had collectively gasped. One of the junior analysts in the back looked as if he were about to faint. Stacey’s jaw had dropped, her eyes darting between you and Vance in absolute horror. Nothing could have prepared any of them for that.
“Excuse me?” Vance had sputtered, his chest heaving, hair practically standing on end. “This is highly inappropriate—”
“I said, take it out, Arthur,” you had repeated, tapping a manicured fingernail against the table, your tone calm enough to mimic the likes of his earlier condescension. Click. Click. Click. “Put it right there on the table. Cock and balls. Let’s see this steady hand you're talking about. Let’s see the majestic, masculine tool that qualifies you to talk down to me in my own goddamn building. Because if it doesn’t match the size of the ego you brought into this room, consider yourself fired.”
“You can't do this,” Vance had whispered, his voice cracking, looking around the room for support. No one looked back. Every single director was suddenly intensely interested in their cut-glass water tumblers. “This is sexual harassment. I’ll sue. I’ll take everything.”
“With what lawyers? The ones I pay for?” you’d whispered back, leaning forward ever so slightly. “You think influence is about who you know. I assure you, it’s about who I allow you to keep. Take your dick out, or get the fuck out of my sight. You have five seconds. Five. Four—”
Vance didn't wait for three. He stood up so fast, his leather chair slammed against the glass wall behind him. He’d grabbed his briefcase, his face a wonderful combination of humiliation, rage, and pure terror, and practically sprinted out of the boardroom, the heavy doors swinging shut behind him. His only consolation had been Michael’s words to him, promising him the matter would be dealt with, and wishing him luck elsewhere—though his tone lacked conviction, and he’d said it only after coaxing him into signing an NDA.
The final interview had been with a temp, sent by an agency in Brooklyn in order for the kid to develop some sort of idea about how business in New York truly functioned. The fact that you were a woman was a bonus, allowing them to further promote their inclusive, highly performative liberal agenda. You'd been ready to decline, unwilling to let amateurs slow the company down. However, any and all resistance disappeared when you’d first met the temp.
Theo Rockwell. Early twenties, just a little over a decade younger than you. He was still in business school. Dark hair styled in something swept-back, akin to a messy middle part. Piercing blue eyes. A killer jawline. Broar shoulders that not even his button-ups could hide from predatory eyes. He’d been quiet and professional, utterly respectful, but most importantly? The fuck-me eyes. Definitely the fuck-me eyes.
“She’s a very pragmatic woman, uh,” Theo had paused, a frown between his dark brows as he looked at the camera, realizing he’d have to choose his words very carefully. He’d cleared his throat. “Some people may not like the way she does things, but, uh... it’s what gets things done. That’s... all I have to say on the matter.”
In the end, none of it mattered. All of them could have entered the office and filed all the complaints in the world. Most of them did. The fact that none of it could touch you only served to remind you of your own solipsism. Whereas they saw a successful empire, you saw the exact fortress you had to tear the world apart to build. No fall from grace could await you—not when you had started at rock bottom.
There was the vice-like grip of utter control brewing at the tips of your fingers, making up for the childhood you had spent forfeiting your innocence to the man your mother had married. No scalding shower would ever strip you of the skin that had already been tainted, but it was impossible to acknowledge the skin beneath the armor that was your success.
₊˚⊹౨ৎ ₊˚⊹
Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
It was cold today. In the unforgiving way where the crisp autumn air seemed to bite what was exposed of your skin, but you gave it no thought. Your posture was reluctantly perfect, heels meeting pavement to produce a rhythmic click-clack as the doors to the building automatically parted for you. Inside, the sterile stench of bleach filled your nostrils, giving cause for your nose to scrunch slightly.
“Good morning!” one of the employees greeted you cheerily. The young woman stood up with a beautiful smile, all teeth and thick gloss. A pretty little thing. You made a mental note to chew her out for the provocative length of her skirt later. The hem sat above her knees, showing off the sheer, black stockings genuinely covering her legs. Was this how your business was being handled? Her tits probably did all the talking for her.
You returned a generous smile as you walked past her, raising a celebratory fist, as if garnering motivation and encouragement for today’s workload. “Good morning, Vanessa. Team. Let’s get some fine work done today, yeah?” Your tone bore the same cadence as the likes of a particularly patronizing motivational speaker, but the others seemed to eat it up. Vanessa, in particular, clapped and thanked you.
The smile didn’t leave your face as you made your way over to your office. “Stupid fucking cocksucker,” you said under your breath.
The glass door of your office clicked shut behind you, cutting off the low hum of the floor. You didn’t even drop your bag before heading straight for the desk, sliding open the top drawer to pull out the silver tray. Your fingers, slightly damp from a sudden spike of adrenaline, popped a single, chalky white pill from its blister pack. You swallowed it dry. It scraped against your throat, bitter and clinical, but it was the only thing capable of quieting the ghost currently trying to claw its way out of your chest.
You poured two fingers of whiskey into a crystal glass, not checking the time, just as the door unlatched. Stacey didn't knock. She walked in with a leather-bound folder tucked tight under her arm, looking like a deer that had successfully memorized the traffic patterns of a highway. Fifteen years since you’d stood in that first conference room together, fifteen years since you’d made Arthur Vance wish he’d never been born, and Stacey still carried herself with the faint, infuriating scent of high school innocence.
“We have a structural leak,” Stacey said without greeting you, dropping the folder onto the desk, letting it hit the wood with a hollow thud. “The short-interest on our commercial real estate portfolio in Hell’s Kitchen just ticked up past twelve percent. The Street’s sniffing blood because of all the Fisk noise.”
You took a slow sip of the whiskey, leaning your head back against the leather chair. “The Street can sniff my asshole. What are the actual numbers, Stace?”
“The numbers are a fucking heart attack,” Stacey responded, leaning over the desk, doe eyes wide and dead serious. “Our outstanding debt across the primary acquisition facility’s exactly two billion. When we structured the leverage with Red Lion National Bank, you signed off on a strict maintenance covenant. If our stock dips below one hundred and thirty, the bank triggers an automatic technical default. They’ll demand immediate repayment of the full two billion in cash within five business days, or they seize Blackwood’s entire asset base. We’re at a hundred and thirty-four.”
You let out a breathless, barely-there laugh that held absolutely zero warmth. To be perfectly candid? You loved it. The terrifying scale of the disaster made the blood pump through your veins like pure adrenaline—so prominent that it you could feel it now, even after chasing Lexapro with nothing but will alone. This was where you belonged, on the edge of a cliff, looking down at everyone else. “So the banks wanna measure their dicks with ours because some fat fuck in a white suit’s making New York look messy,” you said, crossing your legs and letting the red sole of your heel catch the light. “It’s unoriginal. It’s pathetic. We aren’t folding.”
“It’s not about folding,” Stacey countered, her voice rising, thick with frustration. “We don’t have the liquidity to absorb an acceleration. We need a capital injection or a major debt-restructuring plan before the closing bell. If we don’t petition the board for an emergency share issuance to dilute and raise cash—”
“No. Restructuring is for cowards who wanna spend the next decade asking permission from a middle-manager at Chase before they purchase a box of paperclips,” you interrupted, ego flaring up, hot and blinding. You weren’t going to let a piece of paper control you. You’d spent your entire life escaping people who wanted to dictate your boundaries. “We execute a debt-swap.”
Stacey blinked, her brow furrowing as she tried to catch up to you. “A debt-swap? With what collateral?”
You tilted your head ever so slightly, a hint of mockery flickering deep within your irises, as if you were subconsciously questioning your best friend’s competence. “We take our unencumbered residential properties in the Lower East Side, package them into an off-balance-sheet Special Purpose Vehicle, and use the new entity to secure a short-term, high-interest bridge loan from a secondary lender,” you drawled. “We take that fresh cash, dump it right back into the open market, and buy back our own stock. It’ll trigger a short-squeeze, force the price back up to a hundred and fifty, and blow Red Lion’s little covenant out of the water. Boom. Problem solved. The banks can go back to jerking each other off.”
Stacey stared at you, her mouth slightly open in that familiar admiration that always made you want to wrap your hands around her throat. “Jesus. That’s... it’s high-wire stuff. It isolates the toxic debt inside the SPV. But... what if the market doesn’t respond to the squeeze? If the stock doesn’t rally, the debt-service coverage ratio on that bridge loan will collapse within thirty days. How do we cover the interest?”
“We cut the fat.”
“Cut the fat?” Stacey’s eyes narrowed. “We’re already lean, fields-wise. To balance that kind of macro-deficit in a single quarter, you’re talking about massive operational lay-offs. We’d have to liquidate the entire administrative floor, the junior analyst pool, and half of acquisitions. We’d be throwing hundreds of people onto the street just to fund a speculative stock pump.”
You didn’t like that. No, not the reality of forcing employees out of their well-paid jobs and into a butchered economy where organic eggs cost an arm and a blowjob. You didn’t really care about that part. But the nerve for Stacey to so openly defy your idea? Who the hell did Count Cuckquean think she was? There was an involuntary twitch of your lips, barely there as you momentarily closed your eyes, breathing in through your nose.
Upon opening your eyes, you quirked a single eyebrow at her, your smile perfectly composed. “Then they can go find a shelter,” you said. “I’m the CEO, Stacey. I don’t run a soup kitchen, I run an empire. If my gamble pays off, Blackwood wins, the stock stays above one-thirty, and we hire a fresh batch of Ivy League graduates who actually know how to dress themselves. If it doesn’t pay off... well, they were gonna lose their jobs when the bank foreclosed anyway. It’s a clean corporate triage. Draft the SPV paperwork.”
Stacey stood there in the quiet of your office, unfortunately dominated by your sheer force of will. She couldn’t help it; she genuinely believed your hubris was genius. She genuinely thought you were saving the company, completely oblivious to the fact that you had purposefully made her CFO so that if the whole tower collapsed, the legal liability would land squarely in her lap. “Okay,” she whispered, closing the folder with a defeated nod. She turned around, her hand reaching out for the heavy glass door handle, her back completely exposed to you. “I’ll get the financial models drawn up before the market opens tomorrow.”
Of course she would, because she was just so loyal, wasn’t she? So annoyingly devoted and clean. She remained an anchor in shifting tides, tethering your soul to the safety that took the shape of her stupid fucking clipboards and leather-bound journals like she was born to do it. She always caved far too fast, and it made her no different from the rest of them.
“Hey, Stace?” you called out before she could leave, tone gentle enough to give her pause.
Stacey paused, turning back toward you with a smile. “Yeah?”
“How’s Mark doing? You guys still doing that cute little weekend trip to the Catskills, or is he still keeping you up at night?”
Stacey lifted her eyebrows and gave a teasing wink, shaking her shoulders with exaggerated enthusiasm at the mention of her beloved boyfriend. “Weekend trip to the Catskills,” she confirmed, voice dropping to a mock secretive whisper, “where he’ll be keeping me up at night.”
The moment she stepped out, your smile vanished. “Where he’ll be keeping me up at night,” you mimicked her, tone taking on a considerably high pitch. “Cunt.”
For a split second, you considered picking your phone up and giving him a call. Stacey hadn't been provoking you—far from it. She was blissfully unaware of what her best friend and boyfriend were doing behind her back. To you, her enthusiasm and playful little winks seemed like jabs, reminding you that she possessed something that would never fully belong to you. She could call it true love. Soulmates. Fate. Like he wasn’t some blue-collar dipshit who got hard while preaching about hypergamy or the male loneliness epidemic. He didn’t seem all that lonely when he was begging to cum inside your ass.
But then you saw it, on your phone. Notifications that had gone unnoticed after wine-induced slumber the past few days—weeks? Months? It didn’t matter. There were missed calls and unread messages from him, asking to see you over and over again. You put your phone down, a sense of satisfaction blooming in your chest as your shoulders relaxed. It all made sense now. The only reason why he was spoiling Stacey had to be because you were too busy neglecting him.
That had to be it.
The feeling continued to flower as you downed what was left in your glass, rising to your feet as the bleak rays of dimmed sunlight seeped into the office through your windows. You turned to look at them, the grey lights tracing the angles of your jawline—the ombré of eyeshadow meticulously applied. When your gaze dropped to the oblivious pedestrians fifty stories below, the feeling was amplified.
You watched the citizens of the city scurry like ants. It was a dizzying, intoxicating vantage point. Down there, life was a tangle of traffic and schedules; up here, ensconced in glass and silence, you were the undisputed architect of the skyline. The world below felt small, manageable, and entirely yours to command. You felt it as you pulled the hem of your skirt down with one hand, free hand working to open two of the windows until the cold air grazed your skin like an invitation. With your pencil skirt pooling around your ankles, the lace of your panties followed.
No one looked up. Not one of them was greeted by the sight of your bare cunt. They only stared ahead, because that was all life had in store for them.
The stream cut through the freezing air, a thin, pathetic arc of hot amber falling into the abyss. It didn’t feel cheap, it felt like a transaction. You were liquidating your excess directly onto the infrastructure that sustained them. It was a baptism they didn’t ask for and would never know they received. You watched the drop-off, losing the trail after ten stories as the wind atomized it into the grey haze, turning your waste into their weather. They would walk through it and wipe the rain from their glasses without realizing whose it was. That was the baseline—the natural law.
You didn’t blink. Didn’t feel the need to rush. The sheer, terrifying safety of your position settled deep into your spine—the absolute certainty that you could desecrate their entire reality from this height, and the system you built would still protect you, wrap you in silk, and call you a visionary in the morning.
By the time the windows had closed, the hem of your skirt had long since been wrapped around your hips, sleeves rolled up to your elbows. You found yourself back in your chair, ankles crossed beneath the desk, the smell of the piss-stained tissue in the corner bin drowned out by the smell of perfume. The vibration of your phone was silenced when you realized your boyfriend was messaging you.
The quiet of the penthouse floor was broken by two distinct, hesitant taps on the glass door. You didn't look up from the petrified wood, nor did you change your posture as you pulled the silk sleeve of your blouse back down to your wrist, securing the button with a sharp, metallic click. “Come in,” you called out, the command lazy and smooth, dripping with satisfaction that was utterly unearned.
The door swung open, and Theo stepped into the vacuum. He was wearing a charcoal suit that seemed just a little too tight in the shoulders, proof of the hours he’d spent at the Equinox on Greenwich Street trying to look like the kind of man who belonged in a room like this. He didn’t. The moment his heels crossed the threshold, his gaze flickered down to the corner bin, then back to you, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. He knew exactly what went on behind this glass door when the blinds were drawn. He knew that his entire professional future—the letters of recommendation, the analyst track, the six-figure starting salary he’d sacrificed his sleep for—hung entirely on whether he could keep you sufficiently entertained between the hours of nine and five.
You could’ve sworn he was practically vibrating with the desire to please you. You could see it in the way his hand lingered on the edge of your desk as he approached, his fingers twitching, ready to drop to his knees and slide his hands up your skirt if you so much as gave him a nod. On a normal day, when the noise in your head screamed too loud or when the numbers on the screen looked too red, you’d have taken advantage of that desperation and let him make a fool of himself on the marble. But right now? You didn't need the power trip. You were already flying higher than the clouds outside your window, the warmth of delusion humming in your belly like cheap champagne. You felt magnificent. Smug, sitting on a throne of leveraged debt, looking down at a little boy who thought he could buy his way into your good graces with a well-pressed tie.
There was something close to empathy in your eyes—mockery. “You’re sweating, Theo,” you said, leaning back in your chair. You didn't invite him to sit. “It’s unbecoming. What do you want?”
Theo’s cheeks flushed a faint, predictable pink, his hand retreating from the desk to clasp behind his back in a rigid stance. “I apologize, boss. It’s just... the compliance team’s been frantic since the acquisitions report leaked this morning. But I have news. We found a legal representative.”
You raised an eyebrow, a slight smile pulling at the corner of your lips. “A lawyer. Riveting. Did you find another silver-haired relic who wants to lecture me before he goes home to cry into his sparkling water?”
“Not a relic,” Theo said quickly, voice rising with that pathetic, ambitious earnestness you so thoroughly despised. “Given the nature of the cross-collateralization with Red Lion National Bank and the impending technical default on the two-billion facility, most of the white-shoe firms on Madison Avenue refused to touch us without a massive retainer upfront. They’re afraid of the Fisk fallout. But we put the company’s private investigator on it, and he flagged an independent counselor. Someone who specializes in high-stakes corporate mitigation and asset defense, but operates completely outside the standard institutional loop.”
He reached down, opening his leather portfolio to slide a crisp, cream-colored manila folder across the desk. “His name is Matthew Murdock. He’s based out of Hell's Kitchen. He ran a small firm with a partner named Franklin Nelson, but since the firm dissolved, he’s been operating independently. He’s taking on high-profile, highly complex structural disputes. The PI ran a full background check on him. His financials are lean, but his litigation record is pristine. He doesn't scare easily, and more importantly, he has a history of successfully navigating cases that involve... irregular banking practices in the West Side blocks.”
You reached out, your manicured fingernail tapping the edge of the folder before you flipped it open. Your eyes scanned the pages, absorbing the corporate mumbo-jumbo with the practiced ease of a robot. Columbia Law graduate. Top of his class. A brief, prestigious stint at Landman & Zack—the exact kind of predatory corporate shark tank you respected—before he walked away to open a pro-bono storefront operation like a complete dumbass. The folder was thorough, courtesy of the thousands of dollars you funneled into Blackwood’s private security budget. It had his medical history; blinded as a child in a chemical accident on Tenth Avenue. His residential address, his tax filings, his lack of significant personal assets, and a surveillance photograph taken from a distance. The photo showed a man walking down a gray Manhattan street, wearing a dark suit that looked a little worn at the cuffs, a pair of round, crimson-tinted glasses obscuring his eyes, and a sleek red-tipped cane cutting through the pavement ahead of him.
He looked sharp. Broken, but sharp. Like a man who’d been put back together with Elmer’s glue and bad intentions. Of course, the folder didn’t mention anything about him spending his midnights dressed in black ropes, beating human traffickers to a pulp in rain-slicked alleys, or hiding in the basement of St. Agnes Catholic Orphanage. Your PI was good, but he wasn’t a psychic. As far as the paper trail was concerned, Matthew Murdock was just an incredibly capable, blind lawyer who still chose to practice law in a city that was actively eating itself alive.
“A blind lawyer from Hell’s Kitchen,” you murmured, a genuinely amused laugh escaping your throat. It was almost poetic, your tone dripping with disbelief that almost sounded like genuine offense. “Sweetheart, did you hire me a charity case? Am I supposed to feel moved by his tragic backstory while the bank’s actively trying to liquidate my penthouse?”
“The PI guarantees he’s a shark,” Theo insisted, leaning forward just an inch too far, his eyes dropping to the open dip of your blouse before he corrected himself. “He’s already agreed to look over the SPV drafts you ordered Stacey to compile. In fact, he’s on his way to the building right now. His assistant called from the lobby five minutes ago.”
You closed the folder with a sharp snap, the sound echoing through the glass room. You leaned back, a sense of impending supremacy settling deep into your gut. A blind man with a cane and moral superiority sounded like the start to a poor porno, but you’d make use of his litigation record to tie the bank in knots, squeeze the short-sellers until they bled cash, and when the two-billion-dollar gamble paid off? You’d throw him a bone and a check, and send him back to his dingy little neighbourhood.
“Fantastic,” you said, looking at the temp with a smile that was cold enough to kill a winter crop. “Go down to the lobby and make sure Vanessa doesn't drool on him. And Theo?”
“Yes, boss?”
“Button your jacket,” you said, your tone dropping into that flat, cruel cadence that reminded him exactly where he stood on the food chain. “You look like a rent-boy about to ask for a tip. Get out.”
₊˚⊹౨ৎ ₊˚⊹
A/N: I hope this does well 😩 as always, feedback and criticism is always appreciated! This was definitely focused on building the reader’s character, but we’ll absolutely be building Matt’s arc up in the next chapter. I hope to write as little chapters as possible and somehow manage to cram everything into a few neat ones to save everybody’s time. Thank you for reading!
