The morning fog wrapped around the granite floor of Fifth Avenue, and the diamond necklace in the Tiffany window suddenly refracted a demonic red light.Lila jerked to a halt, the fishtail hem of her red Givenchy dress sweeping across the puddled reflection-another figure in the same red dress was smiling at her in the window at the opposite street corner.
"No way ..." Lila's Chanel nails pinch into her palm. There were only three pieces of this seasonal couture in the world; one was on her, one was in the Paris headquarters, and the last was supposed to be locked in a Milan vault. But the woman ten meters away was not only wearing it, she was even wearing a sharper cut at the waist, like a blood-stained machete against her waist.
The moment the light switched, the two red-skirted women stepped into the crosswalk at the same time.Lila smelled the other woman's bitter-peach-toned perfume, Amber's favorite scent when she was alive. She stumbled back, her heels jamming into the drain grate, and watched the moonstone studs in the other woman's earlobes glint in the morning light-the same as the one in Ethan's left ear.
"Watch out." The redhead reached out to hold her in place, her surgically altered voice brushing her eardrums like a snake's letter, "This dress really is more suited to someone with slimmer bones, wouldn't you say, Mrs. Thompson?"
Lila shook off her hand like an electric shock, only to catch a glimpse of three pale pink scars on the side of the other woman's neck. Memory lodged in her nerves like a poisonous thorn; the same burn marks were on Amber's flame-engulfed collarbone the night of the yacht explosion three years ago.
"Who are you?" Lila's voice was so sharp it scared off a flock of pigeons.
"Violet Dubois," the woman pulled out her gilt business card, a fingernail-sized camera flashing over the letter 'D', "Perhaps your husband has mentioned me? After all, we were just at a trust fund hearing last week ..."
The conversation is interrupted by the sound of sirens coming from far away, and Lila suddenly realizes that the red dress is reflected in all the window panes around her, the revolving doors, the elevator mirrors, and even the window of the sports car on the side of the road, and that the Violet in each reflection is closer than the one before it. As she is startled to realize that she has retreated to a window that is undergoing repairs, the dust sheet suddenly crashes down - the three-meter-high glass reflects a myriad of red-skirted women, each weeping tears of blood.
"An illusion ... It's all an illusion ..." Lila frantically pressed the elevator button, scarlet nail polish scraping harshly against the metal surface. The moment the elevator doors were about to close, the tips of Violet's heels jammed into the cracks, and her red dress roiled across the car like splashed-in blood.
The confined space was filled with the scent of bitter peach and Lila's Dior True Self perfume, Violet looked at the mirror to make up her lipstick and suddenly laughed softly, "Do you know why Givenchy named this red dress 'Vermilion Mole'?" When she turned around, the airflow from the hem of her skirt swept down Lila's silk scarf, "Because even the most perfect of marriages can't stand up to the white moonlight turning into blood in the heart."
The display suddenly popped up with the word "Malfunction" in red, and the elevator came to a violent halt on the 15th floor. When the emergency lights came on, Lila saw Violet pull an insulin pen out of her handbag - the exact same one her husband Jared had.
"What do you really want?" Lila's back pressed against the mirror, the cool touch reminding her of the metal table in the morgue.
Violet unscrewed the cap of the pen, the tip of the needle bluing in the ghostly green light, "The claim from the yacht bombing three years ago, the Benson family trust fund, and ..." She suddenly pressed the syringe against Lila's carotid artery, "The life you stole."
The needle had already pierced the skin when the alarm sounded abruptly.Lila's screams were interrupted by the influx of security guards, and the moment the elevator doors slowly opened, Violet but magically held up her lipstick and laughed, "Just kidding, Mrs. Thompson won't mind, will she?"
Lila's legs gave out and she sat on her knees as the crowd gathered around her. She didn't see Violet slide the insulin pen into the vent, let alone notice that all the security cameras swept by the hem of the other woman's skirt turned into snowflake screens as she left.
Three hours later, Lila was huddled in her apartment bathroom, frantically scrubbing her neck with a loofah. While applying sanitizing foam for the fifth time, a tweet popped up on her phone, "Newly minted celebrity Violet Dubois appears at charity gala, suspected of wearing the Benson family's missing blue diamond. In the accompanying picture, the blue light hidden in the neckline of Violet's red dress is the engagement ring that sank into the Hudson River with Amber.
The shower suddenly sprays scalding hot water, and Lila sees blood on the mirror amidst the steam: It's your turn. She screams and smashes the mirror, only to realize in the reflection of the shards that Violet is standing behind her, her finger dipped in blood, drawing yacht designs on the wall.
"Illusion! It's all an illusion!" Lila swings the shards at the phantom until the butler breaks through the door and holds her bloodied hand down. No one noticed that the bottle of sleeping pills that had disappeared from her dresser was now lying in Violet's alligator clutch, stacked with the surreptitious DNA report.
That night, all the electronic billboards in Manhattan suddenly broadcast the news of the yacht explosion three years earlier at the same time. When Amber's last photo appeared on the Times Square jumbo screen, Violet was using tweezers to remove the microchip from the insulin pen's compartment-which held all of Jared's medical records.
"The wrong insulin dose for a chronic kidney disease patient can kill you." She held the chip up to the moonlight and saw Ethan in the reflection of the floor-to-ceiling window pointing a sniper scope at her back.
(End of chapter)
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Violet was in the conference room next door revising her will when the strychnine was detected in the coffee cups at the lawyers' building. When Ethan's cufflink signal jammer is activated, the entire building's surveillance will record how the legal document becomes a death notice ...