Chapter 1

I checked my bank account.

Eight thousand and change, exactly what had been there yesterday.

Then I checked my payment app. Four dollars and sixty-eight cents.

I screenshotted both and sent them to Mom. "The money never came through."

Her reply landed within seconds. "What do you mean it didn't come through? I sent you the receipt. Are you blind? Banks are slow. You can't wait a day?"

"Mom, that isn't a bank receipt." I zoomed in on the image and sent it back. "An AI made it."

She stopped typing and called me instead.

"What is this nonsense? I don't know anything about AI and I don't need to. The paperwork's sitting right there in black and white and you're telling me it's fake?

"Adam James, if you don't want to marry that girl, then say so. Don't hide behind your mother."

I pressed my knuckles into my forehead. "Mom, an AI makes pictures. Pictures aren't documents. It can't buy a house, it can't order a car, and it can't move a dollar of anybody's money."

"Shut your mouth!" Her voice went straight up. "I'm going to say this once, Adam. That girl is carrying a Carter baby. I'm about to be a grandmother, and I said I'd sell the shirt off my back to give you a wedding worth showing up to.

"And what do I get? I hand you money and it isn't enough. I hand you a house and it's in the wrong neighborhood. You want to put me in the ground, is that it?"

"I'm not complaining about the amount. I'm telling you nothing arrived."

"I'm done talking. You figure it out. I gave it to you. If you can't manage to receive it, that's your problem."

She hung up.

I sat there with my mouth open and nothing coming out of it.

That night she posted twenty-some voice messages to the family group chat. I played them one after another. She was crying in every single one.

"What did I ever do to deserve this? I raised that boy by myself. I bought him a house, I bought him a car, I scraped together a hundred thousand dollars for his settlement, I emptied out everything I had, and he stands there and tells me it isn't enough. Every day, fighting with me."

The chat went off like a grease fire.

"Linda, nobody's ever done more for a son than you have."

"That's got to be close to a quarter million all in. Adam, what else do you want from her?"

"You raise them and this is the thanks."

I started typing an explanation and got maybe six words in before another wall of messages buried it. Nobody wanted to hear it.

My brother Kyle surfaced.

"Just be grateful, man. Mom gave you every dollar she's put away in twenty years. I didn't get so much as a haircut out of it. Keep pushing her and her health's going to give out."

I stared at that and nearly laughed out loud.

Kyle was twenty-three. He'd never held a real job. He sat at home playing games until three in the morning, and Mom still slid him eight hundred dollars a month.

Emily's father called at six the next morning. I barely got the phone to my ear before he was going.

"You've got some nerve, kid. Hiding behind your mother now?"

"Mr. Foster, listen to me. That money my mom says she sent — an AI generated the—"

"Stop." His voice went flat over mine. "Your mother called me herself yesterday. Told me, out of her own mouth. Sent the hundred-thousand-dollar receipt straight to my phone. And now you're telling me there's no money?

"Son, what do you think I am? You think I've never set foot in a bank?"