From Humiliated Son-In-Law to The World’s Greatest Doctor

“Maynard!” Derek’s mother-in-law immediately shouted as soon as he stepped into the house. “Come here, Derek Maynard!”

The middle-aged woman looked at him while clenching both hands, her face red with anger.

Derek closed the front door behind him in great confusion.

Meanwhile, his father-in-law slowly rose from his seat and looked at him with a far more deadly expression.

“Yes, Mom? Dad?”

“How dare you only come home at this hour?! You must have been wandering around somewhere after your practice, weren’t you?! If you don’t have any patients coming to see you, you should just come home and take care of the house!”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I stopped by the supermarket for a while. We were almost out of cooking ingredients.”

Derek then raised the two large plastic bags in both hands to show his mother-in-law with wide smile. “I also bought something for Margo. It’s our anniversary today, so I’m going to cook something special for her.”

But his mother-in-law only growled even more angrily. “Then you could have done that quickly! Because you didn’t come home right away and couldn’t be reached, I became even more frustrated!”

“What’s wrong, Mom?”

“You!” Derek’s father-in-law pointed his index finger at him. “Do you know what happened to your friend?”

“My friend?” Derek didn’t understand who his father-in-law was talking about. “Which friend?”

“Fred O’Neill!!”

“Fred… O’Neill? Yeah, we went to the same high school.” Derek narrowed his eyes, his brow furrowing. "What happened to him?”

“So you don’t know anything?! Oh, my God! You two are friends! How could you not know about the news that’s all over the place?!”

Derek’s mother-in-law screamed while clutching her chest. Meanwhile, his father-in-law immediately caught her and guided her to sit on the sofa.

“Mom, are you okay?”

Derek immediately rushed toward his mother-in-law, worried about her. But his father-in-law raised a hand to stop him from getting too close.

“Your friend… Fred, is a wanted fugitive for fraud and embezzlement! The news is everywhere, Maynard, and you don’t know anything about it? This is outrageous! You said he was your friend!"

“What?” Derek was so shocked that the grocery bag he was holding automatically slipped from his hands, making a fairly loud thud as it hit the wooden floor.

“I don’t want to know!” his mother-in-law screamed again. “You have to catch him! He’s your friend! You must know where he is now! Return our money, Maynard! That’s the money we’ve saved for years!!!”

“I…” Derek stammered. “I don’t really know him, Mom, Dad. We can’t even be called friends. As far as I know, Fred was actually closer to Evander.”

When Derek mentioned Margo’s childhood friend, his mother-in-law glared at him in disbelief.

“Evander wouldn’t know! They’re just business partners who only recently met. Unlike you, who have known Fred for years!”

“But, Mom… It was Evander who introduced Fred to you. He should know where Fred is.”

“He couldn’t possibly know.” His father-in-law sighed. “Evander is too good of a man. He probably never expected to be scammed by Fred either.”

“Poor Evander…” His mother-in-law defended him as well. “He’s still young, but he has to lose that much money. He also invested in it like we did back then.”

“I already told you both to be careful when investing in Fred. His proposal wasn’t even that convincing.”

His mother-in-law immediately snapped at Derek’s words. “How dare you blame us! You should have helped us! You’re nothing but a useless piece of shit!”

“Right! You have no right to blame us! You’re the one who was actually at fault, Maynard!” His father-in-law immediately chimed in.

“If you knew him back then, even if you didn’t want to consider him your friend, at least you knew what kind of person he was. You should have warned us to be careful before investing in him, but what did you do? You did nothing!”

“I didn’t really know him…” Derek almost desperately tried to explain. “We only knew of each other, but we weren’t friends. “I haven’t even seen him in a very long time. How was I supposed to know that he would turn into a scammer now?”

“You said you could tell that his proposal wasn’t convincing. Then you should have told us and stopped us!”

“I already warned you… I also tried to stop you…”

Derek remembered clearly that he had done everything he could to make them cancel the investment.

“But you insisted on doing it because you said you completely trusted Evander.”

“Evander was also scammed by him!” his mother-in-law shouted at him. “Why do you sound like you’re blaming him?!”

“I’m not blaming him… It’s just…” Derek hesitated to continue. It was Evander who had repeatedly persuaded them to invest back then. But if Derek reminded them of that too bluntly, his in-laws would surely not take it well and would only become even angrier.

“What do you want to do now? Do you want to keep blaming the two of us and Evander?”

Derek looked at his father-in-law.

“We’re the victims of a scam, Maynard! But you’re only making things worse by blaming us! As our son-in-law, you should be thinking of a way to catch that scammer and get our money back!”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to blame you…”

“Useless son-in-law! How dare you act like this toward your in-laws when we're going through such a terrible situation! Not only are you incompetent, but you also have no empathy!”

His mother-in-law’s gaze at him was terrifying.

“Oh! How could my beautiful and successful only daughter marry a failure doctor like you?! While she works hard to make money, you just keep leeching off her!”

His father-in-law calmed down his sobbing wife, then helped her walk into their bedroom.

Meanwhile, Derek tried to pull himself together to solve this problem.

He picked up the groceries that had spilled and hurried to the kitchen to store and divide the food between the freezer and pantry as quickly as possible.

Then he searched for news about Fred on the internet.

Several recent similar articles appeared. The name Fred O’Neill was clearly written in the headlines, along with the fraud and embezzlement charges against him for a fake real estate investment scheme. Fred had fled and was now officially a wanted fugitive.

Soon after, Derek reached for the phone in his pants pocket and tried to call Evander to ask for Fred’s phone number.

It didn’t connect. Even though Derek tried again several times, an answering machine only informed him that the number he was trying to reach was currently unavailable.

So he hurried out, started his car, and drove again, heading to Evander’s office.

÷÷÷

Just as Derek’s car entered the parking lot in front of Evander’s office, he caught sight of someone who looked like Margo in the distance, walking between the rows of parked cars before disappearing. He recognized her from the outfit she was wearing, which was exactly the same as the one he had prepared for Margo that morning.

Derek rolled down his car window and drove closer to make sure he hadn’t been mistaken.

After reaching the parking aisle where she had disappeared, Derek could see more clearly that it was indeed Margo.

His wife got into a black SUV with Evander, who was sitting behind the wheel.

“Margo!” Derek tried to call out to her, but they were too far apart, and their car was already speeding toward the exit.

Derek drove after them while reaching for his phone to call Margo.

She didn’t answer the first few calls, but eventually Derek heard her voice on the other end.

“What is it, Derek?”

Derek briefly considered putting off telling Margo about the scam that had happened to her parents. He was worried that his wife would panic. It would be safer to tell her bad news like this once she was home.

“Margo, can you ask Evander to turn on his phone? I need to call him to ask him about something very, very, very important.”

“What?” Margo was silent for a moment before raising her voice. “Why are you ordering me around like that? If his phone is off, how am I supposed to tell him to turn it on?! Am I his babysitter or something?!”

Derek felt that something was strange about Margo’s answer.

‘Isn’t she with Evander right now? Then why did she say that?’

“Where are you, anyway?”

“Of course I’m at my own office!”

Derek fell silent, confused by Margo’s lie.

“Just deal with your own problems. I’m very busy!”

Then there was a loud sound of something falling, making Derek flinch and instinctively pull his phone away from his ear. Margo’s curse followed immediately afterward.

“Damn it! My phone fell under the seat. Argh! I can’t reach it…”

“Did you hang up on that loser?” Evander’s voice also came through. Derek began to feel uneasy. He brought the phone back to his ear, though he hesitated slightly.

“Yes.”

“Then just leave it. You can get it later. You’ll hurt your hand if you keep reaching under the seat like that.”

“How troublesome! Derek made my phone fall. He’d better watch out if the screen ends up cracked or damaged.”

“I’ll buy you a new one if it gets damaged. Now, instead of you reaching under the seat, why don’t I reach under your skirt instead?”

Margo’s giggling still came through quite clearly over the phone, which was still connected.

“You pervert! Ah! That tickles, Evander… Not here. Later… We’ll be at the hotel soon anyway.”

It felt as though lightning struck his consciousness in an instant.

Derek immediately stopped the car on reflex, causing several vehicles behind him to honk loudly and shout angrily at him.

But Derek couldn’t even hear the drivers’ curses. The only thing that reached his ears was the conversation between Margo and Evander, something he had never once imagined would happen.

“Evander… slowly… Mmh…”

“Take off your panties, Margo. There’s no point wearing them anymore when you’re already this wet.”

“I don’t want to…”

“Then I’ll just pull them off if you’re going to be stubborn.”

“You’re so impatient! Ah, that hurts, Evander…! Alright, alright… Wait…”

“Good. Now I can touch you properly.”

Without realizing it, Derek’s grip on his phone tightened.

“Does it hurt or feel good, babe? That wet sound of yours is so sexy, you know. Bring your hand over here, Margo. Do something instead of just lying there enjoying yourself.”

Derek ended the call. He couldn’t bear to listen any longer to the sounds describing what Margo and Evander were doing.

In an instant, he was consumed by a raging fire that burned away all his common sense, while at the same time, a devastating flood tore through his heart and drowned him alive. He felt unbearably suffocated, able to see nothing but the empty darkness before him.