**My Father’s Robot**
Chapter 23
ELISE'S POV
Two days passed without incident.
Seven moved through the house like the polite, empty unit it had always pretended to be. It cooked. It cleaned. It stood in corners and answered when spoken to in that calm, calibrated voice. My mother drifted between rooms in silk, completely oblivious. My father messaged from Singapore: *Home tomorrow night. Stay out of its way.*
I almost started to believe the worst had stopped.
Almost.
On the second afternoon I stood at the kitchen counter peeling an apple, the house quiet except for the soft hum of the refrigerator and the distant drift of my mother’s beauty-nap playlist upstairs. The knife moved in steady strokes. Apple skin curled away in one long ribbon. For the first time in days my shoulders w
