Cultivator God, Thanks to Beautiful CEO

Chapter 8

The surrounding crowd gasped. Several interns and nurses who knew Vanessa immediately began whispering among themselves.

Melvin stood still, watching her theatrical performance. Through his Astral Sight, he could clearly read her physiological state.

He already know her pulse was rapid, her adrenaline spiking not from genuine heartbreak or guilt, but from naked, desperate greed. She saw his rising status, and she wanted to leech off it once more.

A faint, cold smile touched the corner of Melvin’s lips. He raised his voice slightly, allowing his qi-infused words to carry cleanly across the entire vaulted lobby.

"Coerced." Melvin let the word sit in the air until it curdled.

"Marlowe Street. Forty-second floor. Every Tuesday and every Friday for six months." His voice carried clean across the vaulted lobby, unhurried, pitched for the back row. "Gavin told me himself, three minutes before he kicked me across a doorframe. He was very proud of one detail in particular."

Vanessa's face drained white.

Melvin took one step closer. "Some of those nights I was parked on the street below, running fares in the rain to cover your restaurant bills. And you used to stand on his balcony and watch my car."

The lobby fell dead silent.

"Wh-What...?" Vanessa paled, her lips quivering.

"Yesterday, when you threw that ring onto the wet pavement and called me a worthless beggar, did Gavin coerce you then?" Melvin continued smoothly, taking a slow step toward her. "When you laughed while he tried to break my hands, were you coerced then?"

Whispers erupted instantly among the crowd like a roaring wave:

"Wait, she cheated on him with the Vice Director's nephew for six months?" "And now that Gavin is broken in a hospital bed, she comes crawling back?" "How shameless! Look at her crying crocodile tears!" "I always knew she was a gold-digger..."

Vanessa’s face burned with intense, agonizing shame as the disgusted glares of her colleagues pierced her like hot needles. 

The image she had spent eleven months constructing — the poised first-year resident who had earned her promotion on merit — came apart in front of forty colleagues in under a minute.

"Melvin... please, don't say that in front of everyone!" Vanessa sobbed, her voice breaking as she dropped to her knees right in the middle of the lobby, grabbing at the hem of his trousers. 

"I was foolish! I was tempted by money, but I realize now that money means nothing without you! I'll do anything, Melvin! I'll leave the hospital, I'll be your dutiful wife, just please don't abandon me!"

Melvin looked down at the woman kneeling at his feet. A day ago, her betrayal had felt like a mortal wound to his soul. Today, looking at her pathetic crawl, he felt nothing but profound indifference.

He stepped back, effortlessly pulling his trouser hem from her grasp.

"A diamond ring bought with six months of honest labor meant nothing to you," Melvin said coldly, his voice echoing with absolute finality. "Don't pretend your tears are worth a single cent to me today. Our five years died the moment that ring hit the mud."

He turned his back on her without a second glance.

"Melvin! MELVIN!" Vanessa shrieked, reaching out uselessly as he walked toward the exit.

The surrounding staff looked at her kneeling figure with pure disdain and mockery. Nobody offered a hand to help her up. Nobody uttered a single word of sympathy.

Left alone on the cold marble floor under the judging eyes of the entire hospital, Vanessa collapsed completely, weeping in bitter, irreversible ruin. She had sacrificed her dignity, her honor, and the one man who would have given her the world—all for a illusion that had collapsed in a single day.

The echoes of Vanessa’s public humiliation had barely settled before panic tore through the executive floor of Apex Medical Center.

Inside his opulent, mahogany-paneled office, Vice Director Victor Vance paced like a caged beast. Cold sweat soaked the collar of his designer shirt. His face was ghastly pale, his eyes wide with unadulterated fear.

"He saved the Sterling heiress... He gave away a hundred grand like pocket change... And now the entire hospital is talking about him!" Victor muttered, slamming his fists onto his desk.

If Melvin remained at Apex Medical Center, it was only a matter of time before Lady Beatrix Sterling investigated why such a miraculous doctor had been forced to work as a blacklisted intern. The secret payoffs Victor had accepted from dark pharmaceutical fronts, his illegal blacklisting of top medical graduates, his medical negligence—all of it would be laid bare.

"No... I won't let a nobody destroy me!" Victor gritted his teeth, his eyes flashing with lethal malice.

He pulled a encrypted satellite phone from a hidden safe behind a painting, dialing a private number. "It's Vance. I need a cleanup job tonight. Four men. Make it look like a street robbery gone wrong in the alley behind the hospital's west gate. Fifty thousand dollars—half upfront from my Cayman account."

Night fell over Sargana City, painting the sky in deep shades of violet and midnight blue.

Melvin stepped out of the hospital's western service exit, pulling his coat tight against the chilly evening breeze. The narrow brick alleyway leading toward the main street was dimly lit, shadowed by towering concrete walls and rusted fire escapes.

As he took a few steps into the quiet corridor, the air around him suddenly grew heavy.

Four heavy pairs of footsteps echoed from both ends of the alleyway, blocking off all exits. Four burly men in dark hoodies stepped out of the shadows. The leader, a scarred man with a snake tattoo creeping up his neck, casually flipped open a heavy serrated switchblade.

"Wrong place at the wrong time, kid," the scarred man sneered, his voice raspy. "Hand over your wallet and phone, and maybe we'll leave you with enough teeth to drink your dinner through a straw."

Melvin stopped in his tracks. He didn't panic and didn’t even raise his hands. Instead, his eyes flashed with a faint, iridescent golden light as he activated Astral Sight.