I slid into my seat—right between Madison and Antonio like he'd arranged earlier. And right across from me?

Sabrina.

Of course. The universe absolutely loved its little jokes.

I lifted my wine glass. Met her eyes over the rim. Her hands were shaking when she raised hers, pretending not to look at me, pretending not to remember anything.

But her body was snitching on her—fast breathing, that slow blooming flush across her collarbone, the pulse at her throat doing double-time. She looked like a woman trying very hard not to react and failing in 4K resolution.

Emma leaned toward Sarah, whispering at a volume that wasn't whispering at all. "Okay, is it just me or is Mrs. Torres acting super weird?"

"Emma," Sarah hissed, mortified. "Quiet."

"I'm serious! She looks like she saw a ghost. Or like… I don't know. She keeps staring at Peter." Emma tugged at her own dress. "Is it hot in here? I feel like it's hot."

Sarah shot her a look, but she wasn't doing much better. Her legs wouldn't stay crossed, her napkin had become some kind of emotional support fabric, and her cheeks were warming up like she'd been left under a heat lamp.

"Say nothing," Sarah murmured, breath slightly catching. "Just observe. This is… honestly kind of fun." She took a long sip of water, then tugged the neckline of her emerald dress like she needed to air out her soul.

Mom was watching too. Not in a jealous, dramatic way—just that clinical nurse stare she used when diagnosing people without their consent. Her gaze kept flicking from me to Sabrina and back again, like she was trying to solve a medical mystery she really wished she didn't understand.

Meanwhile, Antonio was the picture of oblivious happiness. He saw a polite young man having dinner with his family. No tension. No odd behavior. No energy in the air thick enough to slice with the scallop knives.

Which, honestly, made everything even better.

Long dinner ahead.

And I was going to savor every fucking second of it.

Appetizers arrived—seared scallops arranged like someone had made modern art out of seafood. Some kind of yuzu foam, microgreens floating around. Pretentious. Delicious.

Antonio took one bite and practically moaned. "Jesus. This is exceptional. Peter, Madison—if this is what you're serving, you're going to be unstoppable."

"The chef's unreal," Madison said proudly. "Ducasse-trained. Total miracle he agreed to join us."

"Miracle?" Antonio chuckled. "I'm discovering my daughter doesn't rely on miracles."

Across the table, Sabrina still hadn't touched her plate. Her fork lay untouched, scallops going cold. She just held her wine glass—the slightest tremor in her fingers, like her whole body was fighting a losing battle.

"Sabrina?" Antonio's voice cut through the static, that concerned-husband tone that meant you're making a scene, please stop. "You haven't touched your food. Everything alright?"

She fucking jolted, like someone had zapped her with a cattle prod. Which, honestly, same. I'd been watching her slip further down the rabbit hole for the past twenty minutes, her mind somewhere else entirely—somewhere sweaty and wrong and probably illegal in at least forty states.

"What? Oh. Yes." Her eyes snapped to mine. Direct fucking contact. And Jesus Christ, the look on her face—like she'd just realized she'd left the stove on but also that she was maybe, possibly, definitely into arson. "I'm just..."

Just what? Just sitting there with your thighs pressed together so tight I could practically hear the friction? Just white-knuckling that wine glass like it was the only thing keeping you from face-planting into your daughter's underage fiancé? Just—yeah, okay, I see you, lady. I see exactly what you're doing.

"...taking it all in," she managed, finally. Her voice had that brittle quality, like a teacup that's already cracked but hasn't quite fallen apart yet. "This is... a lot."

"A lot?" Antonio beamed, completely fucking oblivious, the human embodiment of a LinkedIn success story. "Our daughter owns a Michelin-star restaurant! Something of her own and we did not help her do it. Her own self. This is amazing!"

"Yes," Sabrina whispered, and you could hear the strain, the way her vocal cords were fighting her brain's desperate command to just shut the fuck up already. "Amazing."

Her hand trembled as she picked up her fork. Put it down. Picked it up again, like her fingers had forgotten their job description. The disconnect between brain and body was getting worse—I could practically feel the static in her synapses, the crossed wires sending eat your risotto signals to her libido instead.

"I just..." She swallowed hard, her throat working around words that probably tasted like shame. "Peter, I'm curious. You're seventeen, you said?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The word landed like a slap. Or a caress. Or both, which is honestly the worst kind. I watched her whole body respond to it—spine straightening in a shiver, nipples hardening against that silk dress in a way that was completely inappropriate for a family dinner, her breath hitching like she'd just been punched in the solar plexus.

Because "ma'am" did the math out loud. Forty-three minus seventeen equals what the fuck are you thinking, lady? It made the wrongness explicit, turned it into a neon sign flashing TABOO over the bread basket.

And god, the Taboo Aura just ate that shit up. Gobbled it like it was the last slice of pizza at 2am. Where normal people saw a fence, the Aura saw a ladder. Where they saw a stop sign, it saw a green light with fireworks.

"And you... you built an AI, and you do all these things, help your family, buy them a mansion and even expensive cars, all in a span of what? One month? Two?" She was grasping for conversational driftwood, anything to keep from drowning in whatever filthy current was dragging her under.

"That's... how does someone so young even begin to do all that, let alone understand that level of technology?"

I kept my voice neutral, clinical, like I was discussing a particularly interesting bug in the code. "I taught myself. Started coding when I was nine. AI and machine learning fascinated me. I spent years studying. Practicing. Building smaller projects until I understood the fundamentals."

Which, sidebar, is actually true. Not the bullshit humblebrags origin story most tech bros spin, but the actual, boring, I had no many friends and too much free time reality of it.

"Nine," she repeated, and the word came out like a prayer and a curse all rolled into one.

You could see the calculation happening behind her eyes—when I was nine, she was thirty-five. Old enough to be my mother. Old enough to know better. The thought should've been a bucket of ice water. Instead, it was gasoline.

Our eyes locked. Held. The rest of the restaurant—the clinking glasses, the murmured conversations, Antonio's proud-dad monologue—just dissolved into static. It was just her and me and this impossible, inappropriate thread of want pulling tighter between us.

Then the Plea ability kicked in. Fuck, I'd been trying to suppress it all night, but it was like trying to hold back a sneeze during an orgasm—impossible and probably messier if you try.

Her thoughts hit me like a fucking freight train:

{I want him. I want this boy—this child, practically—this boy who's young enough to be my son to fuck me on this table, to ruin me, to make me forget my own name. I want my daughter's fiancé. I want to do things that would burn this family to ash and I'd strike the match myself just to feel the heat. And I've never wanted anything more in my entire miserable, perfect, pointless life and I will unravel him piece by piece until he's the only thought I have left.}

Then, even worse:

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