The Apple of the Eye

My son, keep my words and store up my commands within you. Keep my commands and you will live; guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. Do not let your heart turn to her ways or stray into her paths. 6Many are the victims she has brought down; her slain are a mighty throng. Her house is a highway to the grave, leading down to the chambers of death. Proverbs 7:1-2, 25-27

Alex lived a well-ordered life, like the clean code he took so much pride in writing. An IT professional, married to Lilian, father of a young girl, his routine was a stable system of work, family, and church service. The commandment of faithfulness was not a burden to him; it was a principle, the “apple of his eye,” something to be protected instinctively.

Simone entered his life in the most unlikely of places: on the committee for a volunteer project to develop a humanitarian aid app. She was the project manager, dedicated, efficient, and with an impressive ability to make everyone feel special. Especially Alex.

“Alex, your logic is brilliant,” she would say in meetings, and he would feel a warmth of recognition that went beyond the professional. She began to contact him outside of work hours with “urgent questions” about the project, which invariably drifted into more personal conversations.

She was a subtle huntress. She shared stories of her “loneliness” amidst success, creating a narrative in which he, the good and stable man, was the only one who understood her. She was never vulgar; her seduction was a perfume, not an assault. She would praise Lilian, his wife, which completely disarmed Alex. “You two have something so precious. Take good care of her.” The irony was the bait.

Alex began to rationalize. “It is for the project. I am just being a good colleague, a good Christian.” But he started hiding the conversations from Lilian. He started waiting for the notification with her name on it. He was allowing a stranger to get too close to the “apple of his eye.”

The trip to implement the app in a remote community was the perfect setting for the kill. During the day, they worked side by side, surrounded by poverty and need, which created a false sense of shared purpose. At night, the team would gather at the small hotel, exhausted.

On one of these nights, Simone called him out to the balcony. “I need some advice,” she said, her voice low, the moon illuminating the vulnerability on her face. She spoke of an “abusive ex-boyfriend,” painting a picture of fragility that awakened Alex’s protective instinct. He felt like the hero of her story.

“You’re such a good man, Alex,” she whispered, moving closer. “So safe.”

At that moment, all the alarms his conscience had been sounding for weeks were silenced by vanity. He was no longer the logical programmer. He was the fool who, flattered, forgot the danger.

What happened next was not an explosion of passion, but a silent, shameful surrender. It was as if he were watching a stranger in his own body.

The next morning, reality hit him with the force of a physical blow. Simone was different. The vulnerability had vanished, replaced by a casual, almost cold, familiarity. She treated him like a colleague, nothing more. There was no drama, no promises, no guilt. Just a silence that accused him.

He looked at himself and saw himself with a horrifying clarity. He had not been her hero; he had been just an item checked off a list, a conquest. The hunt was over.

He was the ox going to the slaughter.

The flight back was torture. Every mile that brought him closer to home was another step toward the life he had set on fire. As he walked into his living room, the smell of his home, his daughter’s drawing pinned to the fridge, the photo of his wedding in the picture frame—everything that was once his source of peace was now his sentence.

Lilian greeted him with a hug. And in that embrace, he fell apart. The guilt broke him.

He did not know if his marriage would survive. He did not know how he would rebuild the trust he had pulverized. He only knew that, in a moment of foolish vanity, he had let the hunter get too close. He had not kept his commandments, had not protected the apple of his eye. And now, like the bird flying into the snare, he was trapped, not knowing that it would cost him his life. The life that he, so carefully, had built.

(Made with AI)

This story is part of my book Everyday Wisdom

https://books2read.com/u/3knogL