I FOUND A SECOND PHONE HIDDEN IN MARK’S SUITCASE LAST NIGHT
My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped his old canvas suitcase on the floor. I was just trying to put it back in the attic storage, wrestling with the rusty latches that kept catching. That’s when I felt the weight shift strangely inside, something small wrapped in a sock tucked deep near the bottom seam. My heart started pounding like a drum against my ribs before I even saw the dim screen light up through the fabric. The thick attic dust made my hands feel gritty and rough.
It wasn’t his work phone he always leaves downstairs. It wasn’t his personal phone that was charging in the bedroom. This was a *third* one, completely silent, just vibrating continuously against my palm with muffled notifications. “Please don’t be what I think,” I whispered to the empty attic air, my voice trembling and barely audible above my own ragged breathing.
I fumbled with the cold metal rectangle, my fingers clumsy with dread, and swiped the screen blindly. No passcode. It just unlocked instantly, revealing a terrifyingly simple list of calls, hundreds of them, all to just one unknown number saved ominously as “Service.” The bright blue light of the screen felt harsh and accusing in the suffocating dimness of the small attic space.
They were all late night calls, 2 AM, 3 AM, some missed, some lasting minutes, stretching back months and months. This wasn’t a mistake; this was clearly a pattern, a deliberate, hidden part of his life I knew nothing about. My stomach twisted into such tight, painful knots I felt genuinely nauseous from the shock and fear pooling inside me.
Then a text message popped up: ‘She’s asking questions. Get out.’
👇 *Full story continued in the comments…*My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. The ancient attic dust clung to my damp hands, but the cold terror emanating from the phone in my grip was worse than any grime. ‘She’s asking questions. Get out.’ The words seared themselves into my brain. *She*. Was it me? Had my quiet unease, my hesitant questions about his late nights, somehow been noticed? Had I inadvertently endangered him? Or was he in danger *because* of whatever “Service” was, and my innocent inquiries were making him a liability? The second interpretation felt colder, more menacing.
I fumbled with the attic latches again, desperate to close the suitcase, to shove it back into the shadows and pretend I hadn’t seen anything. But the phone was still vibrating relentlessly in my hand. I couldn’t leave it. My movements were jerky and clumsy. I managed to close the case, shoved it roughly towards its corner, and practically tumbled down the pull-down ladder, my feet missing a rung. I landed heavily on the landing floor, wincing, but the pain was a distant echo compared to the sickening dread consuming me.
Downstairs, the house was quiet, empty. I sank onto the bottom step, clutching the phone like a lifeline, or a bomb. The blue light felt less accusing now, just stark and revealing. I scrolled through the call log again, searching for a pattern, a clue, anything. The numbers for “Service” were consistent, always the same unknown number. Hundreds of calls. Late nights. Stretching back… how long? I hadn’t dated the calls in the attic, but they went back page after page. This wasn’t recent; this was a deep, long-standing secret.
I checked the message history with “Service”. Just that one chilling text received tonight. No sent messages from Mark. No other contacts saved except “Service”. The phone was a dedicated line, a hidden channel for this one clandestine connection. My hands were still shaking, but a cold resolve was starting to set in. I couldn’t put the phone back. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t found it. My life, our life, felt like a carefully constructed facade that had just crumbled around my ears.
I went into the kitchen, poured myself a glass of water, but couldn’t hold it steady enough to drink. My reflection in the dark window pane was a stranger – pale, wide-eyed, terrified. I looked at the phone again. The text message felt like a timer counting down. *She’s asking questions. Get out.* Was Mark planning to leave? To leave me? To flee because of whatever this was?
I heard the familiar sound of his car in the driveway. My heart leaped, a fresh wave of panic washing over me. I quickly shoved the phone into my pocket. I had to act normal. I had to see his face, look for a sign, anything that might explain this.
He came in, looking tired, loosened his tie. “Hey,” he said, his voice normal, maybe a little weary. “Long day.”
My throat was tight. “Hey,” I managed, trying to keep my voice steady. “Dinner in a bit?”
“Sounds good,” he said, giving me a brief, tired smile. He didn’t seem different. He didn’t seem like a man who had a secret life of late-night calls and urgent texts telling him to “Get out.” The disconnect was jarring, terrifying.
We ate dinner in strained silence. Every glance he gave me felt scrutinized. Was he looking at me differently because he knew I suspected something? Or was he just tired? I couldn’t tell. The weight of the phone in my pocket was a constant, burning reminder.
After dinner, he settled on the couch, turning on the TV. The mundane domestic scene felt like a cruel mockery. I couldn’t take it anymore. I walked over, the hidden phone feeling impossibly heavy in my hand now.
“Mark,” I said, my voice trembling slightly despite my effort to control it. He turned, his eyes questioning.
“Yeah?”
I pulled the phone out of my pocket. It felt wrong, violating his privacy, but the alternative – living with this dread – was impossible. “I was putting your old suitcase away,” I started, watching his face closely. “And I found this.” I held out the third phone.
His face went instantly pale, the colour draining away completely. His eyes widened, not with surprise, but with a cold, dawning horror. He looked like a trapped animal. The remote clattered from his hand onto the floor.
“What… where did you get that?” he stammered, his voice hoarse.
“In your suitcase. Tucked away,” I said, my voice gaining a little strength as his facade crumbled. “Hundreds of calls to ‘Service’. Late at night.” I held the phone up slightly, the screen visible. “And this text message I got tonight.” I read it aloud, each word a hammer blow between us. “‘She’s asking questions. Get out.'” I looked at him, my voice breaking. “Who is ‘She’, Mark? Is it me? And what is ‘Service’?”
He didn’t answer immediately, his chest heaving. He looked from the phone to my face, his expression a mixture of fear, guilt, and despair. Finally, the words spilled out of him in a torrent. “It’s… it’s debt. Gambling. I got into it trying to… fix things. Make things better. It got out of control.” His eyes were pleading now. “‘Service’ is… they’re who I owe. Who I work for now, trying to pay it back.”
My world tilted. Gambling debt? Working for criminals? It was worse than I could have imagined. “And… ‘She’s asking questions’?” I whispered.
He swallowed hard, his gaze dropping. “They… they noticed I was acting strange. Distracted. They warned me that if anyone was getting suspicious… asking questions… that I was a risk. And they told me…” He looked up, his eyes full of a terrible finality. “They told me I had to leave. Immediately. Tonight.”
The text message wasn’t a warning *to* him to leave because *I* was suspicious and ruining his life with *me*. It was an order *from* his criminal contact to abandon everything, *including me*, because *my existence and my questions* were threatening their operation or his safety within it. He wasn’t planning to leave *me* for someone else or for a new life; he was being told to *get out* of his current life, our life, and disappear, because I was getting too close to the truth of what he’d become involved in.
The air between us thickened with the weight of his confession and the chilling implication of the text. My fear for him warred with a crushing sense of betrayal. This wasn’t just a mistake; it was a complete, hidden life built on lies and illegal dealings. The man I thought I knew, the life I thought we shared, was a fiction.
I looked at the phone in my hand, then at Mark’s desperate face. The decision wasn’t easy, but in that moment, seeing the depth of the hole he had dug and the danger he had brought into our lives, I knew I couldn’t follow him into the abyss. He had chosen his path long ago, in those late-night calls, in the secrets he kept hidden in dusty suitcases. The text message was his warning, but it was also my wake-up call. My questions had inadvertently led me here, to the truth that shattered everything. I didn’t know exactly what he was involved in or who “Service” truly was, but the terror in his eyes and the chilling finality of “Get out” told me enough. My life with Mark, the man I thought I loved, was over. The hidden phone hadn’t just revealed a secret; it had revealed the end of us.