The Vitamin Drop

Mira arranged the spinach leaves with surgical precision, each one a perfect jade quadrant on the white ceramic plate. The papaya sat beside it, ripe and waiting like a silent accusation.

"You're still taking those?" Julian asked, nodding toward the vitamin bottle on the counter.

"Doctor's orders." She didn't look up. "Supposedly I need more D in my life."

"More D," he repeated. "Right."

The air between them had grown thin, translucent as glass. Three months of surveillance—her profession, her trade—had trained her to notice the smallest shifts in behavior. The way Julian now locked his phone. The new passwords on his laptop. The late-night "work calls" that sent him into the garden with a cigarette he didn't smoke.

She'd followed him yesterday. Watched him meet a woman in a coffee shop, watched them exchange something small and innocent-looking. A thumb drive, hidden inside a vitamin supplement bottle.

The oldest spy trick in the book.

"You're quiet," he said, leaning against the counter. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, exposing the hollow of his throat where she used to rest her fingers.

"Just thinking."

"About what?"

She slid the plate toward him. "About how you told me your consultancy work ended last month. About how the woman you met yesterday was holding a vitamin bottle just like that one. About how, in our line of work, we both know that corporate espionage doesn't just happen in movies."

Julian's face didn't change. Not surprise, not guilt, not denial. Just that terrible calm she'd seen him use with suspects, with targets, with the people he'd been hired to break.

"You've been following me."

"I recognized the signal. The vitamin bottle. It's tradecraft, Julian. Did you think I wouldn't know?"

He looked at the papaya on his plate, at the spinach arranged like evidence bags.

"I'm protecting you, Mira. That's all."

"From what?"

"From what I do." He finally met her eyes. "The company I'm consulting for—they're the ones who hired your firm to investigate them. I'm feeding them misinformation. Keeping them off balance. If they knew who you were married to..."

The papaya's seeds formed a perfect constellation on her plate.

"You're a double agent," she said softly.

"I'm your husband."

"And a spy."

"And a spy." He reached for her hand across the counter. "But I'm done. This was the last drop."

She should pull away. She should verify. She should demand proof. Instead, she let him trace the lifeline on her palm, let his fingers find the places no surveillance could ever reach.

"Eat your spinach," she said. "Before it wilts."

He smiled, and for the first time in months, she couldn't read it at all.