Three Men, One Obsession

ANNA

I stay frozen for a long time after the door next door clicks shut, straining to hear anything else - footsteps, breathing, anything - until the silence stretches so thick and complete I can't tell if I imagined the whole thing.

I don't imagine things like that. I know I don't.

I get up eventually, legs unsteady, and cross to the wall behind my headboard, pressing my palm flat against it like that might tell me something.

"Hey." My voice comes out low, careful, nothing like the fury I threw at Arthur an hour ago. "Hey, can you hear me? Are you okay?"

There was nothing.

I knock, soft at first, then harder, knuckles against plaster.

"Hello? I heard you. I heard ..... whatever that was. Are you hurt?"

Still nothing. Not even a shift, a breath, a single sign that anyone's alive on the other side of this wall at all.

"Please," I try again, quieter now, some of the fight draining out of the word. "You don't have to say anything. Just .... knock back. Once. Just let me know you're still there."

The silence doesn't answer that either.

I slide down the wall eventually, back against it, knees pulled to my chest, and just sit there, because there's nothing left to do with my body except let it stay still while my mind does something considerably less still.

I think about Elliott.

I think about the version of him from three years ago, the one who spilled wine on my shoes at a party and apologized so earnestly I laughed instead of getting annoyed. The one who learned my coffee order within a week and never once got it wrong after that.

When did it start? That's the question that won't leave me alone, turning over and over in my skull like a stone I can't put down.

Was there a version of him, somewhere in the last three years, who was already capable of this and I just never saw it? Or did something break in him slowly, one bad decision compounding into the next, until the man who used to memorize my coffee order became the man who poisoned it instead?

I don't know which answer scares me more.

I think about my mother, probably calling our apartment right now, getting my voicemail, assuming I'm just busy, not yet worried, not yet suspicious, because why would she be.

I think about Abby, my oldest friend, who texts me stupid memes at least three times a week and hasn't gotten a single reply from me today.

Has anyone noticed yet? Has anyone started to wonder? Or is it still early enough that my absence just looks like a woman who forgot to check her phone?

I sit there a long time, running through all of it, grief and fury and disbelief circling each other without ever quite landing anywhere solid, until exhaustion finally wins the argument my brain's been having with itself, and I drift off sitting upright against the wall, chin dropped to my chest.

---

The door opening jolts me awake.

My neck screams in protest the second I try to lift my head, stiff and sore from sleeping sitting up, and I press a hand against it, wincing, as I blink against the morning light spilling in.

A woman's standing in the doorway.

Beautiful ... genuinely, striking beautiful, sharp cheekbones and dark hair scraped back tight, but there's something almost unsettling about how thin she is, like she hasn't eaten a full meal in longer than anyone should go without one.

I push myself up off the floor, joints protesting, and she watches the whole clumsy process without offering to help.

"Violet," she says, once I'm upright. "I'll be training you for the next few weeks. After that, you'll be assigned a room."

"Training." I rub the back of my aching neck. "For what, exactly? What the hell is this place?"

"Obsidian." She says it, like the word should already mean something to me. "It's a firm. For prostitutes."

The word lands like a slap, even though some sick, exhausted part of me already half-expected it after last night.

"And whoever you were before we bought you," she continues, unbothered, "that ends the moment you crossed the gate. Doesn't matter who you used to be. Doesn't matter what you used to do. None of that exists here anymore."

She drops a bag onto the bed.

"Clothes. Change. You stink."

I stare at her for a second, genuinely almost impressed by the sheer economy of the insult.

"Wow. And here I thought getting drugged, kidnapped, and choked against a wall was the worst part of my night. Turns out I was missing out on a fashion critique too. Truly a full-service establishment."

Something flickers across her face - not quite a surprise, closer to mild interest, like she wasn't expecting the new girl to have anything left in her tank this early.

"Get dressed," she says, already turning for the door. "A guard will take you to the training room when you're ready."

"Can't wait."

She's gone before I can get another word in, the door left open behind her this time, and I sit there a second longer, staring at the bag on the bed, before I finally drag myself up to see exactly what fresh humiliation's waiting inside it.