Exit Interview

Marcus stared at the notification on his iPhone, the blue light illuminating his face in the otherwise dark bedroom. Sarah was asleep beside him, her breathing rhythmic and deceptive. Three years of marriage, and he still checked her messages like he was the one being paid to be paranoid.

He'd been a corporate spy for twelve years, hired by Fortune 500 companies to infiltrate competitors, gather intel on upcoming products, sabotage launches from the inside. The job had made him wealthy, cynical, and incapable of trust. He knew exactly how to hide his tracks, which made it all the more insulting that Sarah hadn't even bothered.

The vitamin supplements on her nightstand—her meticulously organized daily regimen—had been his first clue. She never missed a day. But three weeks ago, she'd started skipping the evening doses. Her schedule, normally precise as a metronome, had developed inexplicable gaps. Late nights at the office. Emergent meetings that couldn't be confirmed.

Tonight's notification was the confirmation he'd been dreading. A message from someone named Tom: "Can't wait to see you tomorrow. Same place?"

Marcus slid silently out of bed, walked to the home office he'd claimed as his workspace, and booted up his forensic laptop. He'd installed a monitoring program on Sarah's phone six months ago—just a precaution, he'd told himself then, just standard procedure. Now he watched as her location data from the past month unfolded across his screen: a coffee shop she visited every Tuesday and Thursday, a residential neighborhood she'd had no reason to frequent, patterns that aligned perfectly with those evening vitamin absences.

The corporate world called this bull market behavior—everyone positioning themselves for the next opportunity, leveraging assets, hedging against uncertainty. Marcus had never thought he'd be the asset being liquidated.

He returned to the bedroom and stood over his sleeping wife. In the morning, he'd call his lawyer. In the afternoon, he'd transfer his assets. By evening, he'd be gone. He was good at disappearing—it was, after all, his profession.

"You should have been more careful with your vitamins," he whispered, though she couldn't hear him. "You taught me that."