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Chapter 3
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2026-01-30 05:29:31Elara spent the night on a bench in Riverside Park. She couldn't afford a hotel. Her credit cards had been declined when she tried, frozen probably, pending some kind of fraud investigation Marcus had no doubt initiated.
When dawn broke gray and cold over the city, she walked to the nearest coffee shop. She used the last of her cash to buy a small black coffee and sat in the corner booth with her phone.
The news had exploded overnight.
"Disgraced Scientist's Meltdown at Golden Gala" was trending on three different platforms. The videos had been viewed millions of times. Someone had created a hashtag: #AethelgardMeltdown.
She scrolled through the coverage with a kind of detached horror.
Then she saw it.
A new article, posted two hours ago.
"Medical Records Reveal Troubled History of Researcher Who Disrupted Gala."
A low, involuntary sound, a ragged gasp, escaped her. Her hands went numb.
She clicked the link.
The article, loaded with images of medical documents, patient records, psychiatric evaluations.
Her name was on every single one.
"Patient: Dr. Elara Vance
Diagnosis: Clinical psychosis with paranoid delusions
Treatment: Recommended inpatient psychiatric care
Physician: Dr. Raymond Cortez, MD"
The date on the evaluation was from eight months ago.
Elara stared at the screen. She'd never seen these documents before in her life, or met any Dr. Raymond Cortez and certainly never had been diagnosed with psychosis.
The documents were fake.
But they looked real. Official letterhead, stamped signatures, case numbers that probably checked out in whatever database Marcus had paid someone to insert them into.
The article continued below the images.
"Sources close to Dr. Vance report that she has been receiving treatment for mental health issues for nearly a year. Her ex-partner, Dr. Marcus Sterling, attempted to support her through this difficult period but ultimately ended their relationship when her behavior became too erratic to manage.
'I wanted to protect her privacy,' Sterling told reporters this morning. 'But given her public accusations last night, I feel I have a responsibility to share the truth. Elara is sick. She needs help, not a platform to spread these delusions.'
A wave of sudden, violent nausea hit Elara, forcing her to clutch the edge of the cheap formica table. The casual, concerned lie was more sickening than the forged documents.
There were more documents below. Security footage from Aethelgard Pharmaceuticals showing Elara in the lab late at night. The timestamp read 3:47 AM.
The caption: "Vance was frequently found in the laboratory during unauthorized hours, exhibiting erratic behavior and paranoia about her colleagues."
Another footage showed her arguing with someone in a hallway. The other person's face was blurred for privacy, but Elara recognized Isabella's red coat.
The caption: "Confrontation between Vance and Dr. Isabella Cross, six weeks prior to the Golden Gala incident."
Elara's hands shook as she scrolled.
Every piece of evidence looked real. Every document, every video, every testimony from unnamed sources.
It was a masterpiece of character assassination.
And it had clearly been planned for months.
She thought about the security footage of her in the lab at 3 AM. Marcus hadn't been supporting her career; he'd been encouraging the late nights, pushing the deadlines, and gently manufacturing a crime scene. Every "I believe in you" had been a lie designed to get a high-quality, incriminating timestamp on a security tape.
He'd been setting her up.
The footage of her arguing with Isabella in the hallway, that had been the day Isabella first arrived at Aethelgard and walked into Elara's lab uninvited to go through her notes. Elara had confronted her about it, and Marcus, standing right there, had told Elara she was overreacting, that Isabella was just eager to contribute. He'd been manufacturing evidence even then, positioning her outrage as paranoia for the camera.
The medical documents from Dr. Cortez were the final piece. Completely fabricated, but impossible to disprove without access to sealed medical records that didn't exist.
It was perfect.
Elara set her phone down on the table then subtly observed her surroundings
Around her, morning customers ordered lattes and pastries. Someone's laptop played a news program at low volume. She heard her own voice shouting from the speakers.
"That's my research! You know I did, Marcus! Tell them!"
A woman at the next table glanced at Elara, then quickly looked away.
Did she recognize her?
Elara pulled the hood of her jacket up and hunched lower in the booth.
Her phone buzzed. An email from Aethelgard Pharmaceuticals.
"Dr. Vance,
In light of recent events and the serious allegations regarding your conduct, Aethelgard Pharmaceuticals is conducting a formal investigation into your employment history and research contributions. Effective immediately, your building access has been revoked and your credentials are under review.
You are required to appear before the Ethics Committee on Friday, June 14th at 9:00 AM to address these concerns. Failure to appear will result in immediate termination and potential legal action.
Regards,
Human Resources Department
Aethelgard Pharmaceuticals"
Friday was tomorrow. Less than twenty-four hours to prepare for her professional execution.
Elara closed her email. She opened her banking app.
Account balance: $247.83
Her savings account was empty. The joint account she'd shared with Marcus showed a balance of $0.00 with a note: "Account closed by primary holder."
He'd taken everything.
She pulled up her research files from the cloud storage. Her fingers moved across the screen, navigating to the folder where she kept her lab notebooks, her synthesis protocols, her trial data.
Access denied.
She tried again.
Access denied.
Marcus had her login credentials. He'd had them since they moved in together, back when sharing passwords seemed like an intimate gesture of trust.
He'd locked her out of her own research.
Elara set the phone down carefully. If she didn't, she'd smash it against the table.
She had two hundred and forty-seven dollars. No home, no job, no access to her research, and a reputation so thoroughly destroyed that no one in the pharmaceutical industry would ever hire her again.
The door to the coffee shop opened. A woman in a business suit walked in, her phone pressed to her ear.
"Did you see that video from the gala?" she was saying. "Completely unhinged. I feel bad for Marcus Sterling. Three years with someone that unstable must have been exhausting."
Elara stood up. She left her half-finished coffee on the table and walked out into the gray morning.
She had nowhere to go, but she knew exactly what to do. Marcus Sterling wanted her gone. He wanted her silent. That, she realized, was the one thing he would never get.
Bab terbaru
Betrayed, I Become The CEO'S Contracted Bride Chapter 46
Elara pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. The tears didn't come gently. It was a violent, physical ache that hollowed out her chest. She broke down with complete abandonment, the ragged sound of her own sobbing echoing in the empty lab.She cried for the father who had never existed. The man she had spent five years grieving was an illusion, constructed strictly to manage an experiment. Every moment of warmth, every rare smile of approval, had just been positive reinforcement. She hadn't been a daughter making her father proud. She had been a prototype hitting a baseline metric.The grief twisted into something sharper, bleeding into pure agony for Isabella. A sister who could have been an ally. The only other person on earth who could have understood the specific damage Arthur Vance inflicted. Instead, he had deliberately engineered them to destroy each other. He had designed a system where connection was impossible, feeding Isabella the data needed to era
Betrayed, I Become The CEO'S Contracted Bride Chapter 45
Elara didn't make it to the elevator. She had packed the folder and switched off the overhead lights, intending to follow Alexander up to the penthouse. But the manila envelope felt impossibly heavy. Her legs gave out before she reached the glass doors. She slid down the side of a stainless steel biosafety cabinet, the metal cold against her spine. The folder slipped from her grip. Papers and photographs spilled across the sterile tile. She didn't pick them up. She just sat on the floor in the dark. The ambient glow from the equipment monitors cast long, pale shadows across her father’s face in the scattered photos. Always controlled. Always clinical. A memory surfaced, uninvited and razor-sharp. She was nine years old, sitting at the kitchen table late at night, crying in frustration over a complex chemical modeling kit. She had wanted to quit. She had looked up at him, expecting comfort or a hand on her shoulder. Instead, Arthur Vance had simply sat across from her, watch
Betrayed, I Become The CEO'S Contracted Bride Chapter 46
Alexander stood in the doorway. He took in the scattered documents, the photographs spread across the tile, and the woman curled against the steel cabinet. He didn't speak. He just watched, assessing the total devastation and understanding exactly what she had learned. He crossed the laboratory. His leather shoes clicked against the tile with slow, deliberate purpose. He didn't hesitate or pause. He walked straight to where Elara sat in the dark and lowered himself onto the cold floor beside her. His tailored suit jacket brushed against the metal. He stretched his legs out, ignoring the dust collecting on his polished shoes and the scattered evidence of Arthur Vance's betrayal. Alexander Thorne—the billionaire who commanded boardrooms and dismantled entire corporations—sat on a laboratory floor at three in the morning because she needed him there. He didn't offer empty platitudes or try to minimize the pain. He just sat beside her. Solid and present. Elara kept her eyes on t
Betrayed, I Become The CEO'S Contracted Bride Chapter 44
Elara didn't go home.She remained at her workstation, the manila folder sitting open under the harsh fluorescent lights. The physical evidence of her father's betrayal lay scattered across the steel—the birth certificate, the photographs, and the clinical journals labeling her as nothing more than Subject One.At three in the morning, the heavy laboratory doors slid open.Elara didn't look up from the timeline of her engineered childhood. Footsteps crossed the tile and stopped beside her bench."You're still here." Alexander's voice broke the steady hum of the centrifuges.Elara finally looked up. He wore a dark suit with the tie loosened, looking as though he had come straight from the executive floors."Dr. Chen called you.""He did." Alexander looked down at the documents spread across the bench. "He didn't think you should be alone tonight.""I'm fine.""You aren't." Alexander pulled out the chair across from her. "May I?"Elara gestured to the open journals.Alexander
Betrayed, I Become The CEO'S Contracted Bride Chapter 43
Elara sat alone in the break room.The manila folder remained open on the white table. She had already looked through the birth certificate and the photographs, but a thick stack of bound laboratory journals still rested at the bottom.She reached inside and pulled out the oldest volume. The spine cracked as she opened it to the first page.Her father's precise handwriting filled the margins. He used the exact same organization for these pages as he did for his published research.Subject 1 (E.V.): Walking at thirteen months. Speaking in full sentences at twenty-two months. Early language development exceeds baseline predictions. Motor coordination excellent. Proceeding with enhanced cognitive stimulation protocols.Elara dragged her thumbnail beneath the ink. The entry was dated twenty-six years ago. Right from the beginning, she didn't have a name in his private records.She turned the pages, tracing a timeline of her entire childhood measured against a sterile metric.Subje
Betrayed, I Become The CEO'S Contracted Bride Chapter 42
The heavy laboratory doors remained sealed. The mass spectrometer continued its automated sequence, humming a low, steady vibration into the floorboards.Elara stood alone under the harsh fluorescent lights of the break room. The manila folder sat on the white laminate table.She broke the seal. The thick stack of documents slid onto the surface.Her fingers brushed against the top item. A photograph, printed on heavy archival paper rather than standard printer stock.A man stood in the center of the frame. He looked fifteen years younger than the father Elara remembered. His hair lacked its familiar gray iron, and the deep, exhausted lines around his eyes had not yet formed. Arthur Vance. He stood on a cobblestone street with a European café blurred in the background. His arm wrapped comfortably around the waist of an elegant, dark-haired woman.Elara traced the woman's face. She searched her memory for a visiting professor, a distant relative, or a university colleague. The po
Betrayed, I Become The CEO'S Contracted Bride Chapter 13
Mrs. Chen knocked on the door at 2:30."Mrs. Thorne, we should prepare to leave soon."Elara stood in front of the closet. For the past 10 minutes, she had tried on everything. Everything looked wrong. Too formal. Too casual. Too much like she was trying."What should I wear?" Elara asked.Mrs. Che
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2026-03-20Betrayed, I Become The CEO'S Contracted Bride Chapter 11
Elara read for two hours. She sat at the small table by the window, coffee going cold beside her, and dissected every clause of the contract. Her scientific mind approached it like a research paper. Hypothesis. Methodology. Results. Risks. The hypothesis was simple: marry Alexander Thorne for
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2026-03-19Betrayed, I Become The CEO'S Contracted Bride Chapter 10
Mrs. Chen was waiting in the foyer when they entered. She was older, Chinese, with silver hair pulled into a neat bun. Her eyes were kind but assessing. She looked at Elara's wet clothes and dripping hair without judgment. "Mrs. Chen manages the household," Thorne said. "She'll show you to your
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2026-03-19Betrayed, I Become The CEO'S Contracted Bride Chapter 9
The city lights blurred past the tinted windows. Rain hammered the roof in a steady rhythm. Elara sat in silence. She was still dripping onto the floor. Her wet clothes clung to her skin. She didn't apologize. Alexander Thorne watched her from the opposite seat. His steel-gray eyes assessed her
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2026-03-18
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