The Padel Court Confidential

The cat watched me from the windowsill, those amber eyes judging everything I didn't say about Helena's schedule. She'd been playing padel three times a week for six months, though I'd never seen her hold a racket.

I should have trusted my instincts when I found the ethernet cable she'd ripped from the wall behind her desk, coiled like a dead snake in the trash. Helena claimed it was broken. I believed her because I wanted to.

The irony of being a corporate spy is that you forget to spy on the one person who matters.

Tuesday night, I followed her to the padel club. The parking lot was half-empty. Helena's car sat alone near the back entrance. I waited twenty minutes before a black sedan pulled up beside hers.

A man stepped out. Not her regular partner, Sarah. This man carried himself like someone who'd spent too much time in rooms without windows. He handed Helena a thick envelope. She kissed his cheek—not romantic, transactional.

I knew that look. I'd given it to plenty of people who'd sold secrets for the right price.

The cat was still on the windowsill when I returned home at 2 AM. Helena's car wasn't in the driveway. I poured myself a drink and sat on the back porch, counting the constellations like they were something I could navigate.

At 3 AM, I finally found what I was looking for beneath the floorboard of her closet: a burner phone, a stack of unencrypted drives, and a passport with a name I didn't recognize.

Helena wasn't cheating. She was something worse.

She was the competition.

The cat jumped onto my lap, purring like everything was still right with the world. Maybe that's the thing about cats—they know when you've been lying to yourself, and they don't care. They just want warmth, and maybe that's enough.

I heard Helena's key in the lock at 4:15. She smelled like expensive gin and other men's cologne. She smiled when she saw me sitting in the dark, that same practiced smile she'd used for three years of marriage.

"You're up early," she said, dropping her padel bag by the door.

"Just thinking," I said. "About games. And how sometimes you forget you're playing one."

The cat wound between her legs, and Helena's face softened. She reached down to stroke his fur, and for a moment, she looked like the woman I'd married, not the spy who'd been living in my house, stealing my company's secrets while I slept beside her.

"Your turn," I said. "Tell me about your match."

She laughed. It sounded like glass breaking.