Madison smiled, that dangerous smile that meant chaos was incoming. "Oh, not long. But when you know, you know. Right, baby?" She looked at me with dark eyes that promised murder if I didn't take the bait.
"Right," I agreed, feeling ARIA laughing somewhere in the neural pathways of my brain. "When you know, you know."
Ms. Chen studied us both, her almond eyes—sharp as broken glass—scanning my face, then Madison's designer everything, then doing the math in her head: our ages, my sudden wealth, the diamond on Madison's finger, the cut of her clothes.
I watched the exact moment the calculations clicked—several conclusions flashing in her eyes, probably 60% accurate, 40% still shrouded in mystery.
"Well," she said, her voice diplomatically smooth, masking whatever fire she'd just calculated, "young love is beautiful. Tommy's father and I met when we were sixteen."
Tommy groaned, a sound like tearing cardboard. "Mom, please don't—"
