The Green in His Teeth

The spinach stuck between his incisors seemed more honest than he'd been in months. Elena watched it from across the dinner table—a tiny green flag of surrender, or perhaps accusation.

"You're staring," Marcus said, finally pushing the vegetable away with his tongue. His eyes shifted to the window, then back to her, then away again. The pattern was familiar now. The surveillance wasn't directed at her, but through her. Around her. Past her.

"I'm just wondering," she said, knife hovering over her own untouched dinner, "why the investment banking division requires a safe house in Jersey City."

Marcus froze. His fork clattered against china.

"Bullshit," she continued, her voice remarkably steady. "I'm not an idiot, Marcus. I found the burner phone. The surveillance equipment. The photographs of that woman—the one from the arbitration hearing last year."

"Elena—"

"Are you a spy?" The question sounded ridiculous in their suburban kitchen, with its granite countertops and the echo of their children upstairs. But the silence that followed was heavy with the weight of an answer she didn't want to hear.

"Corporate espionage," he said finally. "Just leverage. Information. It's not like in the movies."

"And the woman?"

"She's the general counsel for the competition. Married. Two kids. We never..." He rubbed his face. "It was just access, Elena. Her computer, her files, her schedule. Nothing physical."

The spinach was gone from his teeth now. He'd swallowed it, like everything else.

"You're sleeping with her laptop," she said. "That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"I did it for us," he whispered. "The bonuses, the private school—"

"The lies?" She stood up, her chair scraping loudly against the floor. "That was for us too?"

Later, as she packed her bag in their bedroom, she found another photograph tucked inside his nightstand. Not the corporate lawyer. A picture of her, Elena, sleeping. Dated three months ago. Written on the back in his handwriting: *Asset remains unaware. Extraction pending.*

The joke was on him. She'd been awake when he took it, watching him through half-closed lids, wondering when the man she'd married had become someone she needed to surveil.

Some marriages don't end with a bang or a whimper. They end when you realize you were the one being watched all along.