The Vitamin Spy

Marcus had been running double lives for three years, though the corporate espionage part paid better than his marriage ever had. As senior VP of research at VitaCore, he'd been selling proprietary formulas to their competitor for eighteen months—a quarter million per leak, deposited in Cayman accounts his wife Elena never asked about.

The running started six months ago. Literal running—5Ks through the city at 2 a.m., partly for the cover story (insomnia, stress), partly because the guilt was eating him alive in ways his therapist called 'somatic anxiety.' He'd pop a vitamin B-complex before each run, swallowing the yellow tablets with the same methodical precision he applied to shredding documents.

What Marcus didn't know: Elena had hired a private investigator two weeks after his first midnight run. The spy's photos—Marcus meeting a woman in a parking garage, passing documents, accepting cash—sat in a safe deposit box alongside her own research. She wasn't planning divorce. She was planning leverage.

The night everything unraveled, Marcus returned from a run to find Elena seated at their kitchen table, surrounded by spread sheets. 'VitaCore's new vitamin D3 synthesis process,' she said, tapping a document. 'Your competitor just filed a patent. Remarkably similar.'

Marcus's heart hammered harder than it ever had on his runs. 'Elena—'

'I'm not upset about the money.' Her voice was terrifyingly calm. 'I'm upset you didn't think to include me. I have contacts in regulatory affairs, Marcus. We could've doubled the operation.'

She slid a vitamin bottle across the table. Store brand, not VitaCore. 'Start taking these. Magnesium. You're going to need it for what comes next.'

Marcus realized then that his wife had been running her own operations for years. And that somehow, he'd always been the one being surveilled.