Vitamins and Secrets

Maya adjusted her name badge for the third time, her palms sweating against the laminated plastic. Wellness Expo 2024. Three days of kale smoothies, cryptocurrency pitches, and vitamin startups desperate for funding. Perfect cover for a corporate spy.

She'd spent six months infiltrating Vitality Labs, stealing their proprietary vitamin formula while pretending to be their social media manager. The payout would finally let her leave this life—the aliases, the lies, the hollow hotel rooms that smelled like other people's despair.

"You look like you need this more than I do."

Maya turned to find Elena offering a champagne flute. Elena from accounting. Elena who'd started leaving cat treats on Maya's desk because she'd mentioned missing her own cat back in Chicago. Elena who'd invited her to dinner five times, with five perfectly reasonable excuses why Maya couldn't make it.

"Corporate espionage," Maya thought. "Not cat sitter. Not friend. Not whatever this is."

"My grandmother read palms," Elena continued, surprisingly steady for someone consuming her fourth complimentary drink. "She'd say yours are too tense. Like you're carrying something heavy."

"Just the weight of ethical business practices," Maya said, and they both laughed—the hollow, practiced laughter of employees who knew exactly how much their companies were worth, and how little their souls weighed on the balance sheet.

"I know who you really are," Elena said suddenly.

Maya's heart dropped. "What?"

"The new formula? It's synthetic." Elena placed her hand over Maya's on the bar. "They're not making vitamins. They're making something that looks like vitamins but isn't. I found the memos yesterday."

"You're not surprised," Maya realized.

"No. I was waiting for you to figure it out too." Elena's thumb traced Maya's palm. "The spy who forgot to check what she was stealing."

The next morning, Maya deleted the stolen formula. Then she sent Elena's evidence to the FDA. She'd never work as a spy again, probably never work in corporate America again either. But that evening, feeding the stray cat that lived behind her hotel, she realized she didn't care.

Some things were more important than vitamins. Or secrets. Or the false comfort of a paycheck that came with your soul already deducted.