Citrus and Secrets

The orange cat sat on the windowsill, watching Mara peel the tangerine with surgical precision. Julian had brought the fruit basket yesterday — a peace offering after their disastrous meeting about the merger.

"You're too soft," the cat seemed to say with its unblinking amber gaze. "He's playing you."

Mara had known Julian for seven years. They'd survived grad school together, celebrated each other's promotions, cried over failed marriages. He was more than a colleague; he was the friend who had held her hair back when she drank too much at the office holiday party, the one who knew about her mother's dementia before anyone else.

Then came the audit.

The discrepancies were subtle — missing files, altered timestamps, proprietary client data accessed at 3 AM. All traced back to Julian's credentials. But it wasn't until the private investigator handed her the surveillance photos that the reality crystallized.

Her friend. Her spy.

The orange cat meowed as Julian's name appeared on her phone screen again. He wanted to meet for coffee, discuss "next steps" for the team. The same script he'd been running for months, gathering intelligence, feeding it to their competitor.

What hurt most wasn't the corporate betrayal. It was the calculated intimacy — every shared confidence, every vulnerable moment after her divorce, every late-night strategy session over wine — all harvested like ripened fruit.

She answered the phone.

"Mara, please, we need to talk."

"Actually," she said, placing the orange cat on her lap, "I think we're done talking."

The cat purred, its warmth anchoring her to something real. Some bonds, she realized, were worth more than a seven-year investment. Some loyalty — feline, otherwise — couldn't be bought.