Her perspective is not helpful toward this conversation, she thinks. Her marital bond with Samael has a magical component that is meant to be quite enduring. So she listens and attempts to understand Allison's own perspective instead, aware that her friend has done some not so great things, same as Emilia.

It doesn't mean she deserves this.

"There is messy and complicated, and then there is cruelty." It sounds to her like Patrick was engaging in the former to spite Allison, a woman he once claimed to love. And bringing their child into it, no less.

"Do you think it was ... competitiveness?"

If they were both in the same field of work. Some men do have fragile egos, goddess.