The Scent of Betrayal

The moment I opened the door, I smelled a cloying, sweet perfume that I never wear—and

then I saw the lipstick-stained glass on our coffee table. It stopped me dead in my tracks.

As I stood frozen in the doorway, the aroma twisted through my senses like a warning,

whispering of secrets yet to be uncovered. Instantly, I knew something was terribly wrong;

his absence now made a sinister kind of sense. My boyfriend, Caleb,

had left early that morning under the pretense of an urgent meeting. But now,

with each step deeper into our shared apartment, the invisible web of deceit he’d spun

began to reveal itself. Sitting innocuously on the coffee table was that stained