Market Corrections

The bear market had been eating away at Marcus's portfolio for six months when he met Elena at a juice bar in Midtown. She was ordering something green and unidentifiable; he was drowning his sorrows in overpriced fresh-pressed nonsense.

"You look like you're swimming upstream," she'd said, gesturing at the Bloomberg app on his phone.

Marcus had laughed bitterly, running a hand through thinning hair. "Just trying to stay afloat."

Their affair began the way these things do—with stolen hours in hotel rooms, papaya-scented mornings in apartments that weren't theirs, the delicious weight of a secret. Elena worked in compliance. She saw everything. She knew about the offshore accounts, the fabricated trades, the way Marcus's firm was really making its money.

"You're riding a bull that's going to turn," she told him once, tracing circles on his chest. "You know that, right?"

Marcus did know. He'd been running from the knowledge for years. The money was too good, the lifestyle too addictive. Now the SEC was circling, and Elena had stopped returning his calls.

The last time he saw her, she was eating breakfast at a sidewalk café alone—papaya, grapefruit, black coffee. Marcus stood on the corner like a bear coming out of hibernation, hungry and disoriented. He wanted to cross the street, to sit down across from her, to say something that might matter.

Instead, he turned and started walking. Not running—walking. Step by step, away from the bull market, away from the lies, toward whatever came next.

Behind him, the city hummed with money and desperation. Ahead, the air felt clean enough to breathe again.