Medical alcohol was boiling in a glass jar, soaking three bloody nails.
When Isabella Voss took off her rubber gloves, Chanel No.5 perfume was competing with formalin for control of the air in the treatment room. She threw the bloody nail clippers into her Gucci handbag, turned around and adjusted the position of her pearl necklace in front of the full-length mirror - just enough to cover the new bite mark above her collarbone. The young girl on the psychological treatment chair was reflected in the mirror, and the blood oozing from the gauze on her wrist bloomed like a poppy on the beige cashmere blanket.
"The thirteenth suicide attempt." Isabella picked up the girl's diary with tweezers. There was a half-burned wedding dress photo between the yellowed pages. "I really should thank Nathaniel for introducing these lovely patients." She licked the blood stains on the footer, and the bitter taste of black coffee exploded on the tip of her tongue.
The alarm suddenly screamed.
In parking space No. 13 in Zone C of the underground garage, Nathaniel's Bentley Mulsanne was leaking gasoline. Isabella's high heels stepped on the oil stains, and the iris pattern was iridescent in the moonlight. She remembered the smell she smelled at the Devil's Corner Cliff five years ago - 97 gasoline mixed with sea salt, and the sweet and greasy smell of Evelyn's burning hair.
"You are twenty-three minutes late." The sound of ice cubes colliding came from the shadow of the back seat, and Nathaniel's diamond cufflinks scraped against her thigh stockings, "Is there a fresh corpse in the clinic today?"
Isabella slapped the blood-stained diary on his chest: "If your little lover injects bleach into her veins again, you can only give her last prayers next time." She deliberately exposed the tulip birthmark under the ceiling light, and watched with satisfaction as the man's pupils shrank suddenly.
The car body suddenly jolted violently. In the rearview mirror, a man in a firefighter's uniform was cutting the car door with hydraulic pliers. Isabella's nails dug deep into Nathaniel's wrist until the Van Cleef & Arpels couple watch oozed blood. The look in the fire chief's eyes when he announced Evelyn's death five years ago was now looking at her in the mirror.
"Fasten your seat belts." Nathaniel slammed the steering wheel, and the moment the Bentley crashed into the fire hydrant, Isella's pearl necklace broke. The round Akoya pearls rolled into the sea of gasoline, just like the South Sea pearls that fell off Evelyn's wedding dress.
***
In the basement of an abandoned church in the West Side of Chicago, Lilith was cleaning the sewing machine with gasoline.
The blood-stained wedding dress fabric was soaked in an industrial oil drum, and rainbow ripples appeared as she stirred. The old radio played the breaking news of New York Fashion Week: "Blackwood Group sponsored designer Isabella Voss's 'Redemption' theme show and encountered protests from animal protection organizations..." Amid static interference, the fire truck sirens came from far away.
A dead pigeon suddenly fell from the ventilation duct.
Lilith cut open the pigeon's crop, and the gold foil fragments covered with digestive fluid spelled out the word "Fairmont" - the logo of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. She pressed the gold foil into lipstick paste and applied it to the broken face of the Virgin Mary. The lips reflected in the mirror began to bleed, just like when she bit Nathaniel's collarbone on the cliff five years ago.
There were three long and two short knocks from the secret door in the basement. Dr. Kovac came in with a refrigerator, and the surgical instruments played death metal music in the box. "Your new identity." He threw the passport with ice chips on the sewing machine, "Guest designer for Milan Fashion Week, flight ticket in two weeks."
Lilith pierced Isabella's face in the passport photo with a sewing needle: "Too slow." She opened the refrigerator and took out the eyeball specimen soaked in formalin. When the needle pierced the iris, the surveillance screen suddenly flickered - in the New York apartment, Nathaniel was tearing Isabella's pearl necklace, and the Van Cleef & Arpels couple watch smashed the French window in the struggle.
"The micro-detonator you installed in his watch," Dr. Kovac wiped the laser cutter, "is enough to turn the catwalk into an incinerator."
The church's stained window was suddenly pierced by a searchlight. Lilith quickly hid the bloody wedding dress in the confessional, but touched a fresh scratch on the wooden board - a tulip pattern, and the number of petals was exactly the same as Isabella's birthmark. The roar of the fire truck stopped three blocks away, and a familiar voice came from the noise of the intercom: "Parking space No. 13 in Zone C needs to be cleaned again..."
***
In an apartment on the Upper East Side of New York, Isabella's silk nightgown was soaked in Chardonnay white wine.
"You actually kept her earrings." Nathaniel's hand pinching her neck was throbbing with veins, and the tulip diamond earrings flashed in the glass shards on the ground. "Five years ago, when the firefighters found this pair of earrings from the ashes, I should have thrown you into the shredder."
Isella's knee hit the man's lower abdomen hard, and the champagne knife cut the Persian carpet in the chaos. She panted and crawled to the fireplace, pouring half a bottle of sleeping pills into the laptop that was still in the video conference: "Do you think Evelyn is the only one who secretly records?" Amid the horrified expressions of the group directors on the screen, she raised the tulip brooch that hid the pinhole camera.
The alarm tore through the night sky.
When the fire ladder crashed through the French window, Isabella was throwing the burning diary at the silk curtains. The fire illuminated the birthmark on her chest, and the tulip bloomed seductively in the heat wave. She smiled in the thick smoke, watching Nathaniel frantically slapping the locked electronic door - just like Evelyn slapped the bulletproof car window in the burning wedding dress.
At the moment when the fire hose broke through the window, Isabella whispered to the hidden headset: "Tell Lilith that the game has been upgraded." The water droplets passed through the micro-receiver between her collarbones, reflecting a strange electronic blue light in the ashes. And three time zones away in Chicago, the blood-red wedding dress in the church confessional suddenly stitched itself together, embroidering a brand new flame pattern...