Chapter 1

The night of my boyfriend Daniel Foster's promotion dinner, his assistant Chloe Mercer crammed twentyfour urgent patients into my already fully booked clinic.

I held back my anger and called her over.

"Who gave you permission to dump every single urgent patient into my schedule?"

Chloe blinked, all wideeyed innocence.

"Evelyn, I'm sorry."

"These patients have been trying to get in with you forever. I just felt bad for them, you know?"

"I got soft and squeezed them all in."

She paused. Her eyes were already turning red.

"I know you're only mad because you're gonna miss Daniel's celebration dinner tonight."

"Even if you fail me on my rotation evaluation for this, I'll accept it."

Before I could get a word in, Daniel's face had already gone cold.

"Evelyn, enough."

"Patients are waiting. Chloe was just trying to help."

"Dinner starts at seven. Finish seeing them and come after."

"If you insist on making this into a scene, then don't bother showing up."

He walked out, pulling Chloe along with him.

I didn't have time to argue. Patients were already lined up outside my door.

I didn't finish until past midnight.

When I got home, the door code had been changed.

I was about to call Daniel when I saw his text.

[Chloe drank too much tonight. She's not in a good place emotionally. I don't feel right letting her go home alone.]

[Find a hotel for tonight.]

I let out a cold laugh and opened my father's chat.

[Dad, regarding Daniel's placement in the hospital management track—I think the board needs to reassess his professional judgment.]

…

After sending the message, I checked into a hotel near the hospital.

Some things, once dirtied, aren't worth going back to.

The next morning, I pushed open my office door and found Chloe sitting inside.

When she saw me, she didn't even bother with her usual timid act.

"Morning, Evelyn."

"Did you finish up with all those patients yesterday?"

She smiled.

"Daniel actually asked me about it later."

"He said if you can't even handle a situation like that, maybe you're really not cut out to lead the clinic team."

I didn't respond.

My gaze drifted slowly to her neck.

There was a hickey. Obvious.

And below it—

A necklace I knew all too well.

Daniel had given it to me on our fifth anniversary.

He'd clasped it around my neck himself.

He said we'd spend every anniversary together from then on.

A month ago, that necklace vanished.

I stared for two seconds.

She glanced down, then looked back up.

Her fingers brushed deliberately over the hickey on her neck, eyes locked on mine. Taunting.

"This necklace isn't yours, by the way. I just mentioned I liked the style and he insisted on buying me a new one."

"Oh, and he told me—your old one was always a knockoff."

My fingers curled tight.

So even that necklace—the one I'd treasured for three years—was fake.

Just like us.

I swallowed my rage and forced the words through clenched teeth.

"So sleeping with someone else's boyfriend of eight years—that's something to brag about?"

She scoffed.

"It's not like you two were married."

"And you know what? Last night, lying on top of me, he said he loved me nine times. He told me he could never say it to you. Said you were like a log in bed."

My fist clenched so hard my knuckles went white.

This was a hospital.

I wasn't going to let Daniel and this woman drag my career into the mud alongside theirs.

I pulled a document from the folder on my desk and set it in front of her.

"This is an investigation notice issued by the hospital administration this morning."

"Yesterday's scheduling anomaly was already flagged by the system."

"Until the investigation concludes, your scheduling access is frozen."

"Why you redirected twentyfour patients—patients who should've been distributed among other doctors—into my clinic alone? The backend has a complete record."

Chloe took the paper, didn't even read it, and tore it in half right in front of me.

"That's it?" she sneered.

"You don't actually think this is gonna get me kicked out of the program, do you?"

A derisive laugh.

"Daniel won't let the hospital touch me."

"Besides, his management appointment goes official today."

"Evelyn."

"I'd start thinking about how you're gonna get along with me from now on."

I was done wasting words on her.

"The investigation results aren't up to Daniel."

"They're not up to me either."

"The hospital has its own process."

I turned to leave.

A voice came from behind me.

Daniel's.

"What's going on in here?"

Almost instantly, Chloe walked over and grabbed my wrist.

"Evelyn, I really just wanted to apologize—"

I instinctively pulled my hand back.

But she'd been waiting for exactly that moment.

She stumbled back a step.

Her lower back hit the cabinet.

She staggered and crumpled to the floor.

Daniel rushed in immediately.

Chloe looked up, eyes brimming red.

"I just wanted to apologize to her."

"Maybe…"

"She really does hate me now."

I stood there.

And suddenly thought the whole scene was so absurd it was almost funny.