Riddles We Tell Ourselves

Maya ran the perimeter track at 2 AM, the stadium lights flickering above her like dying stars. Her breath hitched—less from exertion than from the email still burning in her pocket: *I need to see you. It's time you knew everything.*

Fox. Always calling himself that, smiling with those clever teeth, as if cunning were something to be proud of. Three years of Board meetings and hotel bars, of him spinning riddles around her like a sphinx guarding secrets she'd been too foolish to question. *What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?* he'd ask, laughing, while his other hand moved divestments through shell companies.

The thunderstorm broke as Maya rounded the final bend. Lightning fractured the sky—violent, illuminating—the way his face had looked last Friday when she'd found the discrepancies in the Q3 reports. Not surprise. Resignation. Like he'd been waiting for her to finally solve the riddle.

He'd taught her that every sphinx eventually meets its Oedipus. The lesson was in the way he'd signed the confession: *You were the only one who ever asked the right questions.*

Maya stopped running, lightning flashing again as her phone buzzed. Fox's name glowing against the dark. Not running anymore—from him, from herself, from the terrible knowledge that she'd loved the mystery more than the truth.

She answered.