The Last Drop

Elise found the burner phone beneath his side of the mattress, a sleek black iPhone that shouldn't have existed. Her hands trembled as she powered it on, the glow illuminating their bedroom at 3 AM. Beside her, Marcus slept deeply, exhausted from another late night at the office. Or so he'd said.

The cat, Bast, wound around her ankles, purring with an intensity that felt almost like warning. Elise had adopted the straysleek three years ago, during what she now understood was a decoy deployment in Berlin. Marcus had been such a thoughtful lover then. He knew how she took her coffee, what books she loved, exactly which spot behind her ear made her shiver.

The phone's gallery held hundreds of photos: Elise at her office, Elise at the grocery store, Elisse crying on their balcony after her mother's funeral. The metadata stretched back two years. He wasn't just spying—he was curating.

She dropped the phone in the toilet and watched it sink beneath the water, a final baptism of truth.

By sunrise, Elise was running through JFK with nothing but a passport and a cash-stuffed purse. The message she'd left on his phone was simple: *I know what you are.* Let him wonder how long she'd known, let him question which parts of their love had been real and which had been just another assignment.

Somewhere over the Atlantic, she finally let herself cry. The flight attendant brought her water with a look of practiced sympathy. Elise accepted it with trembling hands, suddenly grateful for the hollow ache of betrayal. At least it was hers.

Somewhere in the city below, Bast would be waiting by his food bowl, demanding breakfast from a man who would never again know what was real. Elise closed her eyes and imagined the cat's judgment, those golden eyes seeing through every lie.