Citrus Protocol

The orange sat on Elena's desk like a grenade with its pin halfway pulled. Bright, innocent, and devastating.

"You've been following me," David said without turning from his computer. His voice carried that strange calm it had held for six months—since the promotion, since the late nights, since he started smelling like hotel soap instead of their home.

Elena's heart hammered. "I'm not following you. I'm your wife. I came to bring you lunch."

"You're not my wife." David rotated slowly in his ergonomic chair. "You're corporate security's newest hire, assigned to investigate the data breach in my department. You've been spying on me for three weeks."

The air conditioning hummed. Somewhere in the open-plan office, a phone buzzed.

"What?" Elena laughed, but it came out brittle. "David, that's insane. We've been married seven years."

"Seven years, three months." His expression softened into something like regret. "I didn't know until I saw your access logs last week. Then I traced your badge usage to the building across the street—the one where our actual corporate security team operates." He gestured at the orange. "That's not a lunch. That's a test. You always bring fruit when you need to observe someone for extended periods. Less suspicious than loitering."

Elena's fingers went cold. She hadn't even realized she'd developed that tell.

"I'm not with security," she whispered. "David, I'm not."

"Then why did you hire the private investigator?"

"I thought YOU were cheating on me!" The words ripped out of her. "I saw the texts. The hotel receipts. The encrypted messaging app on your phone. I hired someone because I was terrified I was losing you."

David's face crumbled. "Oh, El. The encrypted app—it's for the whistleblower case. I've been gathering evidence against the CEO. The hotel stays were when I was meeting with federal prosecutors."

"The whistleblower case?" She remembered the headlines. Massive fraud. Executives fleeing the country. "You're the—"

"I'm the witness." He took her hand. "I've been protecting you by keeping you in the dark. If you knew, you could be questioned. Compromised."

Their cat, Mozart, sat in the window at home, watching this scene through Elena's phone—the camera feed she'd checked obsessively during her "lunch breaks." The cat had known everything all along. He'd watched David encrypt files at 2 AM. He'd watched Elena cry over surveillance footage that showed nothing but a man working himself into exhaustion to protect the company—and his wife—from collapse.

David pulled a small folder from his desk. "I'm going into protective custody tonight. The testimony starts Monday. You can come with me, or..."

"Or?"

"Or you can decide if your real assignment was always to bring me down."

The orange rolled off Elena's desk and hit the carpet with a soft thud. Somewhere, their cat finally stopped pacing.