Court-Side Confessions

Elena adjusted the brim of her hat, grateful for the shadow it cast over her eyes. At table seven of the clubhouse terrace, she watched him—David, her target, her husband's business partner, the man she'd been paid to follow for three weeks. The irony tasted like the spinach garnish on her plate, bitter and strangely persistent.

She'd chosen the padel club deliberately. David came here every Sunday, played doubles with men whose net worth exceeded the GDP of small nations. Elena ordered another club soda, wishing she could order something stronger. The surveillance game was wearing thin, not that she could tell her husband that. Marcus didn't know she'd taken the job. He didn't know a lot of things anymore.

"Mind if I join you?"

Elena froze. David stood at her table, racquet bag slung over his shoulder, sweat glistening on his forehead. Up close, he smelled like expensive cologne and exertion. He wasn't supposed to notice her. She was supposed to be invisible—just another woman in a hat at the club.

"You've been watching me," he said, not accusingly. Curiously. "Three Sundays in a row."

Elena's heart hammered. This wasn't in the dossier. "I come here to think."

"So do I." David signaled the waiter. "Your husband's partner, actually. Marcus's wife?" He named her, recognized her from Christmas parties she'd attended half-drunk on Marcus's arm. "He talks about you constantly. Says you're thinking of leaving him."

The words landed like blows. Marcus had told his business partner, but not her. Had never asked her if she was staying.

"I'm a private investigator," she heard herself say. The admission escaped before she could stop it. "Marcus hired me. He thinks you're embezzling."

David laughed, but there was no humor in it. He reached across the table, his hand covering hers. His thumb found the bare spot on her ring finger where her wedding band had been missing for months. She'd stopped wearing it the night Marcus stopped coming home.

"I know," David said softly. "I hired someone too. My spy follows Marcus. Turns out he's been seeing someone from his accounting firm." He pulled a folded photo from his pocket, placed it on the table. The woman in the picture wore Elena's missing ring on a chain around her neck.

The spinach on Elena's plate suddenly looked nauseating. Two years of marriage, both of them hiring investigators, neither of them brave enough to just ask.

"Play a match with me," David said. "I'll teach you padel. Then we'll decide what to do with this mess."

Elena took off her hat. For the first time in months, she didn't want to hide.