Chapter 1: Working for the weekend
The fluorescent lights buzzed like trapped hornets overhead. Their stark glare bleached the color from everything, reflecting harshly off the glass walls of the conference room and the polished steel legs of the table. The air hung thick, suffocating, saturated with the cloying mix of a dozen different men’s colognes clashing – woodsy, aquatic, sharp citrus notes – overlaid with the faint, ever-present tang of fear-sweat. Eleven men sat rigid in ergonomic chairs, eyes fixed on the tabletop, on the ceiling tiles, anywhere but at the figure pacing at the head of the room.
Victoria Vance didn't pace. She stalked. Her stilettos, blood-red and sharp enough to puncture steel, struck the industrial carpet with precise, venomous clicks. Click. Click. Click. Each one a tiny detonation in the silence. Her tailored ivory suit, impossibly expensive, strained across her chest. The blouse gaped slightly between the buttons, revealing a hint of black lace. Her hips flared dramatically beneath the jacket’s sharp cut. Her face, sculpted and sharp-featured beneath a helmet of perfectly blown-out blonde hair, was a mask of icy fury.
"Pathetic," she spat the word like a shard of glass. Her voice, usually a low, commanding purr, was a whip-crack. "This? This is the best you could manage? After three days?" She snatched a thick report off the table, its pages flapping uselessly. "It reads like a toddler scribbled it during naptime. Just… drivel. Meaningless, incompetent drivel."
Her gaze swept over them, a predator assessing weak prey. It landed on Carl Davies, sweating visibly through his pale blue dress shirt. "Davies. The market analysis section. Who gave you permission to use crayons? The projections are so far off base they’re orbiting Neptune." She slammed the report down in front of him. Papers skittered across the polished wood.
Carl flinched. Vance, the raw data from Finance was delayed, I had to extrapolate—"
"Excuses are the mating call of the mediocre, Carl," Vance cut him off, leaning forward, placing both hands flat on the table. Her posture pushed her chest forward aggressively. "Did you extrapolate with your eyes closed? Did you just pull numbers out of your…" She let the word hang, thick with implication. Carl’s face flushed crimson, sweat beading on his upper lip. He stared fixedly at her knuckles, white where she pressed them into the table.
She straightened, turning her venom on Ethan Shaw next. "Ethan. The competitive landscape. Did you even bother to check who acquired Veridian Dynamics? Or did you just copy-paste last quarter’s obsolete garbage? Because that’s what this," she jabbed a perfectly manicured fingernail at the document, "smells like. Obsolete garbage."
"It was a holding company acquisition, Ms. Vance," Ethan mumbled, his voice barely audible over the hum of the lights. "The core entities remain the same competitors—"
"Don't correct me, Shaw," she hissed, leaning into his space. The overpowering scent of her expensive, floral perfume mixed nauseatingly with his cheap drugstore cologne. "Don't you dare correct me. Your job isn't to think. Your job is to execute. Perfectly. Which you failed at. Spectacularly." She straightened again, raking them all with that glacial stare. "All of you. You think because you have degrees and wear suits you're worth the oxygen you waste? You're replaceable. Utterly disposable. I could find smarter monkeys in a fucking zoo."
The silence deepened, thick and viscous as tar. The buzzing lights sounded louder. The cologne seemed to thicken in the air, pressing down. Tom Reynolds, usually stoic, clenched his jaw so tight a muscle jumped in his cheek. Mark Henderson stared at the abstract art on the wall, his breathing shallow. Fear, sharp and metallic, radiated off them in waves. Humiliation. A simmering, impotent rage.
Vance surveyed them, a cruel twist to her lips. "Well? Nothing? No more pathetic bleating? Just sit there like stunned cattle waiting for the bolt?" She shook her head, a dismissive flick of blonde hair. "Get out. All of you. Re-do it. Tonight. Every single page. I want it flawless on my desk by 7 AM sharp. Or start polishing your resumes. And trust me, I will ensure no one in this city touches you with a ten-foot pole when you crawl out of here."
She turned her back, a gesture of supreme dismissal, walking towards the window overlooking the sterile cityscape. Her silhouette against the glass, sharp and imposing.
Carl Davies didn't move. He was still staring at the spot on the table where she’d slammed the report. His breathing hitched. A vein throbbed in his temple. Ethan Shaw glanced at him, then quickly away, his own hands trembling slightly where they lay flat on the tabletop.
Then, without a word, without even looking up, Carl Davies’s hands went to his belt. The metallic clink of the buckle seemed absurdly loud in the quiet room. He fumbled for a second, then yanked down his zipper. The rasp of the teeth was harsh. He shoved his trousers and underwear down just past his hips.
His erection was already thick, flushed, painfully hard. A stark, vulnerable intrusion in the clinical corporate space.
Vance, sensing the shift in the dense silence behind her, started to turn, a fresh wave of contempt already forming on her lips. "What are you—"
Tom Reynolds, who sat beside Carl, didn't hesitate. His face was blank, wiped clean of expression except for a terrifying vacancy in his eyes. He pushed his chair back roughly, the legs scraping the floor. In one fluid, brutal motion, he stood, grabbed Carl by the shoulders, whipping him around to face the table. Carl grunted, half bent over, his exposed skin pallid under the fluorescents. Tom shoved him hard, forcing his chest onto the cold, polished surface. Reports crumpled under Carl’s weight.
Tom wasn't gentle. He grabbed his own cock, already stiffening against his chinos, a grotesque inevitability. He spat roughly into his palm, slicked himself once. Then, with a harsh, guttural sound, he thrust forward.
Carl gasped, a sharp intake of breath that was almost a sob, his fingers scrabbling uselessly on the shiny tabletop. His eyes squeezed shut.
The room froze for a fractured second. Vance stood rigid by the window, her back still half-turned, her furious dismissal curdling into stunned disbelief. Her mouth hung slightly open, the color draining from her sculpted face. The only sounds were Carl’s ragged breathing, the wet, rhythmic slap of skin against skin as Tom drove into him with grim, efficient force, and the relentless, indifferent buzz of the overhead lights amplifying the horror unfolding beneath them.
Mark Henderson, still seated, watched. His expression wasn't disgust, or surprise, or even lust. It was something colder. Detached observation. Like noting a glitch in a spreadsheet. His hand drifted slowly, deliberately, towards his own belt buckle.