The Trophy Room

Elena had spent three months as the club's new head of hospitality, but Marcus still watched her with the precision of a predator. He never let his gaze linger too long—just enough to make her skin prickle, like static before a storm.

The incident happened at the padel courts on a Tuesday evening. Elena had stayed late, hitting serves against the backboard, sweat slicking her neck. Marcus appeared in the doorway, backlit by sunset, holding two glasses of champagne.

"Your form's slipping," he said, setting one glass on the bench. "You're bearing down too hard on your backhand."

She should have walked away. Instead, she drank the champagne, cold and expensive, and let him adjust her grip. His fingers were calloused from something—he'd claimed construction, but his hands moved like someone who handled delicate things.

Two weeks later, she found herself in the pool house after hours. The indoor pool reflected moonlight through skylights, rippling against the tile like mercury. Marcus had left something for her: a key to the trophy room.

Inside, mounted on mahogany shelves, were stuffed heads of game animals—elk, boar, a grizzly bear with glass eyes that caught the light. But it was the smaller display case that made her breath hitch. Hidden behind a vintage tennis racket was a collection of tiny cameras, memory cards labeled with dates and names.

Her name was on three of them.

The realization hit like cold water: Marcus wasn't a member seducing the staff. He was the club's security consultant, hired to spy on suspected embezzlement. She'd been a target since day one.

Later, in his apartment, she traced the scar along his ribcage while he slept. The bear head from the trophy room had been his first kill, he'd told her once—Montana, twelve years ago. Now she wondered what else he'd hunted, what else he'd mounted on walls to prove he'd conquered it.

She dressed quietly, pocketing one memory card. Let him bear witness to something real for once.

The padel court was empty at dawn. Elena served ball after ball into the net, each one harder than the last, until her shoulders burned and she couldn't tell if she was crying or sweating. Some trophies, she realized, you don't mount. You just survive them.