Wireless

Forty-two and my hair started falling out in clumps. That's how I knew the marriage was over before Marcus did. He was too busy with his padel league, too obsessed with his backhand, too everything that wasn't me.

The package arrived on a Tuesday. A sleek black cable, coiled like a snake, with a note: "Plug it in. Trust no one."

I should have thrown it away. Instead, I connected it to the hidden port behind Marcus's home office server rack. That's when I learned my husband of fifteen years wasn't an architect. He was a spy—not the romantic kind, but a corporate one, selling blueprints to Chinese competitors. Our savings, our future, everything we'd built on lies.

The earpiece in the cable whispered instructions. I could turn him in. I could disappear with half our assets. Or I could become something else entirely.

"Can you bear it?" the voice asked. "The weight of who he really is?"

That night at the padel club, watching Marcus laugh with his doubles partner, someone else's husband, I understood something darker about myself. I didn't want justice. I wanted to win.

The agency offered me a contract. Counter-espionage. Use me to catch him. I took the deal.

Now when I brush what's left of my hair in the mirror, I see someone else. Someone who plays a longer game than Marcus ever could. He thinks he's the spy. He doesn't know he's the prey.

The cable sits under our bed, coiled and waiting. Tonight, I'll finally use it.