The Art of Watching

The market had been in a bull run for three years, and Elena had stopped asking herself if she deserved any of it. The money came in torrents, the kind that made moral questions feel like luxuries she couldn't afford.

She'd been working with Marcus for seven months—friend seemed like the wrong word for someone she knew only through encrypted messages and dead drops, but they were closer than lovers. He was the one who'd shown her how to access the building's surveillance network through a forgotten cable duct behind the server room. 'Corporate espionage,' he'd called it, with the theatricality of someone who'd watched too many spy movies.

'People think privacy is a right,' he'd told her once, as they watched the CEO's empty office on a monitor. 'It's actually just a failure of imagination.'

Now she sat in her car outside the rooftop pool party where their firm was celebrating another record quarter. Through the fence, she could see the water reflecting the city lights—people floating in that artificial blue, drunk on success and something that felt like invincibility.

Marcus was supposed to be there. They'd agreed to meet tonight, something about leaving the company together. But he'd texted three hours ago: *Can't make it. Trust me.*

A heavy man in a bespoke suit walked past her car—Anders, the head of security. He stopped at the gate, spoke to someone inside, then turned and looked directly at her windshield. Elena's breath caught. She didn't start the engine. She didn't breathe.

Her phone lit up. Not Marcus. An automated message: *Your employment has been terminated effective immediately. Please return all company property.*

The pool crowd laughed at something—a joke, a toast, a moment they'd forget by morning. Elena watched them through the fence, understanding suddenly that she'd never been the spy in this story. She'd always been the mark.