The Spy Who Sat Across from Me

The spinach stuck in Julian's teeth should have been funny. Instead, it became the crack in the glass.

We were at Noma — Copenhagen, our company's quarterly retreat for the executive team. Julian, my friend of twelve years, my second-in-command, the man I'd trusted through two divorces and one promotion I'd deserved more than him. He was laughing at something the CEO said, his greying hair catching the candlelight, and there it was: a tiny green wedge of spinach, wedged between his front teeth.

I should have told him. Friends do that.

But then I noticed his phone on the table, screen glowing with an incoming message. Not from his wife. From a competitor we'd been quietly courting for acquisition. The message preview was visible from where I sat: "They bought it. Bear position confirmed. Transfer tonight."

Bear position. Our code name for the hostile takeover strategy Julian and I had drafted together in my living room three months ago. The strategy only five people knew about.

I thought back to the hair I'd found on his blazer last week — blonde, not his wife's dark brown. When I'd joked about it, he'd laughed it off as a colleague's hug goodbye. Now I wondered: had it been from the woman sending him texts? Or had he been somewhere he shouldn't have, physically or metaphorically?

"You okay, Elena?" Julian asked, still smiling, that piece of spinach mocking me.

I'd spent my career building strategies, bear markets and bull markets, trusting that numbers didn't lie. But people — people lied beautifully. People you broke bread with, people whose kids you'd watched grow up, people who knew exactly how to smile while selling you out.

"Fine," I said, setting down my wine glass. "Just thinking about tomorrow's meeting."

The spinach was still there when he laughed again. I didn't mention it. Some things are better left to fester, I thought. Let him walk into tomorrow's board meeting looking ridiculous. Let him wonder why nobody warned him.

Some betrayals, I was learning, you bear in silence. Until you don't.