Three Men, One Obsession

ANNA

The training room's full by the time the guard shoves me in - maybe ten women crammed into hard-backed chairs, all of us dressed in whatever ugly sack Violet decided passed for appropriate.

I take the nearest open seat because standing around looking lost isn't a look I've got patience for today.

The woman beside me glances over. Young, dark curls pulled back messy, eyes red-rimmed like she's been crying and hasn't fully clawed her way back from it.

"You new too?" she whispers.

"Yesterday." I keep my voice low. "You?"

"Three days." She swallows hard. "Ruby."

"Anna."

Violet strides in before we can say anything else, and the whole room stiffens at once.

"Posture," she snaps, circling like a shark that's already picked its meal. "Spine straight. Chin up. If a client walks in and finds you slouched like a sack of trash, that's a mark against you, and I don't enjoy explaining marks to Arthur."

She stops in front of a woman two rows up older than the rest of us, maybe mid-thirties, shoulders curved in on herself like she's trying to disappear.

"You," Violet says. "Stand."

The woman stands, trembling.

"Eyes up. Look at me when I'm speaking to you." Violet circles her slow, cataloguing. "You've got the posture of a woman who's given up before she's even started. That's not gonna sell, sweetheart. Nobody's paying good money for a corpse that hasn't finished dying yet."

"I'm sorry," the woman whispers.

"Sorry doesn't fix your fucking spine."

"Jesus Christ," I mutter, loud enough that a few heads turn. "She's shaking, not filing a tax return late. Ease up."

Violet's head snaps toward me. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me. She's terrified, not defective. Maybe try being a human being about it instead of a drill sergeant with a grudge."

"And who the hell asked you?"

"Nobody. I volunteered. Free of charge, even." I lean back in my chair. "Consider it a professional courtesy, seeing as you clearly could use the coaching yourself."

Violet crosses the room fast, stopping right in front of me, eyes raking down my body with the exact brand of contempt I've come to expect from her.

"You want to talk about coaching? Let's talk about you, then. A body like yours, and you think you've got room to run your mouth about who needs help selling themselves in here?"

"Careful," I say, unbothered. "Almost sounds like you're jealous, and jealousy's not a good look on somebody already this bony."

"You're fat," Violet snaps. "Fat, and mouthy, and about thirty seconds from finding out exactly how little either of those things matter once a client's got you bent over a...."

"Wow, okay, didn't realize we were doing full-on insults before lunch, but sure, let's go." I stand, chair scraping loudly against the floor.

"You know what's actually funny? You spend so much energy hating a body like mine, and yet here you are, starving yourself into a shape that looks like it'd snap in a strong wind, and somehow I'm still the one you're threatened by. That's not an insult, by the way. That's just fucking math."

"You don't get to talk to me like that."

"I just did. Twice, actually, if you're counting."

"You ungrateful little...."

"HEY."

The voice cuts through the whole room like a blade, and every single woman drops instantly silent, spines snapping straight, eyes dropping to the floor.

Arthur's in the doorway, hands in his pockets, and even from across the room I can feel the temperature drop.

"What the hell is this," he says, low, eyes moving between me and Violet. "I came to check on training. Not to walk into some goddamn marketplace shouting match."

"She started it," Violet says, fast, defensive. "She's been disrespectful since the moment I met her this morning. No respect for me, none for the process, none for anything. Not one single ounce."

Arthur's eyes land on me, and I hold them, chin up, refusing to give either of them the satisfaction of watching me shrink.

He crosses the room slowly, until he's close enough that I have to tip my head back to keep meeting his eyes. Then his hand closes around my jaw..... gripping hard enough that my teeth press uncomfortably against the inside of my cheek.

"It seems," he says, voice dangerously quiet, "you still think you're living in whatever pathetic little fantasy life you had before you walked through my gates. That's a problem. That's a problem I'm going to fix myself, since apparently nobody else has managed it."

"Let go of my face," I grind out, as best I can with his grip locking my jaw in place.

"You're going to spend the next two days locked up," he continues, ignoring me completely. "No food. No water. Just you, alone, with enough time to figure out exactly where you are and what that actually means. Maybe that'll reset whatever's left of that fucking mouth."

"Fuck you," I spit out, the second his grip loosens enough to let the words through. "You absolute piece of shit, you can't just..."

He releases my jaw and turns away like I haven't said a single word, already walking toward the door.

"Get her out of here," he tells the guard standing near the entrance, voice flat, done with the whole conversation.

"You're a fucking coward!" I shout after him, as the guard's hands close hard around my arms, dragging me backward. "You hear me? A coward! Hiding behind guards and locked doors because you can't stand the idea of a woman not falling apart in front of you!"

He doesn't look back. Doesn't even slow down.

The guard hauls me toward the door, and as I'm dragged past the row where that trembling woman was standing minutes ago, I catch it ..... the empty chair, the space where she was, nobody in it now.

She's gone.

Nobody in the room reacts. Nobody even glances at the empty seat, like it's the most normal thing in the world for a woman to simply stop existing mid-conversation.

My stomach drops cold, and even as the guard drags me down the hallway, even as I keep cursing every single name I can think of at the top of my lungs, some small, frozen part of my brain is still stuck on that empty chair, wondering exactly how many more of them I'm going to watch disappear before I figure out what the hell is actually happening in this place.