The Canary in the Coal Mine

Maria swallowed the last vitamin D pill with lukewarm office coffee, her hands trembling just enough to notice. Three years undercover as a corporate spy, stealing trade secrets from the pharmaceutical giant that had fired her father, and she'd never felt more like a hollowed-out shell of herself.

Her phone buzzed—Mark, her handler. "Bull's on to you. Get out."

Bull. The man everyone called that for good reason. Richard fucking Sterling, the CEO who trampled anyone in his path. He'd summoned her to his office twice this week already, those dead eyes scanning her face like a predator deciding whether to kill or toy with its prey.

Maria packed her things slowly, deliberately. Her apartment would be empty—she'd had to give up Buster, her elderly golden retriever, when she took this assignment. The dog had gone to her sister's farm, where he chased actual cattle and slept in sunlight instead of the artificial glow of her laptop screen. God, she missed him. Buster had been the only living thing that didn't want something from her.

"Maria," a voice behind her said.

She turned. Sterling stood in his office doorway, loosening his tie. The bull in the china shop.

"I know who you work for," he said calmly. "But I also know you're good. Better than good. My counteroffer is simple: double whatever they're paying you, plus the vitamin formula you've been trying to steal. Fair trade for loyalty."

Maria looked at him—really looked at him. For the first time in three years, she saw not a monster, but a man as hollow as she'd become. Both of them playing roles in someone else's game, pretending it mattered.

"You kept my father's pension," she said. "When you fired him after thirty years."

"Business is business."

"No," she said, walking toward the elevator. "Business is what you do with people you don't know. What you did to him? That's just cruelty."

The elevator doors opened, and for the first time since she'd started this job, Maria breathed. She'd call Mark and quit. She'd drive to her sister's farm and get Buster. She'd figure out who she was when she wasn't someone else anymore.

The vitamin deficiency she'd been treating for years—that wasn't about supplements. It was about living in the dark.

She stepped into the sunlight and didn't look back.