The Last Pill She Swallowed

Elena stared at the amber **vitamin** bottle on her counter, the one Marcus had insisted she take every morning with breakfast. "For your immunity," he'd said, pressing a kiss to her forehead before heading to his job at the telecommunications firm. That was three months ago, before he disappeared.

Now two men in dark suits sat at her kitchen table, explaining that her husband of seven years had never worked in IT. Marcus was a **spy**—corporate intelligence, selling secrets to whoever paid. The bottle on her counter contained placebo pills, part of his cover story. He'd needed her to believe in the routine, the domestic illusion that allowed him to slip away at night.

"Did you love him?" the older agent asked, and the question caught like glass in her throat.

She went to the sink and ran the **water**, watching it swirl down the drain. That first night alone, she'd sat on the tiled floor and drunk herself into something like peace, letting the liquid fill the empty spaces where his laughter used to be. Now she realized the void had been there all along.

"Check this," the younger agent said, holding up a tangled **cable** he'd found beneath their bed. It was connected to a small device. "He was monitoring your calls too. Professional habit."

Elena laughed, a dry, cracked sound. All those late nights when he'd claimed to be troubleshooting network issues at work. All those times she'd poured her heart to her sister, thinking she had privacy. She'd been living in a glass house and never noticed.

"Ma'am?"

She turned off the faucet. The silence in the apartment was absolute. She'd been taking those vitamins for seven years, building an immunity to nothing, swallowing the lie daily.

"Did I love him?" She met the agent's gaze. "I loved what I thought we were building. But that's not the same thing, is it?"

She picked up the vitamin bottle and dropped it into the trash. The plastic clattered against the bottom, satisfying and final. Tomorrow she'd start something new. No more prescribed routines, no more blind trust. She'd take her chances with the unknown.