Corporate Espionage and Spinach

The spinach was stuck between Marcus's front teeth, a tiny green flag of surrender. Elena stared at it across the conference table, his latest betrayal as mundane and ridiculous as everything else about their affair.

Three years of stolen afternoons, midnight texts, the way his hands knew exactly how to undo her blouse before she'd even locked her office door. And now this—another lunch meeting he claimed was with investors, another hint of perfume clinging to his collar that wasn't hers. Not that she could say anything. Not with her own secrets weighing heavy in her pocket.

"You're not eating," Marcus said, gesturing at her untouched salad.

"Not hungry," she replied, watching a long dark hair slide from his sleeve onto the polished mahogany. Black hair, unlike her own blonde. Unlike anyone's in their office, really.

She'd known something was wrong for months. The proprietary data that kept walking out the door. The sudden disappearance of their lead developer. The way Marcus's eyes never quite met hers anymore, even when they were tangled together in hotel sheets, his breath hot against her neck, his promises whispered like prayers.

Now she knew. He was the spy. And she'd played the willing dupe.

The corporate espionage unit had contacted her yesterday morning. They'd been tracking him for six months, building their case. They wanted her to wear a wire to tonight's dinner.

"Elena?" Marcus's voice cut through her thoughts. "You okay?"

She met his gaze squarely for the first time in weeks. "Fine. Just thinking about tonight."

"Me too," he smiled, and she saw the spinach again, this absurd detail that made everything simultaneously more real and more surreal. He had no idea. He was going to lose everything—his job, his freedom, whatever they'd had together—and he was sitting there worrying about a piece of lunch in his teeth.

She wondered if she should tell him. Give him a chance to run. But then she remembered the investors who'd lost their pensions, the employees who'd been laid off after the last leak, the way he'd looked through her instead of at her for months now.

"Dinner's still on," she said, standing up. "Eight o'clock."

"I'll pick you up."

"No," she surprised herself. "I'll meet you there. At the restaurant."

He looked confused, then shrugged. "Whatever you want."

What she wanted was the impossible—to rewind to before she'd slept with the enemy, before she'd become an unwitting accessory to corporate treason. But there was no going back, only forward through the wreckage.

She walked to her office, already planning what she'd wear to record his confession, already mourning the man she'd thought he was, already bracing herself for the moment when everything between them would become evidence.