Service

The ball hit the padel racket with a satisfying crack, echoing off the glass walls of the court. Marco wiped sweat from his forehead, squinting across the net at his friend of fifteen years.

"You're off your game tonight," Javier called, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Distracted?"

"Just tired." Marco forced a grin. But the truth sat heavy in his stomach like a stone.

Three hours earlier, he'd found the listening device under his desk. A tiny transmitter, sophisticated enough to cost more than his car. And the serial number traced back to a shell company—one whose board of directors included Javier's sister.

Baseball had always been their thing. They'd met in a corporate league back when they were both twenty-three, wide-eyed graduates convinced they'd take the world by storm. Sunday afternoons with cheap beer and mediocre pitching, dreaming of promotions that seemed both inevitable and endlessly distant. Now they were forty, and those promotions had come, but somewhere along the way, the friendship had calcified into something transactional.

"Your backhand," Javier said now, missing an easy return. "Usually you'd have that."

Marco studied him across the net. The familiar jawline, the salt-and-pepper hair at his temples, the easy smile that never quite reached his eyes anymore. How long had he been playing both sides? How many "confidential" conversations over drinks had found their way to competitors?

He realized with a sickening lurch that their entire friendship had become a long game of intelligence gathering. Every lunch, every padel match, every late-night phone call about work frustrations—Javier had been vacuuming up details, storing them away, using them.

"Match point," Marco said softly.

Javier's return sailed long.

They met at the net, the familiar handshake now foreign. Javier's palm was damp.

"Same time next week?" Javier asked, too casual.

Marco looked at his friend—his spy—and understood that some breaches couldn't be patched. "I think I'm done with this game."

He walked toward the locker room, leaving Javier standing alone on the court, surrounded by the glass walls that had made them both visible, and vulnerable, all along.