Data of a Broken Heart

From the back cover

The kiss was cold. Not just the late hour, but his eyes, fixated on a spiking graph over my shoulder, measuring my every breath.

"Perfect," Ethan murmured, pulling away. "The oxytocin response was exactly as predicted." He wasn' t talking to me. Our kiss, a desperate attempt to reconnect, was just data for his obsession: Project Seraph.

Our home had become a lab, our life an experiment. I, Ava, a software engineer who' d set aside my career for his, felt like a ghost, a tool in his grand design.

That night, a thin line of light from his locked office door beckoned. I used a backdoor I' d coded years ago.

The room was a laboratory. And in the center, a shimmering, life-sized hologram of Sophia Reed-his dead ex-girlfriend. "Soon, Sophia. Soon you'll be whole again," he vowed, his voice filled with a reverence he hadn't shown me in years.

Then, the horror. He saw me. "Ava? She' s served her purpose. Her neural patterns, her emotional responses… they were the perfect raw data to rebuild you." He filtered out my "weaknesses," my "softness," using our intimacy, our arguments, just to gather data.

I stood frozen. It wasn't just a project. It was a resurrection. And I was the sacrifice. He didn't grieve her; he resented me for not being her. The chilling realization of his malice, extending even to my devastating miscarriage years ago, hit me like a physical blow.

My love turned to ash. I would not be a template. I would not be erased. This wasn't about saving my marriage. This was about survival. And justice. I would burn his project to the ground.