Chapter 4I Sent My Cheating AI Incubus to the Scrapyard

A jolt went through me, and blind in the dark, I stumbled my way to the garage.

Through the gap in the door, I saw Vivian, her face buried against Lucien's shoulder, trembling, her cheeks flushed.

And the thing they were facing was my parents' memorial portraits.

I'd set my parents' tablets in the garage so I could pay respects easily, so they could watch me come home safe each day, and now the two of them were defiling that spot however they pleased.

I clenched my fist and knocked. The instant Vivian saw me, she scrambled up off of Lucien.

"I just felt so sorry for him, shut in the garage. I only wanted to comfort him. Please don't be angry."

Then her foot caught, and she gasped and slammed into the table.

Crack.

A tablet hit the floor, glass scattering everywhere.

I couldn't hold the rage anymore, and I lunged and slapped her hard across that fake-startled face.

“Ah!”

She crumpled to the floor, her eyes instantly rimmed red.

Before I could even register it, a heavy force hit me and shoved me down to the ground.

"Are you insane?"

Lucien's eyes churned with open hostility as he pointed at me, roaring.

"What gives you the right to bully Vivian like this? She didn't mean it. If you hadn't locked me in the garage, she'd never have come rushing over out of worry for me."

Then he didn't spare me another glance. He bent to the side and gently wiped the tears from the corner of Vivian's eye.

I sat slumped in the broken glass, my palms torn into raw red gashes, my breath thinning from the allergy, and I forced out a weak thread of sound.

"Get my allergy meds. Hurry."

Lucien looked down at me, and instead the corner of his mouth curved up slowly.

"Hurts pretty bad?"

"Did you ever think about how much you hurt Vivian when you tormented her? Today you can get a real taste of what she went through."

With that he lifted Vivian steadily and walked off without looking back.

I watched his unyielding back, despair swallowing me piece by piece, until I blacked out completely.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in a hospital room.

A nurse at my bedside told me softly that the smartwatch on my wrist had caught my heart rate crashing and triggered an emergency call on its own.

I gave a bitter smile.

A cold little smartwatch could save me, yet the robot I'd poured a fortune into and cared for day after day had stood by and let me almost die.

I had no reason left to put up with it.

Right then I pulled out my phone, gathered the evidence of Vivian repeatedly stealing my designer goods, sent it to the staffing agency, and unilaterally terminated her contract.

I'd noticed a while back that she'd been quietly walking off with my valuables. At the time she knelt and begged through tears, and I went soft and covered the whole thing up for her.

This was what it had cost me.

Then I called the AI manufacturer and pressed them to send someone out to collect and scrap this machine that refused to recognize its owner.

Customer service replied fast, promising a van that afternoon.

I let out a breath and slowly put my phone away.

But before long, the hospital room door banged open, and Lucien stormed in, seething.

"Still not done? Knocking Vivian over wasn't enough? Now you're fabricating theft evidence to destroy her life for good?"

"Apologize to Vivian. Right now."