Chapter 1: The Consultation of Narcissus
“I want to look better than this hag my boyfriend is married to.”
The words hung in the sterile air of my clinic, sharp and cold as a scalpel. She didn’t know that the face she was mocking was the same one hidden behind my surgical mask, and that by the time I was finished, she wouldn’t just look like the hag—she would become her.
The Vance Institute in Beverly Hills was a temple of white marble and hushed whispers. It smelled of eucalyptus and money, a scent designed to make you forget the blood that paid for it. I sat behind my glass desk, fully scrubbed in—blue cap covering my hair, N95 mask concealing my nose and mouth, surgical loops magnifying my eyes. To the world, I was Dr. Evelyn Vance, the “Sculptor of the Stars.” To the girl sitting across from me, I was just a pair of hands holding the keys to her vanity.
Chloe was twenty-two, blonde, and radiated the kind of entitlement that usually comes with a trust fund, though her cheap shoes told a different story. She tossed her phone onto the desk with a clatter.
The screen lit up. It showed a candid photo of a woman in a garden. She was wearing no makeup, her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and she looked exhausted.
It was me.
