Chapter 4

Elara walked for hours. Her feet blistered inside her heels, the ones she'd bought to match the emerald dress that was now stained with rain and humiliation. She’d changed into jeans and a sweater from the storage facility, but she still felt exposed. Like everyone who passed her on the street knew exactly who she was. 

The disgraced scientist. 

The crazy woman from the videos. 

By noon, she found herself outside the Aethelgard Pharmaceuticals building. Forty-three stories of steel and glass rising into the cloudy sky. She’d worked on the twenty-seventh floor for three years. 

Security was stationed at the entrance. She recognized Michael, the day guard who’d always smiled at her when she arrived early for lab work. 

She walked up to the door, only for Michael’s hand to block her path.  

“Sorry, but I can't allow you in, your credentials have been revoked so I can't let you past the lobby," he apologized, his expression sympathetic but firm  

"Michael please, I have a hearing tomorrow and I desperately need my files; my research notes, every proof of my research I can get,” Elara pleaded.  

“I’ve worked here for three years, you know this, you know me, please," she continued, trying to appeal to the person beneath the uniform.  

"I'm sorry, but I still can't allow you in, I don't make the rules, I'm only obliged to follow work protocols.” 

A black town car interrupted the stalemate. Marcus stepped out, looking infuriatingly well-rested and happy in a perfectly knotted navy suit. His pause upon seeing her was a calculated act of superiority.  

What are you doing here?” He demanded. 

“You should very well know what I'm here for Marcus. I need my research files, my notebooks, and the synthesis protocols I personally developed.”  

“They now belong to Aethelgard, which makes them company property that you're neither allowed nor authorized to access,” he said with a cold dismissal.  

Elara knew she had created them, but he used the intellectual property agreement she'd signed on her excited first day as a weapon, reminding her that everything she created while employed was theirs. The rights had been signed away. 

Defeated on that point, she tried for the digital files, the trial data, the molecular models. 

“You can't have those either,” he said flatly. 

“Marcus, I just need to—"  

“You’re not an employee anymore, Elara,” he said, cutting off her protest. He gestured to the glass doors, laying out the new reality: no clearance, no access, no rights to anything in that building.  

"You need to leave now, before I call the police,” he threatened. 

“Why? What's illegal about me standing on a public sidewalk?” she challenged. 

In response to that, he revealed the restraining order Isabella had filed that morning.  

Order of Protection: Isabella Cross vs. Elara Vance.  

Elara’s hands shook as she unfolded the document he handed her, the words blurring: stay at least 500 feet away from the petitioner at all times. She was standing less than twenty feet from Isabella’s primary workplace. 

"You're currently in violation of it, so I'd repeat it again Elara, Leave, Now,” he said calmly. 

"Marcus, this is insane. Why would I need a restraining order?! I didn't do anything to her except scream at her in the ballroom!” she insisted. 

“You accused my wife wrongly and made her feel unsafe, I see that as enough reason to safeguard her protection and prevent this from repeating," he stressed, his voice infuriatingly reasonable but twisting her actions in every way. 

Elara paused. Wife?! What did he mean by that? 

“Your wife?" She asked him directly in disbelief. 

"Yes, I and Isabella are married. And I expect you to treat her with the respect as such.” 

If she hadn't felt her heart completely break before this moment, she certainly felt it now. So many things had happened between the day and before that it was hard to believe that this wasn't some sort of fever dream. Her fiancee, well former fiancee, was actually married to the very woman who had stolen her work and had destroyed her, her reputation, her life work, her life basically, just for this strange woman. 

"Marcus… why?" She sounded broken, defeated, finally crumbling under the weight of everything that had been happening. 

“Elara, I won't repeat this again. Leave, before I make you to." Marcus replied coldly then turned to Michael.

Michael's radio crackled. A security guard’s voice came through, reporting a situation at the front entrance and a possible violation of the restraining order. 

Elara, defeated, backed away from the door. “I’m leaving,” she said quickly. “I’m leaving right now.” 

She turned and walked down the sidewalk, her vision blurring with tears. Behind her, she heard Marcus say something to Michael. The two men laughed. She kept walking. 

Three blocks away, she stopped in front of a convenience store. Her phone buzzed. 

Another email. It was from Dr. Helena Moss. 

Elara opened it. 

The graduate committee at North City University had voted to review her doctoral dissertation. Given the recent allegations about her research integrity, they must ensure that her degree was earned legitimately. The review would take several months. Until it was complete, her PhD would be considered conditional. 

Conditional. 

They were going to take her doctorate. 

Three years of graduate school. A dissertation that had been praised as groundbreaking. A degree she'd earned through countless sleepless nights and failed experiments and small victories that had felt, at the time, like everything. 

Now it was conditional. 

Elara walked into the convenience store. She bought a bottle of water with some of her remaining cash. The clerk barely looked at her. 

She sat on the curb outside and drank the water slowly. The sky was starting to darken. Evening was coming. 

She had nowhere to sleep tonight. 

The storage facility closed at six. She'd gone there this morning to retrieve her clothes and found that Marcus had put almost nothing in storage. Just a few boxes of personal items. Her books. Some photographs. 

Everything else, the furniture they'd bought together, the kitchen supplies, the artwork on the walls, had disappeared. 

Probably sold. Or thrown away. 

She checked her bank account again: $235.10. 

A cheap motel would cost at least fifty dollars a night. That gave her four nights, maybe five if she didn't eat. 

Then what? 

Her phone buzzed. A text from a number she didn't recognize. 

"Stop embarrassing yourself. No one believes you." 

Then another text. 

"You look pathetic in those videos." 

Then another. 

"Crazy bitch. Get help." 

The messages kept coming. Someone had leaked her number online. 

Elara turned her phone off and put it in her pocket. 

She sat on the curb as the sun set and the streetlights flickered on. People walked past her. Some glanced her way. Most didn't. 

She was invisible now. 

Erased.