That night, Theo Hanks tossed and turned on the narrow, spring-coiled motel mattress, unable to fall asleep for a long time. The thin sheets felt like sandpaper against his skin, and every time he closed his eyes, the high-definition image of that butterfly tattoo flared behind his eyelids. He felt a deep, suffocating self-loathing rising in his throat. He hated himself, his stupidity, and his moment of drunken weakness. Right then and there, staring up at the water-stained ceiling, he decided to give up drinking entirely. "I wonder if Tracey will spread those photos around the hospital," he whispered into the dark room, his voice raspy with anxiety. "Although it was an unintentional 'romantic encounter,' it is still a scandal, and it really happened. If those photos circulate around Oakridge General, no one will care about the setup or how it happened. They'll only focus on the fact that it happened at all. I'll be branded as a hypocrite with a dissolute private life. The worst-c

Theo stared at his phone screen in disbelief. He had tried dialing Tracey’s number first, but her phone was completely switched off. Frustrated, he attempted to reach her personal assistant, Su Fei, only for the call to go straight to voicemail. With no other options, Theo grabbed his coat and headed out into the bitter night, driving toward the Central Precinct Police Department."Dr. Hanks, so it's really you! If I'd known Hope was your daughter, I would have sent her straight to your home."The striking female police officer on duty recognized Theo from his recent high-profile resuscitation in the ICU and welcomed him warmly. However, Theo felt a knot of deep embarrassment twisting in his gut. After exchanging a few polite, necessary pleasantries, he sat down at the booking desk to complete the formal release paperwork.As his eyes scanned the official registration form, his gaze stopped at a single line. In neat, careless handwriting, Hope had listed her relationship to him as ste

Since they had nothing more to say to each other, Theo turned on his heel and left the Teague estate immediately, the heavy front doors closing behind him with a dull, final thud.Throughout the lonely journey back to his quarters, he remained in a foul, dark mood. The night sky was beginning to pale into a sickly grayish-blue, matching the exhaustion settled deep within his bones. Yet, in a strange way, Glen Teague’s vitriolic tirade in the study had also forced him to see reality with crystal clarity.I'm just an insignificant doctor, he thought, his hands gripping the steering wheel as the streetlights blurred past.Theo gave a bitter, self-mocking smile and calmly accepted his own mediocrity. He was no corporate titan, no billionaire scion, and no master of ruthless legal warfare. He was simply a man who held a scalpel and cared for the dying. Surprisingly, surrendering the foolish urge to prove his worth to a family that had spent sixteen years exploiting him made a sudden, overw

The light in the cramped on-call room casted a jaundiced glare over the metal desk where Theo sat in absolute silence.Spread out before him were the contents of the manila envelope Director Qian had discarded like a toxic asset: glossy 8x10 photographs, printed hotel folios, and detailed logs designed to shatter his professional standing. For the first few minutes, the weight of the humiliation had pressed down on his chest like a lead weight.But as a surgeon trained to dissect microscopic anomalies in complex tissue, Theo's mind instinctively shifted gears. He stopped reading the dossier as a personal scandal and began analyzing it as a forensic puzzle, like he was some detective in a crime series.Taking his time and making sure to do everything with clean accuracy, he pulled his hospital digital access logs and laid them side by side with the timestamped photographs.His eyes narrowed suddenly. The first photograph, stamped with a precise digital overlay, purported to show him sl