MY FIANCÉ HID A SECOND PHONE UNDER HIS CAR SEAT WITH STRANGE MESSAGES
My fingers brushed something cold and heavy under the passenger seat while I was looking for my dropped earring this morning. Pulled it out; a dark, cheap-looking phone. Pressed the power button, and a name I didn’t recognize lit up the lock screen: ‘The Drop’. My stomach clenched instantly.
I didn’t wait. I shoved it in my pocket and confronted him the second he walked in. Just held it up, not saying a word. His face drained white, then flushed a deep, angry red. “Where in God’s name did you get that?” he finally choked out, his voice tight and trembling.
He stammered something about an old work phone, a backup he forgot about. But the messages weren’t old; they were popping up in real time. Short codes, times, coordinates – clearly not work. The phone buzzed constantly in my hand, a hot, vibrating weight.
This wasn’t a side hustle; this felt coordinated, maybe illegal. I scrolled past dozens of cryptic exchanges, the bright screen light burning my eyes in the dim room. Then, a new message arrived at the top.
The last message just read, “They know. Get out now. Use the north exit.”
👇 *Full story continued in the comments…*His eyes darted to the screen, and I saw the colour drain from his face completely this time, replaced by a mask of pure terror. He didn’t stammer anymore. He lunged.
“Give it to me!” he roared, his hands reaching for the phone, his voice unrecognizable.
I flinched back, clutching the device. “What the hell is this, Mark? Who are ‘They’? What are you involved in?”
He stopped, chest heaving, looking wild-eyed between me and the buzzing phone. The frantic energy radiating off him was terrifying. “It’s… it’s not what you think,” he gasped, but his eyes were scanning the room, towards the windows, towards the door. “We have to go. *Now*.”
“Go? Go where? Explain this!” I demanded, holding up the phone again.
Just then, a sharp, urgent rapping came from the front door. Not a polite knock, but quick, hard thuds that vibrated through the floor. Mark froze, his eyes wide with panic.
“North exit,” he whispered, grabbing my arm, his grip like iron. “Back door. Alley. We have to move!”
He didn’t wait for my consent, yanking me towards the back of the house. My mind reeled – the hidden phone, the coded messages, “They know,” the frantic warning, the knocking at the door. It was happening too fast. This wasn’t just a secret; it was a life-threatening one.
As we burst through the back door into the cool night air of the alley, the sound of splintering wood echoed from the front of the house. Someone was breaking in.
Mark pulled me along, his pace breakneck, dodging overflowing bins and puddles. My only thought was the phone vibrating in my pocket, the cold weight a stark contrast to the heat of terror washing over me. He kept looking over his shoulder, his face etched with fear and desperation.
We reached the end of the alley, a dimly lit street stretched before us. Mark didn’t hesitate, pulling me towards a parked car a little way down. But as we neared it, two figures detached themselves from the shadows near the vehicle. Not the people from the door, these looked different – bulky, watchful.
Mark stopped dead. His grip on me slackened slightly. He saw them too. It was a trap.
He shoved me hard towards the opposite side of the street. “Run! Don’t look back! Go!” he yelled, his voice raw.
I stumbled, heart hammering against my ribs, turning instinctively towards the main road. As I ran, I risked one glance back. Mark stood frozen for a second, then turned, not towards the figures, but back into the deeper part of the alley, disappearing into the darkness as shouts erupted behind me.
I ran until my lungs burned and my legs ached, eventually collapsing onto a bus stop bench under the glare of a streetlamp, gasping for air. The cheap phone was still buzzing in my pocket, forgotten for a moment in the chaos. I pulled it out, staring at the blank screen now that the notification was gone.
Mark was gone. The life we were building, gone. My fiancé, the man I thought I knew, had been living a dangerous, hidden life that had just violently collided with ours. I didn’t know who ‘They’ were, or what ‘The Drop’ was, or where Mark had gone. But holding that cold, silent phone, I knew one thing with chilling certainty: I would never see him again, and the man I loved was lost somewhere in the cryptic world that lived on this device. My engagement was over, shattered by the secrets hidden under a car seat.