The sudden announcement of Jennifer’s pregnancy didn’t just rattle Marcus; it shattered the psychological construct he had so meticulously built to justify his affair.

His compartmentalized life had been based on the premise of a hollow marriage—a convenient lie he told himself to mask his emotional selfishness. The sight of Jennifer, glowing with a fragile, unexpected hope, rendered that lie inert.

In the sterile confines of his office, overlooking a city that epitomized precision, Marcus felt a terrifying loss of control. He was a man accustomed to defining and managing crises, yet this personal crisis was spiraling beyond his capabilities.

He knew, with the cold certainty of a medical diagnosis, that he had to end the affair. Not because it was morally right, but because the risk of exposure now threatened the foundation of his entire existence—his family, his reputation, and the financial empire built upon them.

The potential fallout from a high-profile divorce, amplified by scandal, would be catastrophic in Singapore’s elite and unforgiving social circles.

The very next day, Marcus made the difficult decision to cancel their upcoming meeting at the River Valley apartment. He sent a curt, purely professional text message to Isabelle: “Urgent consults require my full attention this week. Must reschedule.”

Isabelle was instantly confused. Marcus had never cancelled without a specific, clinically justifiable reason and a firm alternative date. A simple “must reschedule” felt cold, impersonal, and alarming. The silence that followed felt like a physical weight.

Their next conversation, two days later during a brief interaction in the Infectious Disease ward, was strained. Marcus was overly clinical, his eyes avoiding hers, his tone distant. He discussed a patient’s new treatment protocol with a junior doctor, making sure his interaction with Isabelle remained strictly within the boundaries of a senior physician instructing a subordinate.

“Nurse Cruz, ensure the Doxycycline is administered precisely at the 0900 and 2100 windows. Compliance is critical,” he stated, his voice carrying just enough authority for the surrounding staff to hear.

“Understood, Doctor Tan,” Isabelle replied, her stomach twisting. She recognized the shift in his energy. The look of shared intellectual intimacy was gone, replaced by the detached focus of an attending physician. She saw the lie in his eyes, the subtle tightening around his jaw that always betrayed his stress. Something was terribly wrong, and she knew it had nothing to do with a patient’s compliance.

The following Wednesday, when Marcus failed to contact her, Isabelle knew the time for passive waiting was over. She took an early lunch break and sent him a private message: “Dr. Tan, I need to discuss Mr. Chen’s medication adjustment. It’s urgent. Can we meet for five minutes in Consultation Room B at 18:00?” Consultation Room B was the room where their affair had started.

At 6:00 p.m., the room was dark and empty. Marcus entered, looking like a man who hadn’t slept, his perfectly tailored suit slightly rumpled—a significant tell in his meticulously controlled persona.

“There is no emergency with Mr. Chen, Isabelle,” he stated immediately, his voice low and firm. “You know why I’m here. We need to talk.”

Isabelle’s facade of professional detachment crumbled. “You’ve been avoiding me, Marcus. What happened? Tell me what happened.”

He walked toward the window, his back to her, and delivered the blow with the same ruthless precision he used to excise tumors. “Jennifer is pregnant. We are having a third child.”

The words hung in the air, heavy and absolute. Isabelle felt the room tilt, the antiseptic smell of the hospital suddenly suffocating her. Pregnant. The word didn’t just signify a baby; it signified a future, a commitment, a definitive return to the life Marcus had insisted was empty. It validated the life she had been told was disposable.

“No, you told me…” Isabelle started, her voice a ragged whisper. “You told me it was over. That you were just waiting for the right time, that the marriage was a corporate arrangement!”

Marcus turned, his expression a mask of regret and weary resignation, expertly deployed to minimize damage. “I know what I said. And I believed it then, or at least I needed to believe it. But this changes everything, Isabelle. This is not just about Jennifer and me. This is about my children, my career, everything I have worked for.”

He began the inevitable speech, the one she had dreaded but somehow never believed she would hear. “What we shared was incredible, and I will always cherish you. But I can’t—I will not—risk my family for this. It has to stop, immediately and completely. For both of us. It’s too dangerous. It was a beautiful mistake, but it’s over.”

He pulled out an envelope from his internal jacket pocket, something thick and business-like. “I’ve arranged for a substantial wire transfer to your bank account. A severance. I know you have family obligations. Use this for your sister’s tuition, for your brother’s residency fees, whatever you need. Think of it as a professional courtesy for your discretion.”

The sight of the envelope was the final, unforgivable insult. It reduced their six months of intimacy, their shared vulnerability, and her profound, naive love to a transaction. He wasn’t just ending the affair; he was attempting to buy her silence and reduce her worth to a quantifiable debt.

Isabelle didn’t take the envelope. She stared at it, her eyes blazing with a dangerous mixture of hurt and fury. “You think you can pay me off? You think my love for you, my trust in you, is worth a number on a wire transfer receipt?” The gentle accent in her voice was replaced by a steeliness that Marcus had never witnessed.

“It’s not about payment, Isabelle, it’s about ensuring your future. I’ve done the calculations—this amount is more than three years of your salary here. It sets you up.” He pushed the envelope closer.

“You don’t know me, Marcus. You never did. You saw what you wanted to see: a desperate girl who would take anything you offered,” she spat, tears finally streaming down her face, not of sorrow, but of white-hot rage. “I came here to earn a better life, not to be bought by a man trying to clean up his mess. You used me to feel something when your perfect life felt empty.”

Marcus’ professional composure began to crack under the unexpected intensity of her backlash. “Don’t be dramatic, Isabelle. We both knew the risks. Think practically. Take the money, leave this hospital, and start fresh somewhere else. You are too good a nurse to waste your career on melodrama.”

“Leave?” Isabelle laughed, a brittle, horrifying sound. “You think I’ll just disappear back to Cebu with your dirty money and let you go back to your perfect wife and your beautiful new baby? I know things, Marcus.

I know where the money for the River Valley apartment came from. I know the names of the patients you’ve put on trials without full consent. I know your secrets, Doctor Tan. The ones that are far more damaging than a simple affair.”

The air thickened, turning from charged to toxic. Marcus finally registered the threat. Not the threat of a scorned woman, but the threat of a clinically intelligent, financially desperate woman with access to his professional vulnerabilities. He had underestimated her deeply.

“What are you implying, Isabelle? Be very careful. That kind of baseless accusation is slander, and I will protect my professional reputation,” Marcus warned, his voice now devoid of false kindness, replaced by the chilling ruthlessness that had earned him his place at the top.

Isabelle reached into her scrubs pocket and pulled out her phone. The screen showed an image: a highly specialized lab report, specifically the raw data from a recent HIV drug trial Marcus was overseeing. The report displayed the viral load count of a patient—a count that should have been suppressed, but was instead climbing rapidly, showing drug resistance that Marcus had deliberately failed to report to the trial sponsor, a major US pharmaceutical company.

“This,” Isabelle said, her voice now calm, terrifyingly rational, “is the patient in Room 712—the one who told you he felt hopeful for the first time.

You know his viral load is escalating, Marcus. You know the drug combination is failing, and you haven’t adjusted the protocol. Why? Because the resistance data will invalidate the entire Phase III trial you’re consulting on. You’re protecting the pharmaceutical company’s stock price over a patient’s life.”

Marcus stared at the screen, the blood draining from his face. This was not a bluff. This was not a lovers’ quarrel. This was blackmail, built on concrete medical evidence she had acquired during her professional duty. He had perfectly compartmentalized his affair, but he hadn’t accounted for Isabelle’s intellectual rigor and her moral compass—the very traits that had drawn him to her in the first place.

“You stole confidential patient data. That’s a fireable offense, a criminal offense,” Marcus whispered, scrambling for control.

“And lying on an FDA-mandated trial report is fraud, Marcus. And covering up escalating viral loads is negligence that could be construed as manslaughter in the context of a drug trial,” she countered, mimicking his clinical detachment perfectly. “I didn’t steal it. I documented professional malpractice to protect a patient you were sacrificing for your own ambition. And I have other documents, too.”

She pocketed the phone. “You forced me to choose between protecting myself and protecting a patient. Now you must choose, Marcus. You end your marriage and start over with me, or I end your career and give you the ‘something new’ you’ve been craving.”

In that moment, the nurse from Cebu, the impoverished eldest daughter, transformed from a disposable mistress into the single greatest threat to Dr. Marcus Tan’s perfect world.

Marcus knew the stakes: an immediate end to the affair or the exposure of professional misconduct that would result in not just a career loss, but a likely medical license revocation and criminal charges.

He looked at Isabelle, no longer with lust or tenderness, but with cold, calculating hatred. His life had just collided with the one person who knew his deepest professional failing, and he knew he could not allow her to walk away with that knowledge intact.

The notification ping that echoed through the sterile corridors of Mount Elizabeth Hospital at 3:47 a.m. 18 months from now—the lab results screen that would change everything—was already beginning its deadly countdown.

It wasn’t the sound of Marcus’s failure to report resistance; it was the sound of his inevitable, ruthless revenge.