Palm Reading in Dubai

The humidity in Dubai made her palms sweat, but she kept them steady on the table. The woman across from her — sphinx-like with kohled eyes and an unreadable expression — traced the lifeline on Elena's hand.

"You're bearing a great burden," the palm reader said. "Something you cannot speak."

Elena's phone buzzed in her pocket. Another encrypted message from her handler at the agency. She'd been undercover for six months, infiltrating her target's inner circle, sleeping with the enemy, falling in love with him. The ultimate spy cliché, becoming the thing you're meant to destroy.

"My work," Elena said, which wasn't exactly a lie.

"And your heart?" The woman's nail pressed into Elena's mount of Venus. "This is crossed. Someone has deceived you. Or perhaps — you are the one deceiving?"

That night, in Marco's penthouse, she watched him sleep. He'd told her he worked in import-export. She'd told him she was a corporate consultant. Both of them selling bullshit, but only one of them lying about something that mattered.

His phone lit up on the nightstand. She shouldn't look. She was meant to be the professional here, the one who could compartmentalize. But three months ago, he'd held her through a panic attack in a hotel bathroom in Singapore. Two months ago, he'd whispered "I think I'm falling for you" in French. Last week, he'd talked about buying a house somewhere quiet.

She reached for his phone.

The messages weren't about weapons, or money laundering, or any of the things her agency had claimed. They were about her. About a mole in his organization, someone sending his secrets to competitors. He wasn't the target. He was hunting the spy.

He was hunting her.

The sphinx's words echoed: *you are the one deceiving.*

Elena had three choices: disappear before he woke, call in her team to extract her and let him be collateral, or tell him everything and let the chips fall. The agency wouldn't let just her walk away. They'd already made that clear.

She felt like she was standing on a precipice. The weight of it pressed against her chest — the months of lies, the nights that had become real to her if not to him, the impossibility of any future where they both survived this intact.

Marco stirred. His arm reached out, found her waist, pulled her closer. He buried his face in her neck, breathing her in like she was the only real thing in his world.

"Ti amo," he murmured, half-asleep.

Elena pressed her palm against his cheek, memorizing the shape of his jaw. She could still call this in. She could still complete the mission. She could still be the spy she'd been trained to be.

Instead, she whispered back, "I know."