The Vitamin Protocol

Emma's morning routine had become a liturgy of suspicion. She'd line up her supplements on the granite counter—vitamin D3 for the days she never saw sunlight, magnesium for the sleep she couldn't find, B-complex for the energy she'd stopped feeling. Then she'd pick up her iphone, checking for the notification that never came.

Her husband David had been working late again. At corporate headquarters, on the pharmaceutical account. The same account her agency was pitching next week.

The hair on the back of her neck rose before she even opened the file. She'd found it on David's home office desktop—a folder named "Vitamin Protocol," encrypted but poorly. Two hours of coffee and determination had cracked it.

Her hands trembled as she scrolled. Client lists. Pitch decks. Her agency's entire campaign strategy for the pharmaceutical launch. David's company wasn't the competition; they were the client. And David wasn't just a senior analyst—he was their corporate spy, embedded at her agency through her.

Three years. Three years of pillow talk secrets, of strategic whispers over morning coffee, of casual questions about her day that had never been casual at all. Every time she'd thought they were connecting, he'd been mining her for intelligence.

The iphone buzzed. David: "Running late again. Don't wait up."

Emma stared at the message, then at her reflection in the darkened screen. The man she loved, the man she'd trusted with everything, had been systematically betraying her since before they'd even moved in together. This wasn't just corporate espionage. It was the complete destruction of everything she'd believed was real.

She swept the vitamin bottles into the trash. All that careful health maintenance, all that self-care—for what? So she could be strong enough to survive this?

Her iphone lit up again. Another text from David.

Emma picked up her phone, typed three words, and pressed send: "We need to talk."

Then she called legal. Some vitamins, it turned out, were actually poison.