E L L A R A

The clinic is silent except for the hum of the ceiling fan and the faint hiss of the sea beyond the glass. Midnight on Seraphine never feels peaceful to me, it feels watchful. I should be sleeping, but the screen in front of me keeps bleeding blue light across the paperwork spread like a battlefield on my desk.

Asha went home hours ago. Ethan’s patrol beacon blinked once on my phone that said east docks were secure and went dark again. I’m alone with coffee gone cold and a headline I can’t stop reading.

BREAKING: Resort Heir’s Secret Romance with PR Consultant.

Anya Delacourt’s face dominates the photo, mouth tilted toward Adrian’s ear as they leave the boardroom together. The caption slices deep: “Sources claim late-night strategy sessions turned intimate amid growing resort tensions.”

I tell myself it’s irrelevant. I tell myself I don’t care who he lets touch him for optics. But my pulse betrays me, a slow throb each time I scroll. I know that boardroom. I know the way he leans when he’s tired. The flash caught him mid-blink, unreadable yet the world will decide it means guilt.

I close the tab, force my gaze to the spreadsheets instead. Procurement logs, delivery confirmations, serial numbers and something solid, something I can control. If I drown myself in data, maybe I won’t picture his hand at the small of her back. Maybe I’ll remember why I’m here.

Saving this island was supposed to mean saving myself.

Numbers don’t lie, until someone pays them to.

I scroll through the procurement ledger, column after column of neat deception. The last six months of safety purchases are logged under my department, my name, my credentials. The dates line up with the upgrades I fought for after the lagoon incident: AEDs, crash carts, heat tents. But something’s wrong.

Serial numbers repeat. Twice. Then three times.

At first I think it’s a copy-paste error, but the pattern keeps going in mirrored batches, staggered by two days, all marked Delivered and Verified. I pull up the receipts. Each signed with the same stylus flourish: A. Valcrosse.

Except Adrian wasn’t even on the island that week.

I open the scanned slips. The signatures are too smooth. His real handwriting slashes; these curve and preen.

Forgery.

I cross-check supplier invoices with shipping records. Three vendors listed, all routed through a shell address, Seraphine Holdings Procurement Ltd. My stomach twists. That company doesn’t exist in any Valcrosse registry. Someone built it to siphon money through the orders I demanded, using my reforms as cover.

Every time I begged for equipment, someone else made a fortune pretending to deliver it.

Half the AED barcodes in the clinic don’t match. The rest don’t exist.

The fluorescent hum deepens, like the island’s listening.

Whoever’s behind this didn’t just steal money, they used our safety as camouflage. Used my name. Used Adrian’s.

And now the tabloids are already painting him as corrupt through his “affair” with Anya Delacourt.

Maybe that’s not a coincidence at all.

The cursor blinks like a pulse I can’t steady. I started small.

Asha answers groggily.
“Doctor?”
“Quick question. The last AED shipment, how many units did we actually receive?”
“Six. No.. five. One arrived broken. We filed a claim that never got answered.”
“Did anyone sign for replacements?”
“Procurement did. Marina Navarro came down herself. Said she’d handle it.”

I thank her and hang up.

Next call: Ethan.
He’s instantly awake. “What’s wrong?”
“Remember the supplier trucks last month?”
“Yeah. Too many sealed crates, no random checks. I flagged it. Got told they were emergency medical shipments and orders approved by Adrian himself.”
“Who told you that?”
A pause. “Procurement head. Said it came straight from PR.”

PR. Marina again.

My throat goes dry. “Ethan, if someone forged Adrian’s sign-offs..”
“I’ll dig quietly,” he cuts in. “Keep it between us. Cameras on the dock corridor were offline that week. Not an accident.”

When we hang up, I scroll the clinic chat group. A buried message catches my eye: a vendor rep apologizing for “supply irregularities” and promising to “follow the Seraphine Procurement process.” No company signature, just initials—M.N.

Marina Navarro.

Each testimony locks another piece of the puzzle: forged approvals, fake deliveries, money funneled through a ghost account. All of it leading back to PR’s smiling mouth.

And now the world believes the crisis consultant she hired is Adrian’s lover.

I press my palms to my eyes until I see stars. If I bring this to him, it’ll look like jealousy. If I stay quiet, she wins.

I’ve fought too hard to be dismissed again.

I shut the laptop, but the glow clings to my skin like guilt. Every forged signature, every image of Anya’s hand at Adrian’s sleeve loops in my mind.

I pace the clinic, the air sharp with antiseptic and salt. He’s out there somewhere, maybe pretending the rumor doesn’t sting. Maybe it doesn’t. I don’t want to care. I want to be furious at him, at her, at every system that turns compassion into weakness.

The printer light blinks. I didn’t send anything to print. A test page slides out: a delivery manifest I left open hours ago. At the bottom, Verification Authority: Quinn, E.

They’re already using my name.

If this erupts, I’ll be the scapegoat and the whistleblower in one breath, the doctor who faked orders to protect her “lover.”

My hands shake once, then still.

Coordinates on the manifest point to the supply dock. Closed after midnight, but my badge overrides medical locks.

If I’m going to drown, I’ll do it chasing the truth, not running from ghosts.

I grab my tablet, flashlight and ID card.

Time to see what Seraphine’s shadows are hiding.

The boardwalk is deserted, the ocean muttering below like it’s warning me back. Lanterns sway, casting gold ripples over the sand. My sneakers barely whisper as I slip into the service corridor feeding the docks.

The air turns metallic. The card reader flashes red, then green under my badge.

Inside, the temperature drops. Fluorescents buzz weakly over stacked crates stamped VALCROSSE MEDICAL SUPPLY. Perfectly aligned. Too clean.

I drag one forward, slice the wrap with my scalpel. Foam packing, label slips and sandbags. Perfectly weighted fakes.

A second crate. Third, All lies.

A single real AED sits on top, pristine and unused, a decoy.

Someone engineered this to survive inspection.

I snap photos: labels, seals, the sand trickling through my light beam. My pulse roars in my ears.

Footsteps.

Slow, confident, coming from the corridor I entered.

I kill the light. Hall glow slices under the door; a shadow pauses there. Listening.

A metallic scrape of a key card across the frame.

I hold my breath until my lungs burn. The light shifts once, then disappears.

They’re gone. Or waiting.

I pocket the phone, sealing the evidence.

Whatever this is, it isn’t simple corruption. It’s protection by someone powerful enough to hide behind safety itself.

And now they know I’ve seen it.

By the time I reach my suite, my hands won’t stop shaking. Every gust of wind sounds like pursuit. I double-lock the door, toss the tablet on the desk, and dump the photos into a secure drive. Proof. Finally, proof.

The upload bar crawls, eight percent, ten and eleven when something slides under the door. Paper whispering against tile.

I freeze.

The island outside is silent; even the surf holds its breath. I kneel and pull the page toward me. Plain white. No seal, no header. Just five words in dark ink:

Stop digging, Dr. Quinn.

My pulse trips. The handwriting is sharp, deliberate like the forged signatures in the ledger. I flip the page.

It’s one of my own photos. The dock crates, my flashlight slicing the dark. Already printed. Already in someone else’s hands.

The upload hits twenty percent. I yank the plug, heart pounding. Whoever sent this doesn’t need to hack me since they’re already inside the system.

A soft click echoes in the hall. A door? A lock? I can’t tell. I kill the lights, press back against the wall, and listen.

The surf resumes, slow and steady, as if the island is pretending nothing happened.

But someone knows exactly where I was tonight.

And they want me to stop breathing next.