The private clinic in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris was perpetually filled with the smell of antiseptic water mixed with iris essential oil. As the anesthetic crept along the veins, Amber heard the crunch of the scalpel clinking against the metal tray like the sound of champagne glasses clinking at an engagement party three years ago.
"Just to confirm for the last time, are you sure you want to modify your vocal cords?" The doctor's French English was wrapped behind a mask, and the cold light of a shadowless lamp slid over his gold-rimmed glasses. His fingers dangled above the console buttons, as if Death were weighing the weight of a scythe.
Amber stared at the surgical lights on the ceiling, the orange-red patches of light from the yacht's explosion lingering on her retinas. She opened her mouth, a raspy airy sound coming from her immobilized banded throat, "I want every syllable to be like a rose piercing velvet."
As the first laser sliced through the mucous membrane of her vocal cords, memories came flooding back like a pouring flood. She saw Jared kneeling on the deck of his yacht and proposing, the waves breaking into a million diamonds behind him. The sea air was salty when he said, "I love you," with his lips pressed against her earlobe, but the memory was as bitter as strychnine.
"Inject adrenaline." The doctor's order caused the monitor to beep shrilly, and Amber felt hot steel needles travel between her vocal cords as pain caused blood-colored fireworks to explode before her eyes. In a trance she became the little girl locked in the attic by her stepmother when she was ten years old, her fingernails digging into the oak door panels until they oozed blood. Benson Sr.'s words as he opened the door, "You should learn to be as thorny as a rose," now resurfaced in her nostrils, mixed with the burnt smell of the electrocautery machine.
The moment the surgical forceps clamped down on the cartilage, the monitor suddenly sounded a piercing alarm. The nurse's French-language exclamation of alarm came as if through a layer of seawater, "Her blood pressure is down to 70/40!" Amber felt consciousness sinking while her body was suddenly gripped by intense weightlessness-the same sensation she'd felt when she'd fallen into the Hudson River three years ago, and the sharp pain of water pouring into her lungs had her desperately clutching not the oxygen, but the photo of the stolen affair with the burnt edges.
"Get on extracorporeal!" The doctor's roar ripped through the memory curtain, and Amber saw in the chaos Lila's fingers, painted with Chanel No. 62 nail polish, sliding from Jared's tie to his belt buckle. The intertwined bodies on the security camera suddenly distort into the aperture of a surgical light, and she realizes with a start that she's letting out an inhuman hiss. It turned out that the doctor was testing new vocal cords and the laser knife was carving the shape of hate.
By the time the last facial implant was secured beneath her cheekbone, the mirror reflected a strange woman. Fiery red curls looked like congealed blood, the corners of her eyes were lifted into feline curves, and the peaks of her newly molded lips were so sharp they could cut through an oath. The doctor shoved the gilt vanity mirror into her bandaged hand, "Remember, Violet Dubois, you're from Nice, your parents died in a plane crash, and you inherited a three hundred million dollar trust fund."
The day the stitches were removed, the rain poured down, and Violet touched the three burn scars on the side of her neck, the only remnants of the old days. The clinic TV suddenly cuts to the news: a mysterious redheaded celebrity has been spotted at a New York charity dinner, clashing with socialite Lila Thompson in Givenchy couture. As the camera sweeps over Lila's pale face, Violet's new vocal cords emit their first soft laugh, husky and lazy as a viper's viper.
The doctor hands over a paper shredder containing her old ID card, but presses her hand the moment it starts: "You know why you chose red hair? In Renaissance paintings, betrayers were always painted with red hair." He removed his mask to reveal the burned lower half of his face, "My wife was one of the charred corpses in the chemical plant your father purchased that exploded twelve years ago."
A rainstorm slapped the floor-to-ceiling windows and Violet spilled confetti into the howling wind. In the flurry of white debris, she saw the wreckage of the yacht at the bottom of the Hudson River glowing. As the last piece of confetti with "Amber Benson" on it disappeared into the Seine, the heartbeat curve on the monitor finally turned into the calm, straight line of an avenger.
(End of chapter)
Next Chapter Preview:
As surveillance screens on the 37th floor of Wall Street capture anomalous trading data, Ethan's sapphire cufflinks reflect Violet's Manhattan apartment building. As the financial nouveau riche and the Nemesis narrowly meet in the data stream, the doctored trust documents are foaming poison in the lawyer's coffee cup ...