The Vitamin Regimen

Every morning at 6:47 AM, Elias swallowed his vitamin D supplement with a glass of lukewarm tap water. The ritual had started after Maria left—a small anchor in the unraveling of his life. The bottle stood beside his coffee maker, a silent witness to his decline.

At work, he'd become convinced someone was going through his desk. Nothing was ever stolen, but papers were shifted. His stapler faced the wrong direction. His coffee mug handle rotated precisely thirty degrees. The office had the feel of a sphinx—enigmatic, withholding its secrets behind a facade of corporate blandness.

Elias started wearing his grandfather's fedora to work, a ridiculous affectation that drew stares from coworkers in their twenty-something hoodies and beanies. The hat made him feel protected, armored. It also contained a tiny camera he'd ordered online—a paranoid whim that now seemed entirely reasonable.

The footage revealed nothing for three weeks. Just empty hallways, cleaning staff, the fluorescent hum of 3 AM stillness. Until Thursday night, when he saw Chen from IT crawling under his desk.

"Found it," Chen whispered to someone on his phone. "The cable's been tapped."

Elias watched the grainy footage, heart hammering. Chen wasn't a corporate spy. Elias was. Or had been, once, before the insomnia and the vitamin bottles and the crushing guilt of selling out his team during the merger negotiations. The cable under his desk—thick, black, innocuous—carried more than data. It carried the weight of his complicity.

The next morning, Elias took his vitamin at 6:47 AM as usual. He placed his hat on its hook. Then he called legal representation and prepared to finally tell the truth about what he'd done. The sphinx, it turned out, wasn't the office. It was him—guarding secrets that had become poison in his blood.