Riddles in the Palm

The night Ella discovered her husband was a spy, she was running her fingers through his hair—salt-and-pepper now, thinner at the temples than when they'd met fifteen years ago. He'd fallen asleep on the couch, exhausted from another 'business trip' to Dubai. His phone sat on the coffee table, screen unlocked.

A notification flashed: 'Assets secured. Return to base.'

Ella's heart hammered against her ribs. She'd always joked that Marcus was like a cat—aloof, nocturnal, impossible to truly know. The joke wasn't funny anymore.

She crept to his home office, a room she rarely entered. The desk held nothing suspicious—just financial reports and vacation planning spreadsheets. But beneath a false bottom in the top drawer, she found it: a dossier on her own company. Photographs of their prototype. Notes about security vulnerabilities.

The sphinx had riddled her marriage, and she'd never even asked the right questions.

Her palm pressed against the cool wood of the doorframe. She remembered their wedding day—how Marcus had traced the lifeline on her palm, whispered something about forever. All those years, she'd thought he was just being romantic. He was probably timing it for the extraction.

The next morning over coffee, Ella watched him stir his oatmeal. 'Dubai was beautiful?' she asked, her voice steady.

Marcus looked up, eyes shadowed. 'You know me, Ella. Just another trip.'

'No,' she said. 'I don't think I do.'

She walked out that afternoon with one suitcase, leaving behind the sphinx of a man who'd loved her in stolen moments between assignments. Sometimes she still wondered: had any of it been real, or was she just another asset to be cultivated?

Their cat, Bast, chose Marcus. Ella couldn't blame her—cats always knew who fed them, even if the food came from classified funds.