The Last Supper at Milano's

The spinach was stuck between her teeth—that small, dark gap in her smile—when Elena told me she'd been sleeping with him for six months. Outside, lightning fractured the sky, illuminating the restaurant's empty tables like strobe photography of a crime scene.

You're a spy, I said, not asking. Not about him. About the emails I'd found, the encrypted files on her laptop, the way she disappeared on Wednesdays.

She laughed, and it was the same laugh that had made me fall in love with her seven years ago in college, before we started running in circles around each other, before the marriage and the mortgage and the slow erosion of everything we'd promised to be. Corporate espionage, she said, like she was discussing grocery delivery. It's not personal, David.

Not personal. The words hung between us like smoke.

I thought about the mornings I'd watched her swimming laps at the Y, how her body cut through the water with such clean purpose. How I'd thought: she's so disciplined, so driven. Turns out that discipline had a price tag. A competitor had been paying her to feed them product specs, launch dates, the kind of intel that ruins careers and destroys livelihoods.

The food came. Cold risotto. Warm bread.

Eat, she said. Please.

I looked at the spinach still caught in her teeth, at the woman I'd built a life around, and realized I'd never really known her at all. That's the thing about spies—they're professionals at becoming whoever you need them to be.

I stood up. Left my wallet on the table. Outside, the rain was just starting, cold and relentless. I didn't run. Walking felt more appropriate. Slow, deliberate steps toward whatever came next.

Behind me, through the restaurant's window, lightning flashed again. She was crying, finally. Or maybe that was just the reflection in the glass.