Every time I lie, my voice turns the excuse into an absurdly romantic compliment.
“Where the hell were you last night, Leo?”
Sarah’s voice cut through the tiny breakroom like a straight razor. She slammed the internal audit folder onto the table, right next to my half-empty coffee cup. Outside the door, footsteps were echoing in the hallway of the Chicago district attorney’s office. Detective Miller and two federal agents were less than thirty seconds away.
“The evidence locker was wiped clean at midnight,” Sarah whispered, her eyes burning with furious desperation. “Your keycard unlocked the door. The Chief thinks you’re selling out our key witness to the Moretti cartel. Talk to me right now, or I swear to God I’m stepping aside and letting Miller handcuff you in front of the entire division.”
My heart pounded against my ribs like a trapped bird. I hadn’t touched the evidence locker. I was locked in a basement apartment across town, tied to a chair by two men wearing tactical masks who wanted the hard drive currently sitting in my coat pocket. But I couldn’t tell her that. If I mentioned the hard drive, the federal wiretaps would flag the room, and my younger sister—who was currently being watched by Moretti’s men—wouldn’t make it through the night.
I needed to lie. I needed to tell her I was at a bar, or that my keycard had been stolen three days ago.
“I was running late because…” I opened my mouth, desperate to manufacture a plausible alibi.
What I meant to say was: I lost my keycard at a diner on 4th Street two days ago.
What actually came out of my mouth—vibrant, steady, and utterly absurd—was: “I was delayed because the stars in the Chicago sky refused to shine until they were sure you were awake to outshine them.”
Sarah froze. Her furious glare wavered for a fraction of a second. “What… what did you just say to me?”
“I’m telling you the truth,” I panicked, trying to fix it immediately. I was ambushed in my home!
“Your eyes are the only reason I bother opening mine every morning,” my voice declared with smooth, unbearable passion.
“Are you out of your mind?!” Sarah took a step back, her cheeks flushing red under the harsh fluorescent lights. “Leo, this is a federal investigation! People are going to prison!”
The heavy oak door swung open behind her. Detective Miller stepped into the room, holding a pair of steel handcuffs.
Miller didn’t waste time. “Leo Vance, you are under arrest for obstruction of justice and unauthorized access to federal evidence.”
Sarah stepped between us before I could even draw a breath. Her face was flushed, her hands trembling, but her body language was pure defense. “Wait, Miller. Give me two minutes with him. Something isn’t right.”
“He cleared the log at midnight, Sarah,” Miller growled, resting his hand on his holster. “His signature is on the digital ledger.”
“Leo,” Sarah turned to me, grabbing my lapels. Her eyes were searching mine, desperate, confused, and dangerously close. “If you didn’t do it, tell me who took your card. Just give me a name!”
I slammed my teeth together. If I named Marcus, Moretti’s dirty agent inside our unit, Marcus’s spotters outside would text the hit squad waiting outside my sister’s high school in Evanston.
I tried to say: Marcus stole my card from my locker while I was in court.
Instead, the curse twisted my words into a low, breathless whisper: “If I breathed a single name other than yours, my lungs would forget how to hold air.”
Miller stopped in his tracks, staring at me like I had lost my mind. Sarah gasped, her grip on my jacket tightening as her chest heaved. “Leo… stop doing this. Why are you saying these things right now?”
“Because,” I tried to explain that I was being blackmailed.
“Because your voice is the only sound that keeps the darkness from swallowing me whole,” my mouth blurted out with tragic, sweeping romanticism.
“Enough of this ridiculous circus!” Miller grabbed my shoulder, spinning me around to slap the steel cuff onto my right wrist.
That was when the fire alarm blared. Red lights flashed across the ceiling, drowning the room in crimson glare. In the confusion, Sarah slipped something heavy and metal into my left pocket—a spare set of keys to the evidence garage—and shoved me toward the emergency exit door.
“Go,” she breathed, her cheeks burning as she stared into my eyes. “If you’re making a fool of yourself because you love me, you better prove you’re innocent first.”
I broke into a sprint down the stairwell, cold steel dangling from one wrist. I made it to the alleyway behind the precinct, ducking behind a dumpster just as a black SUV pulled up. The window rolled down. It was Marcus. He pointed a silenced pistol directly at my chest.
“Hand over the hard drive, Leo,” Marcus sneered. “Or your sister doesn’t make it to second period.”
The rain was beginning to slick the asphalt of the alleyway, reflecting the pulsing red emergency lights from the precinct above. Marcus kept the gun leveled at my heart, his eyes cold and calculating. He didn’t care about the fire alarm or the sirens in the distance. He knew he had me pinned.
“Drive is in the coat, right?” Marcus said, clicking the safety off. “Pass it over, and I call off the guy outside your sister’s school. Try anything clever, and she pays for it.”
My mind raced. I couldn’t fight him physically with one wrist handcuffed. I couldn’t call for help because Miller’s men were searching for me inside the building. My only weapon was the absolute, horrific curse that had ruined my life since childhood: every time I attempted to utter a falsehood, my brain lost control of my vocal cords, translating the lie into an intoxicating, poetic compliment aimed at whoever was listening.
I had spent my entire life hiding it, learning to tell the brutal truth just to avoid sounding like a lunatic. But standing in front of a loaded gun, I realized something. Marcus didn’t know about the curse.
“You think you’ve won, don’t you?” I said, stepping forward slowly.
“Back up, Vance,” Marcus barked, raising the barrel to my eye level.
I needed to make Marcus hesitate. I needed him to think I was playing a completely different game so I could close the distance between us.
I decided to lie intentionally. I tried to say: There are five armed marshals standing right behind your SUV.
My lips moved, and a deep, velvet voice echoed in the narrow alley: “Your presence is so overwhelming that even the shadows in this alley shrink away in admiration.”
Marcus blinked. His brow furrowed in utter bewilderment. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I said,” I tried to lie again, trying to claim that I had already uploaded the drive to a cloud server.
“I said that looking into your eyes makes me realize that perfection isn’t a myth,” my voice declared, oozing with dramatic devotion.
Marcus took a step back, visibly unsettled, his gun wavering for a fraction of a second. “Are you having a stroke, Vance? Shut the hell up!”
“I can’t shut up,” I tried to lie that the police were surrounding us right now.
“I can’t shut up because every moment spent not admiring your magnificent soul is a moment wasted in eternal regret,” I said, taking two quick steps toward him, my hands raised in fake surrender.
Marcus was so profoundly confused, trying to process why a handcuffed prosecutor was confessing deep romantic adoration to him in a dark alley, that he lowered the gun by two inches. That two-inch gap was all I needed.
I lunged forward, swinging my right hand. The loose steel cuff whipped through the air and struck Marcus across the temple with a sickening crack. He stumbled backward, dropping the pistol onto the wet pavement. I kicked the gun under the dumpster, tackled him to the ground, and pinned his arms using my weight.
Footsteps thundered down the alley exit.
Sarah burst through the doors, her service weapon drawn, followed closely by Detective Miller. She took in the scene—Marcus groaning on the wet ground, the dropped radio showing a live feed to Moretti’s cell, and me sitting on top of him with a bloody knuckle.
“Miller! Check his pocket!” Sarah yelled.
Miller knelt down and pulled a burner phone from Marcus’s jacket. The screen was lit up with a text message from an unknown number: Wait until Vance hands over the drive, then eliminate him and his sister.
Miller looked from the phone to Marcus, his face turning pale as he realized he had almost arrested the wrong man. “Jesus Christ. Marcus was the mole.”
Miller immediately grabbed his radio, calling in an emergency dispatch to secure my sister’s school in Evanston. Within two minutes, the tactical team confirmed she was safe in the principal’s office, guarded by uniformed officers.
The tension in the alley evaporated into the cool autumn air. Miller dragged Marcus to his feet, grunting an apology to me before marching the dirty agent back inside the building.
Finally, it was just Sarah and me standing in the quiet, rain-slicked alley.
She walked over to me, holding the key to my handcuffs. She unlocked the steel loop around my wrist, her thumb lingering against my skin for a second longer than necessary. Her cheeks were still faintly pink.
“So,” Sarah said, looking up at me through her wet eyelashes. “The hard drive?”
I reached into my inner coat pocket and handed her the flash drive containing Moretti’s full financial ledgers. “I grabbed it from the vault yesterday after hours because I knew Marcus was going to wipe the system at midnight. I couldn’t tell anyone because he threatened my sister.”
Sarah took the drive, placing it carefully in her pocket. Then she crossed her arms, studying my face with an intense, searching expression.
“You saved the case, Leo,” she said quietly. “But back in the breakroom… and in the stairwell… what was all that?”
My heart stopped. The adrenaline of the fight faded, leaving me completely naked before the truth. I couldn’t lie to her now. If I tried to lie and say it was just a tactical distraction, the curse would throw another absurdly passionate poem at her, making things ten times worse.
I had to tell the actual, terrifying truth.
“I have a condition,” I admitted, rubbing my aching wrist. “It sounds insane, but whenever I try to tell a lie, I can’t do it. My voice changes, and I end up saying the most absurdly romantic compliments instead.”
Sarah stared at me. “You’re joking.”
“I’m completely serious,” I said desperately. “In the breakroom, I was trying to lie and say I lost my keycard at a diner. In the hallway, I was trying to lie and say I was being blackmailed. Every time I tried to make up an excuse, it came out as… well, you heard it.”
Sarah stood silently in the drizzle for a long moment. A slow, mischievous smile began to spread across her lips.
“So,” she said, taking a step closer to me, her voice dropping an octave. “When you said my eyes were the only reason you bother opening yours every morning… you were trying to lie?”
“Yes!” I nodded frantically. “It was a total cover-up!”
“And when you said my voice keeps the darkness from swallowing you whole?”
“A complete fake! I was trying to say I was tied up in a basement!”
Sarah laughed—a bright, warm sound that filled the cold alleyway. She reached out and straightened the collar of my wet coat, her fingers brushing against my neck.
“That’s a shame,” she murmured, looking directly into my eyes. “Because for a second there, I was actually starting to hope you meant it.”
I looked down at her, the rain dripping from the brim of my hair. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to make up an alibi. I didn’t want to hide behind an excuse or a clever line.
“Well,” I said softly, stepping closer so there was no space left between us. “If you want to know how I really feel about you… you’re just going to have to ask me a question where the truth is even better than the lie.”
Sarah smiled, leaning in as the sirens in the background faded into nothing at all.
