My Husband Buried Our Kids. So I Buried His Legacy. Fair Trade. Chapter 06
I stepped back. My throat was tightening. My skin was already itching. Red bumps were popping up on my hands.
“Take it away. I’m allergic.”
Mira’s wrist twisted. The plate tipped. Hot scrambled eggs and toast crumbs spilled all over her chest.
She screamed and stumbled backward, tumbling down the stairs.
“I’m sorry, Elara… I didn’t know… ow… Dr. Drake… it hurts…”
Lucian rushed over. He looked at me. Then at Mira, curled up at the bottom of the stairs, egg all over her shirt.
“Elara! Are you insane?!” He was yelling now.
“Mira didn’t know about your allergy! Did you really have to shove her?!”
“I didn’t!” I choked out.
“You didn’t?! So she just fell on her own?!”
The way he looked at me—like I was garbage.
“You’ve really lost it.”
He bent down, scooped Mira up. She curled into him, face buried in his chest, still sobbing. He carried her toward the door, then stopped and turned back.
“I’m warning you. Take our names off that list. Now. Or I swear I’ll make your life hell.”
I didn’t move. Didn’t respond. Didn’t care.
My phone rang. The third-party management company.
“Elara, we’ve fully taken over. HR is in place. The assignment list goes out this afternoon.”
“Good,” I said. “I need you to check something. The OR footage from Ethan and Evan’s surgery.”
I’d tried before. Got shut down every time.
All the HR people answered to Lucian. Every time I asked, they gave me some excuse—technical glitch, access denied, corrupted file. One after another.
Not anymore. No one could stop me now.
“On it,” they said.
A few minutes later, they called back. Voice tight.
“Elara… the footage from that day is gone. Permanently deleted. Even the recycle bin was emptied.”
My fingers went white around the phone.
Who did it? I didn’t need to guess.
To protect his golden protégé, he’d stop at nothing.
“However—” they added, “we have a data recovery team. Our cloud backup retained fragments of the deleted files. We can try to restore it. Good chance it works.”
I took a breath. “Do everything you can. If you recover it, double everyone’s bonus.”
The list went out that afternoon. My phone started blowing up.
Those doctors—the ones who used to say, “Elara, thank you for putting me through medical school”—were suddenly singing a different tune.
[Elara, you can’t catch your husband’s mistress so you’re taking it out on us? Don’t make me your scapegoat. I’ll go to the media. I’m NOT going to some war-zone clinic in the middle of nowhere, and I’m NOT paying you a cent.]
[Elara, please. I just bought a house. I’m getting married next month. Don’t drag me into this thing between you and Dr. Drake.]
[Old hag, just wait. Once Dr. Drake divorces you and my girl takes your place, let’s see how high and mighty you still act.]
I read every single one. Screenshotted everything. Forwarded it all to management.
[Pull up each person’s funding contract. Calculate how much I put into their tuition, training, research grants.]
[Anyone who refuses to go to Africa—enforce the repayment clause. Triple the amount. Not a cent less.]
I was being generous.
Training a doctor isn’t easy. Making them good at it is even harder.
I didn’t want to ruin anyone. I just wanted back what was mine.