Page 1 of Operation Sunshine
Prologue
Ben Whitaker hadn’t planned to run.
He had always been the kind of man who stayed. The man who always sat longest at the conference table, scribbling notes no one would ever read. The man who stayed behind at charity galas, nodding politely at elderly donors, swirling a glass of pinot noir he didn’t even taste. The man who left the office at 1 a.m., stepping into Melbourne’s cold night air, his breath blooming in front of him like ghosts he couldn’t chase away.
Hell, he’d become amasterof staying. Enduring. Treading water in a sea of corporate handshakes and empty toasts.
He’d built his life on the glossy veneer of success: sleek elevators that whispered shut behind him, marble kitchen counters that never felt the weight of a chopping board, designer shirts starched so stiff they could stand on their own. His penthouse apartment glowed under cold, clinical downlights, the furniture a study in muted grey and glass. A space designed to impress, to intimidate.
Never to invite.
He thought he was happy. Or at least, he thought happiness was something you wore like an expensive suit, something you could slipinto before a meeting, that sat tight on your shoulders but looked damn good from across the room.
There’d been moments, small fractures in the façade, but he’d ignored them.
The first crack? Tokyo.
A year ago, he’d gone on holiday there. He’d stood in front of a ramen shop at midnight, the street alive with laughter and sizzling yakitori smoke, neon lights reflecting on the wet pavement. He’d watched two young men slurping noodles side by side, one of them wiping broth off the other’s chin with an absent-minded tenderness. Ben had turned away quickly, pretending to check his phone.
That same night, he went back to his hotel room, lay on the pristine white bed, and scrolled through dating apps. His thumb hovered over profiles, men with bright eyes and hopeful captions. His heart pounded, a traitor in his own chest. He closed the app and ordered a whisky from room service instead.
Another crack: His thirty-ninth birthday dinner, a private dining room filled with colleagues and investors. Someone gave a toast, calling him “the iron spine of the company,” “the man with the plan,” “a fortress.” Everyone laughed, glasses clinked, but cold trickled down Ben’s spine.
Fortress. A word meant to protect something within its walls—but also to keep others out.
Later that night, he sat alone on his balcony with a slice of molten chocolate cake, listening to the city traffic. He tried to remember the last time someone had sung “Happy Birthday” to him because they wanted to, not because they were obliged to.
There were smaller moments too, countless and insidious: a colleague’s wedding where he had been the lone plus-one to himself; the forced smiles at family Christmas dinners, his mother asking when he’d finally “settle down, with a nice girl, of course”; and the carefully curated social media posts where every sunset was a placeholder for a life he wasn’t really living.
Ben had become fluent in avoidance and justifications. Hepretended he didn’t ache for something real and messy that would ruin his perfect white shirts and shake the walls of his carefully managed silence.
Then came the Tuesday that broke him.
He’d just closed a monstrous deal, the sort that made headlines and bonuses rain from the heavens. The boardroom smelled of espresso and stale croissants. Someone popped champagne, the sound too sharp, like a gunshot.
Ben took the offered glass and raised it to his lips. The bubbles fizzed and died against his nose, and he tasted nothing but metallic emptiness. Around him, people clapped, patted him on the back, called him a genius.
His assistant Fiona leaned in, her eyes wide and shining. “How does it feel to win again, Ben?”
Ben looked at her, at all of them, their bright, eager faces turned toward him like sunflowers. He opened his mouth, but the words slipped away like fish through trembling fingers. It didn’t feel like winning.
It felt like drowning.
Later that night, he returned to his apartment. The city twinkled below like a field of stars someone had smashed and scattered across black velvet. He unbuttoned his shirt with care, each rustle of cotton whispering in the sterile hush of his living room.
He went to water the fern by the window, a plant he’d bought after reading an article on mindfulness in a men’s health magazine. Its leaves were curled, yellow at the tips, some already falling onto the marble floor. He ran his fingers over them and felt the crackle of dry veins.
A surge of unexpected grief rose up in his throat, raw and sour. He could save billion-dollar mergers, restructure entire companies overnight, but he couldn’t keep a single plant alive.
Ben dropped to the floor, his knees thudding against the hard surface, and pressed his forehead to the cold marble.
This can’t go on.
He had no idea how long he stayed in that position, but at last his knees protested he’d been down there way too long. He stood and retreated to his leather couch, desperate to escape the cavern of his own mind. His laptop sat on the coffee table, and he reached for it.
He didn’t know what he was looking for. Flights to Kyoto. Farm retreats in New Zealand. Dog adoption sites.Anythingthat might promise a different heartbeat.
And then he saw it.
