The Vitamin King of Vegas

Mark stood by the pool at the Bellagio, staring at his iPhone like it might somehow tell him why his wife had left him that morning. The screen showed his portfolio: he was still a billionaire, still the Vitamin King—his supplement empire had made him rich beyond counting. But the numbers meant nothing now.

"Bullshit," he muttered, the word tasting like ash. She'd accused him of caring more about his quarterly earnings than their marriage. She wasn't entirely wrong.

The pool's artificial blue water rippled in the desert wind. A woman in a red bikini laughed nearby, and for a moment, Mark felt like he was watching his life from the outside—like he'd become something strange, something inscrutable. A sphinx in his own existence, riddling himself with questions he couldn't answer.

He remembered the last thing she'd said: "You think you can fix everything with pills and money, Mark. But some things just break."

His hand went to his pocket, where he kept his vitamin C supplements—always prepared, always ready to optimize. Even now, in the wreckage of his personal life, he was thinking about antioxidants and oxidative stress.

The phone buzzed. His business partner. Probably wanting to discuss the new "Vitamin King" branding campaign. The irony was almost funny enough to make him vomit.

He placed the phone on a table and walked toward the pool, thinking about how he'd spent thirty years building an empire on the promise of health, longevity, vitality. And here he was, forty-eight years old, the healthiest billionaire in America, feeling more dead than he ever had in his life.

The woman in the red bikini looked up at him as he passed. He didn't smile. couldn't remember the last time he'd genuinely smiled at anything.

"Bull," he said again, softer this time. Just a word, just a sound, but it was the most honest thing he'd said in years.

He needed to figure out what came next. He needed to figure out who he was without the empire, without the money, without her. But for now, he just stood by the pool, feeling like a riddle without an answer, waiting for something—anything—to make sense again.