I Wrote Seven Years Of Letters Answered By AI Chapter 02

I Wrote Seven Years Of Letters Answered By AI Chapter 02

The broker shot a reply back within seconds.

[Ms. Grant, are you sure you want to cut it that low? We already have a buyer lined up, they wanna tour the shop tomorrow.]

I typed straight back, telling him to bring the buyer over.

The next afternoon, I was in the café tallying the last of my coffee bean inventory when the wind chime above the front door jingled.

I lifted my head to see Carter walking in with Summer trailing beside him.

For years, he’d used his heavy research workload as an excuse to barely step foot inside my shop.

Now, to impress a student half his age, he’d cleared his entire schedule without a second thought.

“Mr. Rushton said your coffee isn’t that great, so I begged him to bring me,” Summer said, sliding onto the stool across from the counter.

Carter’s face looked tight and uncomfortable, but he put on his authoritative professor tone to save face.

“I’ll have your signature drink, and warm milk for Summer.”

My hand hovered mid-air, inches from the empty mug.

I’d always hated cloying, sugar-heavy specialty drinks—and once, his AI would send him a daily reminder to remind him not to push those sugary beverages on me. Now that his algorithm was useless, he couldn’t remember a single one of my preferences.

I turned away without a word, going through the motions of making their drinks before sliding them across the counter.

Summer didn’t take a single sip. Instead, she wandered around the counter, poking at everything on display.

She grabbed a pair of handmade ceramic mugs I’d set front and center in the glass cabinet.

“These mugs are hideous—they still have water streaks all over them.”

Before I could react, she twisted her wrist sharply. The mugs crashed hard against the marble floor, shattering into dozens of jagged shards. The sharp crack echoed through the empty café.

Those mugs were the ones we’d painted and fired together at a pottery studio for our five-year anniversary, etched with the tiny initials of Iris and Carter.

The second the ceramic hit the floor, Summer clamped a hand over her wrist and dropped to her knees, eyes already welling with tears.

“It hurts so bad, the fragments cut me.”

The broken shards hadn’t even come close to her skin. But Carter flew into a panic instantly, shoving me hard when I reached for a broom to sweep up the mess.

My spine slammed into the sharp edge of the counter, a blinding pain stealing my breath.

He didn’t spare me a single glance, dropping to his knees to inspect her completely unharmed hands, voice thick with alarm.

“Why’d you leave fragile garbage on the edge?” he snapped, standing up.

“Those are our five-year anniversary mugs,” I said, fighting through the stabbing ache in my back and staring at the shattered ceramic.

He cut me off without mercy. “We can buy new mugs. Don’t scare her like this. A researcher’s hands are too important to risk over cheap pottery.”

His words choked me, making it hard to draw air.

For seven years, I’d run this café to cover all our living expenses, my hands rough and calloused from endless days of brewing coffee and scrubbing dishes. Yet suddenly, another woman’s soft hands were far too precious to risk touching broken ceramic.

Right then, his phone buzzed nonstop in his pocket. He answered the call, his face draining completely of color.

“What do you mean the entire corpus of training data’s gone missing? Is there no way to recover it?”

He hung up, frantic, then shot me an irritated remark over his shoulder.

“Stop throwing a tantrum and clean this up. I have to take Summer back to the lab for a critical project. We’ll talk later.”

He didn’t even leave cash for the drinks before hurrying Summer out the door, his arm wrapped around her waist.

I watched their retreating backs, then grabbed my tablet.

The buyer who’d toured the shop earlier loved the discounted price, and I’d already signed the preliminary transfer papers.

On our seven-year anniversary—three days away—the buyer would wire the full payment and take possession of the shop keys.

I sank slowly to my knees, brushing every sharp shard of the anniversary mugs into the trash.

A text popped up on my phone from an unfamiliar number.