The Padel Court Confession

The bull-headed way Mateo refused to drop the serve at padel practice should have been my first warning. Three months into our affair, and I still couldn't read him—his palms remained impossibly dry during our most heated encounters, while I sweated through every lie I told Marcus.

"You're playing like shit today," Mateo said, slamming the ball against the glass wall. "Distracted?"

I wasn't distracted. I was disintegrating.

The vitamin supplements on my nightstand had become a joke—pills for energy, pills for calm, pills to help me sleep through the guilt of sleeping with a man who might be dismantling my husband's company from the inside out. Marcus had hired a private firm last month to sniff out the corporate spy leaking their proprietary algorithms. Every evening he came home frustrated, describing how someone was methodically siphoning intellectual property, leaving no digital footprint.

"They're too good," he'd say, pouring wine. "It's almost professional."

Almost.

Now Mateo stood across the net, shirtless and glistening, watching me with those unnervingly calm eyes. He'd been so attentive at first—remembering how I take my coffee, sending flowers to my office, showing up at my yoga studio. I'd told myself the age gap didn't matter, that twenty years between us was just experience, not exploitation. I'd told myself Marcus's emotional distance justified my seeking warmth elsewhere.

But as Mateo served again, I caught something in his expression—a calculation, a cold assessment of my reaction time. My stomach turned. How many times had he looked at me like that? How many times had I missed it?

"Your husband's company," Mateo said suddenly, bouncing the ball. "The IPO. Must be exciting."

Something in his tone—a wrong note, too casual, too interested—clicked into place. The vitamins, the sleepless nights, the guilt that had felt somehow excessive even for an affair.

I walked to the net. "You're not in venture capital, are you?"

Mateo smiled. A real one this time, predatory and satisfied. "Corporate intelligence," he corrected. "And you, Elena, have been exceptionally useful."

The ball dropped from his hand. I didn't watch it fall.