The Vitamin Defense

Marco adjusted his grip on the padel racket, the cordite smell of the court bringing back memories he'd rather keep buried. Three years since Madrid, since the Agency cut him loose with a severance package and a warning: forget everything, or else.

He'd chosen the vitamin shop instead. Small. Innocent. A place where the most dangerous thing was an expired bottle of B-12.

"Your backhand is telegraphing, old man."

Elena stood at the net, sweat-dampened hair plastered to her neck. She was twenty-eight, fierce, and entirely too observant for someone who sold organic supplements for a living.

"I'm old, not dead."

"Could've fooled me." She returned his serve with impossible precision. "You move like someone expecting betrayal."

Marco laughed, but it tasted like ash. She had no idea. He'd spent two decades as a spy, collecting secrets like other men collected stamps. Now his biggest secret was the vitamin D deficiency he couldn't shake despite living in Barcelona.

After the match, they walked her dog—a rescue named Bear who'd lost his eye in some previous life. Bear limped alongside them, a battle-scarred philosopher who'd seen enough to know that survival wasn't the same as living.

"He trusts you," Elena said, watching Bear lean against Marco's leg.

"Dogs are easy. They don't want anything except food and someone to not leave them."

"Is that what happened to you? Someone left?" Her voice was gentle, not probing. Just curious.

Marco thought of the handlers who'd burned him, the assets who'd disappeared, the life that had evaporated like fog. But mostly he thought of his wife, who'd left ten years ago because she fell in love with someone who wasn't a liar.

"Something like that."

They reached her building. Bear sat, looking between them.

"Come up," she said. "I make excellent paella. And I have vitamins that actually work."

Marco hesitated. The old instincts screamed: dangerous, complicated, not your life anymore.

But Bear nudged his hand, and for the first time in three years, Marco chose something real over something safe.

"I'd like that."