Chapter 4

The ride home was silent and cold. Chloe sat as far away from him as possible in the back of the town car. Later that night, her mother called him. Mrs. Hayes' s voice was like honey laced with arsenic.

"Ethan, dear," she began. "Chloe is dreadfully upset. You embarrassed her tonight. And you frightened Liam."

"Liam stole from me, and Chloe lied about it," Ethan replied flatly.

"Stole? Don' t be so dramatic. He' s a boy, a boy who admires you. Chloe was trying to be kind. You know how much our family values kindness. You need to be more understanding. Liam is part of our family now."

He felt the implicit threat. Behave, or you' re out.

An hour later, Chloe showed up at his apartment. She looked contrite, her eyes puffy from crying. She threw her arms around him.

"I' m so sorry, Ethy," she whispered into his chest. "You were right to be angry. I was wrong. I should have told you. It' s just... Liam looks up to you so much, and I wanted him to feel included. Please forgive me."

He was so desperate to believe her, so terrified of the alternative, that he let his anger go. He held her, breathing in the familiar scent of her perfume, and chose to accept the lie. It was easier than accepting the truth.

"It' s okay," he lied back.

She sealed their reconciliation with a kiss, a deep, passionate kiss that felt like a promise. "I love you, Ethan Miller," she murmured against his lips. "Only you. Always."

The next day, to prove his trust, to prove he was over his "jealousy," he did something monumentally stupid. He took her to his lab.

"I wanted to show you something," he said, leading her to his primary workstation. "This is it. The big one."

On the screen was a complex flowchart of his life' s work: the revolutionary AI algorithm he' d named 'Prometheus.' It was a self-correcting, predictive model that could process and analyze data with unprecedented speed and accuracy. It was his masterpiece, the key to his future.

"This is going to change everything, Chloe," he said, his voice filled with passion. He walked her through the core logic, explaining the neural network architecture, the learning protocols. He showed her the source code, the digital DNA of his creation. He held nothing back. He was showing her his soul.

She listened with wide-eyed fascination, her hand on his arm.

"Oh, Ethy, it' s brilliant," she breathed, her eyes shining with what he mistook for pride. "You are a true genius. You' re going to be so famous, so successful. We' re going to have the most amazing life."

She kissed him again, right there in the sterile light of his lab. "I love you more than anything," she declared. "I can' t wait to be your wife."

He was dizzy with it. The relief, the renewed love, the bright future she painted for them. He let himself believe that the incident with the watch was just a blip, a small crack that they had successfully patched over.

He spent the next few weeks lost in a dream of his own making. He and Chloe were inseparable again, planning their wedding, looking at houses. He was so happy, so blindly optimistic, that he ignored the warning signs that were flashing all around him.

He didn't notice that Chloe was spending more time than ever on her laptop, often closing it quickly when he entered the room.

He didn' t question it when she asked for a digital copy of his Prometheus presentation, claiming she wanted to "brag to her father" about his genius.

And he tried his best to ignore the photos that kept popping up on social media. Chloe and Liam at a concert he wasn't invited to. Chloe and Liam having lunch, their heads bent close together in intimate conversation. Chloe and Liam, always Liam.

The rumors started to circulate again, quiet whispers in their social circle.

"Are they still getting married?"

"I heard she' s spending all her time with her brother. It' s a little weird, don' t you think?"

"Poor Ethan. He has no idea."

He heard the whispers. He saw the pictures. A cold dread began to seep back into his heart, but he pushed it down. He had to trust her. Their entire life was built on that trust.

He decided he needed to confront the issue head-on, not with anger this time, but with honesty. He would sit her down, tell her his fears, and they would work through it together. He rehearsed the conversation in his head, planning to do it that Friday.

But Liam got there first.