My Wife Robot Lover

The Stress Test

"Doubling the load?" Farrah looked up from her tablet, eyebrows raised. "That's a lot, even for pre-launch testing."

"I want to be sure," Daniel said, standing beside ORION's open control panel, his voice calm and even. "Four hundred people are going to watch this robot walk, talk, and shake hands for two hours straight on launch night. I don't want a single joint failing because we didn't push hard enough beforehand."

It was a good reason. It was also true, which made it easy to say without his voice giving anything away.

Farrah nodded slowly, already typing new numbers into her tablet. "Okay. I'll set up the new schedule. Full motor load, doubled duration, starting tomorrow. It's going to run ORION hard, though. We might see some heat warnings in the joints."

"That's fine," Daniel said. "I want to know exactly where the limits are."

He did not say the rest of what he was thinking, because there was no one in that lab who needed to hear it. If his plan worked the way he hoped, the doubled stress tests would do more than check ORION's motors. They would create long stretches of time when the robot stood in one place, powered up, running hot, exactly the kind of setting Elaine and Julian might one day think was safe enough to use for a private conversation, or something more.

He did not know yet how far they intended to go. But he intended to be ready either way.

That evening, Daniel came home later than usual, his shirt still smelling faintly of the lab, his mind still half full of numbers. Elaine was in the kitchen when he walked in, a pot simmering on the stove, the smell of garlic and butter filling the room.

"You're cooking," Daniel said, surprised. Elaine rarely cooked. It was one of the small, easy jokes between them, back when there had still been easy jokes between them at all.

"I felt like it." She glanced at him and smiled, though something about the smile looked tired around the edges tonight. "Long day at the office?"

"Long day everywhere," Daniel said, setting his bag down and loosening his tie. He walked over and kissed her cheek, the way he always did, and felt her lean into it for just a moment longer than usual, as if she needed the contact more than she wanted to admit.

They sat down to eat a few minutes later, the table set with more care than usual, two candles lit between them.

"How's ORION?" Elaine asked, twirling pasta around her fork without really eating it.

"Running hot," Daniel said. "Literally. We're pushing the stress tests harder this week. Making sure everything holds up for launch night."

"Sounds stressful," Elaine said, and laughed a little at her own small joke, though it did not quite land the way it should have.

"It is," Daniel agreed, watching her carefully over the candlelight. "Fourteen days left. Feels like both forever and no time at all."

Something flickered across Elaine's face at the mention of the number. It was quick, the same kind of flicker Daniel had learned to catch over the last two weeks, but tonight it seemed to linger a beat longer than before, like a shadow that did not want to leave.

"You okay?" Daniel asked, keeping his voice light, the voice of a concerned husband and nothing more.

"I'm fine," Elaine said quickly. Too quickly, maybe, though it was hard to be sure. "Just tired. Board stuff. My father's people are pushing hard on some paperwork this week. Wants everything finalized before launch."

"What paperwork?"

"Boring stuff. Shares. Vesting schedules." She waved a hand, dismissive, the same gesture she always used when she wanted a conversation to end. "You'd fall asleep if I explained it."

Daniel smiled, easy and warm. "Probably," he said, and let it go, though he filed the moment away carefully, the way he filed away everything now, a small brick added to a wall he was building one conversation at a time.

They finished dinner talking about smaller things. The caterers for launch night. A trip Elaine wanted to take once the launch was behind them, somewhere warm, somewhere far from robots and boardrooms. Daniel listened and nodded and even meant some of his answers, because some part of him, the part that had loved this woman for ten years, still wanted to believe in a version of the future where they got on a plane together and none of this had ever been real.

But another part of him, colder and more careful, was already counting the days until launch, already imagining the moment ORION's sensors would finally catch something too clear to argue away.

Two floors above the Cross Robotics lab, Priya Nandan sat alone at her desk long after everyone else had gone home, a stack of printed contracts spread out in front of her, a cup of cold coffee forgotten by her elbow.

She had gone back through every version of the Whitmore share agreement from the last six months, comparing each draft line by line, looking for the exact moment the language had changed. It had not happened all at once. That was what made it so hard to catch. Someone, somewhere, had made small adjustments over time, one clause here, one date there, until the final version bore only a passing resemblance to the deal Daniel had originally signed off on years ago.

Taken alone, none of it looked like much. Taken together, it painted a picture Priya did not like at all. A picture where, the moment those shares vested, Elaine Cross would control enough voting power to reshape the entire board of Cross Robotics without needing Daniel's agreement on anything ever again.

She thought about walking straight into Daniel's office and laying it all out for him. She almost did it twice, standing up from her desk both times before sitting back down, unsure.

It wasn't proof of anything illegal. People restructured share agreements all the time. Maybe Daniel already knew. Maybe he had agreed to all of it and simply hadn't mentioned the details to his head of legal, which would be strange, but not impossible, given how distracted he had seemed lately.

Or maybe he didn't know at all, and something much worse than a business decision was quietly happening around him.

Priya gathered the papers into a folder, marked it with a single word, PRIVATE, and locked it in her desk drawer. She would give it a few more days. She would keep watching the numbers, keep asking careful questions, and if her worry grew instead of faded, she would find a way to bring it to Daniel that would not sound like an accusation aimed at his own wife.

Fourteen days left until launch, she thought, turning off her desk lamp. Whatever was happening, it was going to happen fast now, one way or another.

She had no way of knowing that three floors below her, in a locked office with the lights still on, Daniel Cross was thinking the exact same thing.