Tarot Gone Wrong

The heavy sound of the shower echoed through the apartment as I pushed the front door open.

Nate was in the bathroom. His laptop sat open on the coffee table, the screen still glowing brightly in the dim living room.

An open messaging app immediately caught my eye.

The text at the top read: Luna the Mystic.

The newest message hit me like a physical blow.

[Your reading topic for today: Is there still a chance for you and the one who got away?]

My heart skipped a beat. Without thinking, my fingers brushed the trackpad, scrolling up to read the rest of the conversation.

The psychic had asked Nate to describe the person he wanted a reading on.

"She is the woman I have loved and desperately wanted for seven years. Now, right before I get married, she moved back to the States."

Every drop of blood in my body turned to ice.

Seven years.

Nate and I had been together for exactly seven years.

And we were supposed to get married next month.

The shower stopped. I was so numb I did not even notice the sudden silence.

Nate walked out a moment later, rubbing a towel through his damp hair. Drops of water trailed down his bare chest.

"Serena? When did you get back?" He smiled warmly, walking toward me. "Why are you just standing there zoning out?"

"Just walked in. Saw your laptop was still on."

"Since when did you start believing in this stuff?" I pointed a trembling finger at the screen, my throat incredibly tight.

Nate glanced at the laptop. Something flickered in his eyes, barely there, before he casually snapped the laptop shut.

"Oh, that." He let out a soft chuckle and pulled me into his arms.

"I was grabbing drinks with some colleagues today. I mentioned someone on my feed started doing tarot readings. One of the guys got super into it and begged me to ask a question for him."

"But you are the biggest skeptic I know." I stared directly into his eyes, searching for a crack in his perfect facade.

Nate smiled, the familiar crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes.

"Of course I do not believe in it," he said, gently pinching my cheek. "I was just doing a favor for a buddy. Look, I even told the psychic it was not for me."

He opened the laptop again and pointed to a line of text.

[Asking for a friend. This isn't about me.]

A fraction of the tension left my shoulders, but a dull, nagging unease remained coiled in my stomach.

"So who is your colleague hung up on?" I asked, forcing a casual tone.

Nate paused for a split second before laughing.

"His high school crush. The guy is getting married soon, guess he is just getting cold feet and overly sentimental."

His expression was absolutely flawless.

"What is going on? Why are you so on edge today?" Nate looked at me with deep concern. "Work stressing you out?"

I nodded slowly. "We hit a roadblock on a huge project. I was at the office until just now."

His brows instantly pulled together in a look of pure heartache.

"I told you to stop working yourself to the bone. Are you hungry? Let me make you some pasta."

Looking at his earnest, loving gaze, I silently cursed myself for being paranoid.

This was Nate.

This was the man who remembered my exact coffee order, who warmed up a glass of milk for me every single night, who let me use his phone whenever I wanted.

How could I doubt him over a few random text messages?

Later that night, Nate fell asleep quickly. His breathing was deep and even, as if everything was perfectly normal.

I lay wide awake staring at the ceiling.

Driven by some dark intuition, I picked up my phone and searched for "Luna the Mystic" on Instagram.

A profile with hundreds of thousands of followers popped up.

The bio read: "Expert Tarot Reader. Ten years of experience. Unlocking your soul and interpreting your destiny."

Ten years.

Not exactly someone who "just started doing tarot" like Nate had claimed.

My heart did a painful stutter step. The sickening feeling of being played crept slowly up my spine.

I clicked on the psychic's newest post.

"If you need a private, detailed reading to clear your confusion, drop a heart in the comments and I will DM you!"

There were already hundreds of comments.

I scrolled past endless strangers until a horribly familiar profile picture locked my vision. It was Nate.

He always bragged about hating social media.

Did he make an account just for this?

My fingers trembled as I tapped his profile.

It was a completely fresh account. He only followed ten people. Nine of them were boring financial news outlets.

The tenth was a silhouette of a girl standing under the golden arches of the Eiffel Tower.

Username: Abby Travels.

I clicked. Her name was Abby.

Her pinned posts were a timeline of her life studying, traveling, and working in Europe.

And under every single major milestone, there was a comment from that familiar profile picture.

Five years ago, she posted from a massive New Year party in London: "Counting down with strangers. So romantic yet so lonely." Nate commented: "Next time, I will be there with you."

Three years ago, she posted her Master degree from a top tier university: "Stressed to the max, but I finally did it!" Nate commented: "I told you. You have always been a star."

A year ago, she posted a picture of an IV drip in her hand from a hospital bed: "Feeling so weak today." Nate commented: "Please take care of yourself. Do not make me worry about you."

Seven years ago, she posted a picture at the airport departure gate: "A new beginning. Let's both work hard!" Nate commented: "I will wait for you."

For seven entire years, he had been waiting for someone else.

I kept scrolling.

A week ago: "First day at the new job! Huge thanks to a certain someone for the referral!" The photo was a view from an office window. A view I knew intimately well.

It was the exact view from the high rise building where Nate worked.

The newest post was from three days ago.

"If the cards say yes, we will finally be together." The location tagged was the most famous romantic restaurant in the city.

My chest caved in.

A tsunami of pure agony and deep humiliation swallowed me whole.

I put my phone down and lay frozen in the dark, letting the tears slide silently into my pillow.

Seven years. That youthful obsession, that unforgettable girl in his heart, had never faded.

So what was I?

Just a warm body to kill time with? A convenient distraction until his real love came back?

The next afternoon, I took a half day off work and went straight to the financial district.

The glass skyscrapers towered above me. I used to stand on this exact corner waiting for Nate to get off work, listening to him complain about his corporate drama.

Back then, happiness felt so solid I could hold it in my hands.

Right now, even the air smelled like a lie.

I did not ask to meet Nate. I bypassed him entirely and messaged Abby.

Those few minutes of waiting felt like a lifetime.

Soon, a figure walked into the upscale cafe.

She wore a perfectly tailored designer suit. She was tall, radiant, and her makeup was flawless.

When she saw me, confusion flashed across her eyes, but she confidently walked over anyway.

"Hi, I am Abby. And you are?" She extended a manicured hand.

I ignored it. "I am Serena."

I skipped the pleasantries.

"Serena?" She repeated the name, and a few seconds later, a spark of realization lit up her eyes.

"Oh. Nate's fiancee?"

"Ex fiancee." I looked at her with a deadpan expression. "I came here today to ask you one question."

"What could you possibly need to ask me?" She leaned back in her chair, a mocking smirk playing on her lips. "Is this about Nate?"

I held her gaze. "I want to know the result of that tarot reading. Is there still a chance for you two?"

Abby blinked, then let out a sharp, amused laugh like I had just told a hilarious joke.

"Serena, honey, I think you have the wrong person. Whatever is going on between you and Nate is your business. Coming to me for answers? Do you not realize how pathetic that makes you look?"

"It is not pathetic." I shook my head, keeping my voice utterly flat. "Because he will never tell me the truth."

"After all, he just finalized the deposit for our wedding venue yesterday."

The smirk instantly vanished from Abby's face. Her eyes turned ice cold.

She stared at me for a long moment, then smiled again. This time, it was a petty, vindictive smile.

"Alright. You want to see it?" She pulled out her phone, tapped the screen a few times, and shoved it in my face.

It was a screenshot of Nate's private Instagram story.

The image was his chat with Luna the Mystic.

[Based on the cards, you are definitely trapped in a love triangle. But you hold all the power. The Knight of Swords indicates a need for quick action. Ultimately, you must follow your heart.]

Nate's caption over the photo read: Follow my heart? I think I might just try that.

An invisible fist crushed my lungs. Breathing felt like swallowing glass.

I slowly lifted my head and looked at Abby's triumphant, provocative eyes. I forced the corners of my mouth to curl upward.

"Oh. I see he put that on his Close Friends list." I kept my tone incredibly light. "No wonder it never showed up on my feed."

Abby's face morphed into something ugly.

Embarrassed and angry, she snatched her phone back.

"Listen here. This is between me and Nate. What he posts is his choice. It has nothing to do with me!"

"You coming here to confront me is completely pointless!"

"It better have nothing to do with you." I stood up, looking down at her.

"Trying something new requires an opportunity. If you knowingly insert yourself into someone else's relationship, then it is no longer just his problem."

I did not bother looking at her reaction. I turned around and pushed through the cafe doors.

It was time to end this, Nate.

Nate was not home yet when I walked in.

I went straight into his home office and booted up his desktop.

The password was my birthday. It was so bitterly ironic I almost laughed out loud.

I just wanted to find the contracts for the wedding planners and cancel this massive joke of an event as quickly as possible.

His desktop was perfectly organized.

As my eyes scanned the screen, a folder labeled "Referral" suddenly caught my attention.

Abby's post instantly echoed in my mind. Huge thanks to a certain someone for the referral!

A heavy, suffocating dread wrapped around my throat.

I double clicked the folder.

Inside was a massive list of subfolders, and the naming convention made my blood run entirely cold.

[Nova Corp Vanguard Market Analysis] [Nova Corp Vanguard Strategy Deck] [Nova Corp Vanguard Final Proposal]

Nova Corp. My company.

And Apex Innovations, Nate's company, was our biggest, most vicious rival bidding for the Vanguard account. It was a multi million dollar international contract.

My hand shook violently as I opened one of the files.

It was my exact layout. The exact data charts I had built from scratch. It even had my personal shorthand notes in the margins.

This was the highly classified project stored in a triple password protected vault on my work computer.

How the hell did it end up here?

A memory struck me like lightning. A few weeks ago, my laptop system completely crashed.

When Nate found out, he used his special external drive to help me run a data recovery.

I remembered him kissing the top of my head, gently scolding me for working too hard and not resting enough.

So his little data rescue mission was just a cover to install malware and clone my entire hard drive?

I was so furious I could not feel my fingers.

I forced myself to breathe. In and out. I grabbed my phone and took clear photos of every single file, timestamp, and directory path.

Then, I dialed Harper, the head of HR at Apex Innovations.

Harper was my sorority sister from college. We were incredibly close.

"Did your company just hire a girl named Abby through an internal referral?" My voice trembled.

"Yeah, how did you know?" Harper sounded surprised. "Nate pushed her resume through. Said she was a brilliant junior from his old college who just moved back from Europe. Honestly, we usually do not hire like this, but..."

"But what?" My chest tightened.

"But she absolutely blew us away during her interview." Harper sounded genuinely impressed.

"You know Apex and Nova are fighting over the Vanguard account, right? Vanguard was leaning toward your company. But during Abby's final interview, she pitched this mind blowing concept. The details were flawless, the data was bulletproof. Our CEO hired her on the spot!"

"Why are you asking? Did Nate not tell you?"

I did not hear a single word Harper said after that.

Just a loud, high pitched ringing in my ears.

That was my concept.

Those were the details I stayed up until 3 AM perfecting. That was the data I spent months gathering.

Just to get Abby a job, Nate was willing to let her step on my neck. He was willing to destroy my entire career and steal my life's work.

My body shook with a rage so pure it felt like ice. I dug my nails into my palms until they bled.

"Harper," my voice dropped an octave, turning deadly calm. "Thank you for telling me. I will explain everything later. I have to go."

I hung up and stared at the "Referral" folder on the screen.

Seven years together. Engaged to be married.

And yet, when it came to his perfect first love, he happily threw me under the bus.

When anger reaches its absolute peak, it turns into a terrifying kind of clarity.

If they wanted to play dirty, I was going to bury them both.