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Chapter 1
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can’t you just be patient? Why do you have to make up such ridiculous stories to attack her?”
His voice rose with frustration. “She’s trying to force you to resign? Logically, isn’t it more likely that you’re the one trying to drive her away?”
“Audrey, stop it. I’m trying to focus on my career right now. I thought you’d support me, help me, like you used to. The least you can do is not add to my stress.”
I hung up the phone. I pulled the ring from my finger and tossed it into the back of a drawer.
Ethan was right. I needed to focus on my career.
My own ambitions had stagnated while I poured all my energy into him. It was time to change that. I threw myself into studying for the annual board certification exams.
In the weeks that followed, Ethan and I became ghosts to each other. We didn’t speak. We didn’t text. If we passed in the hallway, we were strangers, not even colleagues.
Finally, the day of the exam results arrived. I was called into the director’s office. He slammed his fist on the desk, his face red with fury.
The research paper I had submitted was identical, word for word, to Chloe’s.
Faced with the accusation, I wasn’t nervous. I knew my work. I was a far more skilled researcher than she
was.
But no one in that room believed me.
Someone shoved a phone in my face. It was Chloe’s social media feed, filled with daily updates on her “pro- gress” with the paper. My colleagues had, in effect, watched her “write” it from scratch.
A torrent of insults rained down on me. “Plagiarist.” “Thief.”
My eyes scanned the room, past the accusing faces, until they landed on Ethan, standing at the very back. He deliberately avoided my gaze.
And in that moment, I knew.
There was only one other person in the world who knew the password to my computer.
It was his birthday.
The evidence was damning. The director demoted me on the spot.
I ignored him. I pushed through the crowd of scornful colleagues and walked straight up to Ethan. I grabbed his chin and forced his head up, making him look at me.
“Ethan,” I asked, my voice deadly calm, “do you also believe I copied her?”
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Chapter 7
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I saw the flicker of doubt in his eyes, a tiny hesitation before it was extinguished, replaced by a single, deva- stating word: “Yes.”
A small, broken laugh escaped my lips. I let him go.
As I turned away, my eyes burned so intensely I felt they could bleed.
“Audrey…” I heard him call my name, his voice suddenly uncertain.
But I didn’t stop. I walked straight out of that conference room and didn’t look back.
After that day, my colleagues began to shun me completely. No one wanted to be associated with the “plag-
iarist,” the “homewrecker.”
I didn’t care. I buried myself in my work, a phantom flitting between the office and the operating room. A demotion was nothing. I could climb my way back up.
Until the day the director threw a letter in my face.
An anonymous tip. An accusation that I had performed surgery while intoxicated, resulting in a patient’s dea-
- th.
For a moment, the world tilted. The words were English, but they made no sense.
“Director, there must be a mistake,” I stammered. “That patient had a severe congenital heart defect. He was
critical when he arrived.”
The director didn’t speak. He just gestured to the witness he’d brought in. The anesthesiologist from that surgery–Chloe’s best friend.
“Director, she’s Chloe’s closest friend! Chloe and I have a history. This is a setup!”
“Enough!”
