Chapter 3

Julian's private clinic was housed in a standalone building on the edge of the city, marked by a small, understated sign: Julian Aesthetic Surgery. The place radiated the particular kind of wealth that doesn't need to advertise.

I parked down the road and waited.

At eight o'clock, staff began filtering out. By eight thirty, a black Maybach rolled out of the underground garage. Julian was driving.

I fired up the car and tailed him without making a sound.

The Maybach pulled up to a high-rise residential building in the heart of the city—a luxury river-view complex with full-floor units.

I hid the car and watched Julian walk into the lobby. I followed close behind, noting that the elevator stopped at the top floor, 28.

No key fob, so I took the fire stairs, climbing all twenty-eight flights.

The door to unit 2801 was closed.

I pressed my ear against it. The soundproofing was too good—nothing came through.

Then I heard it. A sharp, muffled scream. The crash of something heavy hitting the floor.

I stepped back and drove my heel into the door.

The electronic lock was heavy-duty, the door remained completely immovable.

Scanning the area, I yanked a fire axe from its box and swung it viciously at the lock.

Crash! Crash! Crash!

After a few brutal chops, the mechanism shattered. I kicked the door wide open and charged inside.

What I saw stopped me cold.

Iris was crumpled on the floor like a discarded piece of cloth, wearing a thin nightgown. Blood at the corner of her mouth. Hair tangled across her face.

Julian stood over her, looking down with calm contempt, a surgical scalpel in his hand. The tip of the blade was pressed to her cheek—like Aurora's cheek—

"Stop." I crossed the room in three strides.

Julian startled. Just for a second.

I put my fist through his face. He went backward over the arm of the sofa, the scalpel spinning away across the floor, and landed hard.

I pulled Iris up from the floor and put myself between her and Julian.

"Lucien." Julian touched his bloody lip. And then, incredibly, he laughed—a fraying, unhinged sound. "You're right on time. I was just correcting some bad behavior."

"You're out of your mind," I said. "What the hell is this?"

Taking his time, Julian rose to his feet and casually adjusted his disheveled suit.

"What is this?" He spread his arms wide like a curator presenting a collection. "Lucien, you should be thanking me. Aurora was gone and you were destroying yourself. So I gave her back to you. Look at her—" He gestured at Iris. "Every angle of that face, I measured twice. The geometry of her smile. The spacing of her eyes. One to one. Perfect."

His expression went somewhere else—bright and vacant and wrong.

"To make her into Aurora, I broke her jaw and reset it. I rebuilt her eyelids. I cut away the scar tissue piece by piece. A full year of surgeries. And what did I get? The most precise replica ever constructed."

He pointed at Iris, his voice cracking into something colder.

"And then this ungrateful thing goes and actually falls in love with you. She forgot what she is. She's a stand-in. A vessel. Nothing more. She was secretly throwing away the anti-rejection medication I gave her. She was trying to get out from under me."

I felt something go cold in my chest.

"So the package—that was you?"

"No." Julian's smile thinned. "I wouldn't sabotage my own work. That was a nurse I fired. She stole the files and tried to use them for blackmail. I've already handled her."

He said "handled her" the way you'd say you'd taken out the trash.

I turned to Iris. She was gripping the back of my shirt with both hands, trembling, holding on like I was the only solid thing in the room.

"Lucien… take me out of here. Please." She cried and begged.

"Take her?" Julian burst out laughing. "Lucien, who exactly do you think you're taking? You think you're getting Aurora back? Wake up. She's a factory worker from a town you've never heard of. She could barely read when I found her. She signed a contract and traded her body for a roof over her head."

"Shut up." My voice came out low and final.

Julian's laughter cut off. His eyes went flat and poisonous.

"What gives you the right to speak to me like that? You think you loved Aurora? You couldn't even protect her. If she had chosen me back then, she would still be alive!"

The mention of Aurora's death ripped something open in my chest.

"That was an accident," I said. "The gallery fire—it was an accident."

"An accident?" Julian looked at me like I was something almost too pathetic to bother with. A slow smile spread across his face.

He took a step closer, dropped his voice until only the three of us could hear it.

"Lucien. Do you actually believe that was an accident?"