I never told my husband’s mistress that I was the renowned plastic surgeon she booked a consultation with. She didn’t recognize me in my mask and scrubs. She pointed to a photo of me on her phone and said, “I want to look better than this hag my boyfriend is married to. Make me younger so he finally dumps her.” I simply smiled behind my mask and nodded. The surgery was a masterpiece. She believed she was waking up with a face that would make me weep with envy. But when the final bandage was peeled away, her face went pale. She screamed in horror, dropping the mirror to the floor. I hadn’t made her younger. I had used my scalpel to carve her into an exact, permanent replica of…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.
