Chapter 7

Back in Greyfield, I poured nearly every hour I had into my work.

My team was in the middle of pushing forward a critical merger and acquisition deal. If successful, it would go down as the company's most impressive performance of the year.

As a core member of the team, I was practically living at the office, staying until the lights went out and the last person had gone home.

That night, I had barely stepped out of the office building when my phone started vibrating. It was Rachel.

Her voice sounded a little off, as though she was choosing her words carefully. "Sarah... are you doing okay lately?"

"Yeah, just busy. Why?"

"Well... I think you should see for yourself. Someone started a thread on the hospital's internal forum. They mentioned you by name."

My chest tightened, and I had the uneasy sense that something was wrong.

After hanging up, I opened the link Rachel had sent me and clicked into what they called the "Staff Discussion Board."

A headline, bold and bright red, practically screamed at me from the screen. "Let's spill the tea on Dr. Charles, deputy head of surgery at City General Hospital, and his 'career-oriented' wife."

My stomach dropped.

The post was packed with nothing but filthy accusations and outright lies.

The person who wrote it claimed to work at the hospital, and in a sly, gossipy tone, they spun some twisted version of the farmer-and-the-snake fable.

In their story, Charles was the young, gifted surgeon with a brilliant future ahead of him, and I was the cunning social climber from a modest background who'd do anything to lock him down.

According to them, I'd used every trick in the book to marry Charles, and once I had the ring on my finger, I cashed in on his name and connections to grease the wheels of my own career at Greyfield.

The thread also accused me of being a gold digger with flashy tastes, someone who blew money left and right and treated Charles like a walking wallet.

But the sickest part came at the end, where the poster hinted that the real reason behind our divorce was that I had found some richer sponsor at Greyfield and was now ready to toss Charles aside like a used stepping stone.

A few pictures were attached. One showed me in a business suit walking in and out of the Greyfield office building. Another captured me having dinner with a client at a restaurant.

And then there was a shot of me in a conference room with our branch's male manager, discussing a project, but someone had picked the deliberately sleaziest angle possible to make the whole thing look suspiciously intimate.

At the bottom of the post, the author signed off in a tone thick with indignation. [Honestly, I feel terrible for Dr. Bennett. He's devoted his whole life to his work and his patients, and this is how his own wife repays him, by stabbing him in the back. A woman like that has no business being part of our hospital community.]

By then, the comment thread had already exploded, piling up into the hundreds.

[I always heard his wife was hard to deal with. Guess now we know why.]

[You really can't judge people by how they look. Dr. Bennett's unbelievably unlucky.]

[People like her should be called out. I actually feel bad for the guy.]

Some had gone even further, digging up the name of my company and details about my position.

I read through those cutting lines, one after another, and felt a coldness rise from the pit of my stomach, spreading steadily through my body.

I knew exactly who was orchestrating all of this behind the scenes.

There wasn't a single other person in the world capable of pulling off something this vile except Bertha.

She wasn't just trying to ruin my reputation. She was aiming to take everything I relied on to make a living.

And the speed at which the outrage spread online was far more terrifying than I had ever expected.