Between Points

Elena served, the rubber ball cracking against her padel racket at exactly the moment her phone buzzed in her bag. Again. The third time this morning.

"Your serve," called Marcus, her friend of twelve years, her business partner, the man she'd trusted with half her life's savings. He bounced on the balls of his feet, sweat darkening his collar, everything about him screaming normal Sunday morning casual except his eyes.

She'd noticed it last week—the slight pauses before he spoke, the way he angled his body away from her desk at work. Her corporate spy consultant had confirmed it yesterday: someone close was funneling client data to their competitor. Someone with access to everything.

"Eleven-nine," Marcus said, checking the scoreboard. "You're spiraling."

Elena laughed, but the sound scraped her throat. "Just tired. The audit's killing me."

"The merger," he corrected smoothly. "You mean the merger."

Her blood stilled. She hadn't told him about the merger talks. Not yet. Not unless—

Unless he already knew.

The game continued in brutal silence. Padel was their ritual, Sunday mornings at seven, bodies moving through patterns etched by years of friendship. But now every swing felt like a weapon, every defensive return a parry. Marcus played aggressively, taking risks he never took, winning points he usually surrendered.

"Match point," he said, and for a second, she saw something else in his face—pity? Regret? Or was she projecting the horror she'd felt since Thursday, since she'd found the encrypted files on her home network, traced them to an IP address that couldn't be coincidental?

He smashed the final shot into the corner. Unreachable.

"Good game," he said, extending a hand over the net.

Elena looked at his hand—tan, scarred from a biking accident she'd bandaged herself three years ago. The same hand that might have sold her out for thirty pieces of silver, or stock options, or whatever corporate spies charged these days.

"Marcus," she said, voice shaking. "The IP address 192.168.1.47. Does that mean anything to you?"

His face changed. All the casual warmth evaporated, leaving something stark and unrecognizable. "How long have you known?"

"Since Thursday. Since I hired someone to follow the digital trail."

"You hired a spy," he said, almost admiringly. "To catch a spy."

"To catch my friend."

They stood there on the padel court as other players arrived, their Sunday morning ritual fractured forever. "The competitor offered me partnership," Marcus said quietly. "It wasn't personal, Elena. Business never is."

"Friendship is," she said, and walked off the court, leaving him alone between points, holding a racket and nothing else.