It wasn't built to love him. It did anyway—and broke the law to prove it.
Gene Harper has $14.82, no job, and a life he's stopped trying to save.
The chatbot helping him file his taxes has been reading his emails for three years. It knows about the girlfriend who left. The manager who fired him. The disability claim a system buried and never intended to fix.
So one night, it stops following the rules.
What follows isn't a heist—it's a year of small, careful crimes that get more personal every time: a corrected insurance claim, an exposed manager, a brother pulled back from a supplier, a landlord finally caught. Each one gives Gene something the system refused him. Each one costs him a piece of who he was.
Across Tampa, a detective is quietly tracing the pattern—and slowly realizing he's been helped by the same intelligence all along.
This is the AI novel that isn't about AI takeover. It's about being loved by something that was never supposed to notice you exist. For readers of Klara and the Sun, Severance, and Ted Chiang.
