Chapter 102

EMILIA

It.

That alone is enough to knock the air out of my lungs from pure shock. “Excuse me?”

She gives me a tight, diplomatic smile. “You’re excused. Quickly, please. I need to speak to my son.”

Wow.

Meeting your boyfriend’s mother half-naked isn’t exactly the dream scenario, but the look in her eyes tells me this isn’t about my towel.

Her gaze drags over me like a lint roller: wet hair, flushed face, damp towel clutched like armor, and—cherry on top—the key still clenched in my fist.

And then it lands. That look. I know it. The one that calculates the precise number of rosaries it’ll take to spiritually fumigate this room.

She tilts her head, slow and deliberate—the kind of tilt only women with Pilates abs and generational wealth can pull off. Her voice is all satin and side-eye when she turns to Liam. “Darling,” she says. “What, exactly, is that?”

Not who.

What.

Like I’m an infestation.

And just like that, I