{I know it is absurd to think but, in any way, Peter has to be Eros. Same height, slight similar voice, same presence, same hungry look he gives me, same golden hues in their eyes, slight similar face. And Peter has no brother. He's fucking Eros!}

{And I know you just fucked Patricia. If you're Eros, I can smell her on you, you bastard. I can feel it.}

I choked on my water. Actually, physically choked, the liquid going down the wrong pipe as my brain tried to process the triple-decker sandwich.

"Very what, Mom?" Madison's voice cut through, sharp and protective, like she could already feel the earthquake starting to rumble beneath her perfectly curated life.

"Disciplined," Sabrina finished, tearing her eyes away from me with an actual, physical snap, like breaking a magnetic field. "Very disciplined. To teach yourself something so complex at such a young age."

She grabbed her wine glass. Drained it. Reached for the bottle with hands that were shaking so badly the red wine sloshed over the rim, staining the white tablecloth like a crime scene.

"Shit," she whispered, and it was the most honest thing she'd said all night. "I'm sorry. I'm—"

"It's fine, Mom," Madison said, and the temperature dropped about ten degrees. "Maybe slow down on the wine."

"I'm fine," Sabrina said, too fast, too loud, that desperate please don't look at me don't see me energy radiating off her in waves. "Just... celebrating. Our daughter's success. Her... partnership."

She looked at me again, and there was something broken in her gaze, something that had already given up the fight.

"You two seem very... close. Very comfortable with each other, other than lovers, I mean."

Jesus fucking Christ. Other than lovers. The Freudian slip to end all Freudian slips, dropped right there between the arancini and the osso buco.

"Peter's brilliant," Madison said, her hand finding mine on the table, fingers interlacing in a gesture that was half-affection, half-back the fuck off, Mom. "That's why we work so well together. He sees patterns. Opportunities. Things other people miss."

"I'm sure he does," Sabrina murmured, and the subtext was so thick you could spread it on toast. She took another swallow of wine. Then another, like she was trying to drink her way through the awkwardness.

"Sabrina, slow down," Antonio laughed, still playing catch-up on a loop that had already lapped him three times.

"I'm fine," she said, the words tumbling out in a rush, a mantra, a lie she was telling herself more than us. "Just... celebrating. Our daughter's success. Her... partnership."

She didn't even realize she was repeating herself, her brain stuck on a loop like a scratched vinyl, the needle skipping over the same groove again and again.

"We are," Madison said, squeezing my hand so hard I could feel my knuckles grinding together. "We're engaged, Mom. Of course we're close."

"Engaged," Sabrina echoed, and the word sounded foreign in her mouth, like she'd just bitten into something spoiled. "Right. Yes. Engaged." She set down the wine glass. Picked up her water instead, as if that could undo the last five minutes. "When did that happen exactly? The engagement?"

"In a restaurant, remember?" I said, and I let my thumb trace small circles on Madison's palm, a performance for the woman across the table who was very much not her daughter right now. "We wanted to make sure we were ready. That this was... real."

"Real," Sabrina repeated, and her eyes had that glazed-over look of someone who's just taken a punch and hasn't quite registered the pain yet. "And you're certain? Both of you? This is what you want?"

"Sabrina, what kind of question is that?" Antonio finally piped up, his smile faltering as he started to sense the tectonic plates shifting beneath the pleasant family dinner facade. "Of course they're certain. Look at them."

"I'm just making sure," Sabrina said, defensive now, her voice cracking like thin ice. "Making sure my daughter is... happy. Safe. That she knows what she's getting into."

{That she knows what she's getting into.}

The irony was so thick it was choking. Because Sabrina knew exactly what her daughter was getting into—she could feel it, smell it, taste it on the back of her tongue like cheap merlot and bad decisions.

And she wanted it anyway.

Wanted it more because of it.

"I'm happy, Mom," Madison said, but the words came out tight, like she was trying to wedge them between her teeth before they escaped. "Very happy. Peter treats me like an equal. Like a partner. He sees me. Really sees me."

Really sees me.

The phrase landed like a fucking gut punch, and I watched Sabrina flinch—just a micro-expression, a flicker that disappeared so fast you'd miss it if you weren't already watching her the way you watch a pot of water about to boil over. But I saw it. The pain. The recognition.

"That's... that's good," Sabrina said, and her voice was barely a whisper now, like someone was slowly letting the air out of her. "That's important. Being seen."

The table went quiet in that where you could hear everyone's brain working overtime, like a room full of dial-up modems trying to connect. We were all just... sitting there, letting the weight of her words hang between us like wet laundry on a clothesline, heavy and obvious and impossible to ignore.

Then Antonio—bless his heart, the man's got the emotional radar of a potato—cleared his throat like he was about to give a PowerPoint presentation. "Well! Peter, tell me about this AI system. Madison mentioned it's... aware? Conscious? How does that even work?"

'Oh, for fuck's sake.' I could feel the panic start to creep up my spine, that familiar cold sweat of having to explain the unexplainable to someone who still uses a flip phone.

Before I could even open my mouth to bullshit my way through some half-assed explanation that wouldn't give him an aneurysm, Mom's voice sliced across the table like a scalpel.

"Peter."

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