Chapter 3

Chapter 3

LUCIA POV

The mirror doesn't lie.

But I wish it would.

I stare at my reflection in Salome's guest bathroom, and I don't recognize the person looking back at me. My skin looks gray, like I'm already half dead. Dark circles ring my eyes so deep they look like bruises. My hair hangs in greasy strands around my face.

I look exactly like what I am.

Broken.

"This has to change," I whisper to the stranger in the mirror. "All of it."

Three weeks have passed since I woke up in Salome's house. Three weeks of learning how David cleaned out every account, sold every property, transferred every share. Three weeks of watching news reports about my "mental breakdown" and "tragic fall from grace."

Three weeks of grieving a baby I never got to hold.

The bathroom door opens behind me. Salome walks in carrying a thick folder and wearing the kind of smile that usually means trouble.

"Ready for today?" she asks.

"I don't know what today is."

"Today is the day Lucia Mendez finishes dying." She sets the folder on the marble counter. "And Isabella Valen is born."

My stomach twists. We've talked about this, but hearing the words out loud makes it real in a way that terrifies me.

"Isabella," I say, testing the name on my tongue. It tastes foreign. Strange.

"My daughter," Salome says, and there's something warm in her voice I wasn't expecting. "Officially adopted twenty-five years ago, but raised privately in Europe. Educated at the finest schools. Now returning home to take her place in the family business."

I open the folder with shaking hands. Inside are documents I don't understand. Birth certificates, school records, medical files. An entire life that never existed, created with the kind of detail that only unlimited money can buy.

"This is really happening," I breathe.

"Unless you've changed your mind."

I think about David's face when he proposed. The way he looked at me like I hung the moon. How stupid I was to believe any of it.

"No. I haven't changed my mind."

"Good. Because there's no going back after today."

She leads me out of the bathroom, through hallways lined with paintings worth more than most people's houses, down stairs that probably took a year to build. Everything in this place screams money and power.

Soon, it will scream my name too.

We stop in front of a door I've never seen open before. Salome pulls out a key and turns the lock.

"Welcome to your new life," she says.

The room beyond takes my breath away. It's bigger than my old bedroom, filled with clothes, shoes, jewelry, everything a billionaire's daughter would own. But that's not what stops my heart.

It's the woman standing in the center of it all.

She's tall, elegant, with silver hair swept up in a perfect twist. Her white coat tells me she's a doctor, but everything else about her screams money.

"Lucia," Salome says, "meet Dr. Carmen Reyes. She's going to help you become Isabella."

Dr. Reyes steps forward, and her smile is kind but professional. "Miss Mendez, I understand you want to change your appearance."

"I want to become someone else entirely."

"That can be arranged." She opens a medical bag and pulls out a tablet. "I specialize in complete transformations. New face, new body, new everything. By the time I'm finished, your own mother wouldn't recognize you."

My mother is dead, I want to say. But I bite my tongue.

"What exactly are we talking about?" I ask instead.

Dr. Reyes swipes through images on her tablet. "Rhinoplasty to change your nose. Cheek implants to alter your bone structure. Lip enhancement. Brow lift. Eye shape modification." She looks up at me. "We can make you look like a completely different person."

My hands shake. "How long?"

"The surgeries themselves? Six hours. Recovery? Six months for full healing."

Six months. Half a year of hiding while my face rebuilds itself into something new.

"What about hair?" I touch the dark strands that David used to love running his fingers through.

"That's easier." A new voice joins the conversation. A woman with purple hair and more piercings than I can count walks into the room. "I'm Maya. I do hair and makeup for people who need to disappear."

She circles me like a predator studying prey. "Honey, with your bone structure, we can do anything. Blonde, red, short, long. Different color contacts too. Change your whole vibe."

I close my eyes and try to imagine it. Try to picture myself with a different face, different hair, different everything.

When I open them, everyone is watching me.

"I need to know," I say slowly, "that when this is over, when I look in the mirror, I won't see the stupid girl who gave David Rodriguez everything."

"You won't," Dr. Reyes promises. "You'll see Isabella Valen. Billionaire heiress. Untouchable."

The word hits me like a drug. Untouchable.

"When can we start?"

"Now," Salome says. "If you're ready."

Am I ready to let them cut apart my face and rebuild it? Am I ready to become someone else entirely?

I think about David and Yvonne, probably living it up somewhere tropical with my money. Laughing about how easy it was to destroy me. Celebrating the death of the naive little girl who trusted them.

They think I'm broken beyond repair.

They're about to learn how wrong they are.

But first, I need to be absolutely sure.

"I'm ready." The words start to leave my mouth, then stop. My throat closes up like someone's choking me.

Am I really ready to lose everything that's left of who I used to be?

A flash of memory hits me like a punch to the chest. My mother, brushing my hair before bed when I was seven. Her gentle hands working through the tangles while she hummed a lullaby I can't remember the words to anymore.

"You have such beautiful hair, mija," she whispered. "Just like mine when I was your age."

The memory fades, leaving me hollow.

My mother is dead. My baby is dead. The girl who believed in love is dead too.

All I have left is revenge.

"I'm ready," I say again, and this time the words come out strong and clear.

The next few hours blur together like a nightmare. Dr. Reyes draws lines on my face with a purple marker, mapping out everything that needs to change. Maya holds up different wigs, talking about colors and styles that will make me unrecognizable.

They discuss me like I'm a science project. Which, I suppose, I am.

"The nose needs to be smaller, more refined," Dr. Reyes says, marking another line. "And we'll need to change the eye shape completely. Right now they're too distinctive."

"Distinctive how?" I ask.

"You have your mother's eyes," Salome says quietly. "Everyone who knew her would recognize them immediately."

My mother's eyes. The only thing I had left of her, and I'm about to give that up too.

The thought should hurt more than it does.

But I'm already so numb that one more loss barely registers.

"The surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning," Dr. Reyes announces. "Six AM sharp. After that, you'll need to stay here for at least a month while the swelling goes down."

"What about the outside world? People will notice I'm gone."

"No, they won't." Salome's voice carries a certainty that makes my skin crawl. "Lucia Mendez is having a very public nervous breakdown. She's been committed to a private facility for intensive therapy. No visitors. No contact with the outside world."

"You've thought of everything."

"I always do."

Maya approaches me with a pair of scissors that catch the light like knives. "Want to start small? Just the hair for now?"

I reach into my pocket and pull out the engagement ring I've been carrying since the cathedral. David's ring. The symbol of every lie he ever told me. The three-carat diamond catches the light, mocking me with its brilliance.

Without a word, I walk to the bathroom and drop it into the toilet. The sound it makes hitting the water is small and final.

I flush.

Gone.

"Now I'm ready," I tell Maya when I come back.

She leads me to a chair in front of a mirror. My reflection stares back, still recognizably me. Still the girl who believed in fairy tales and happy endings.

This is the last time I'll see her.

Maya lifts a section of my long dark hair. "Any last words for Lucia?"

I stare at myself in the mirror. At the girl who was stupid enough to sign away her inheritance for love. Who was naive enough to trust her best friend. Who was weak enough to let them destroy her.

"You deserved better," I whisper. "But you were too soft for this world."

The scissors close with a sharp snip.

A piece of my hair falls to the floor like a dead thing.

Then another.

And another.

Each cut takes away more of who I used to be. With every snip of the scissors, Lucia Mendez dies a little more.

Maya works quickly, transforming my long hair into a sharp bob that frames my face in a completely different way. Then she pulls out bottles of bleach and color.

"Going blonde," she announces. "Platinum. It'll change everything about how people see you."

The chemicals burn my scalp, but I welcome the pain. It means the change is real. It means there's no going back.

While the color processes, Dr. Reyes shows me before and after photos of other patients. Women who walked into her office looking one way and came out looking completely different.

"This is what you'll look like," she says, showing me a computer simulation based on the changes we discussed.

The face on the screen is beautiful, but it's not mine. The nose is smaller, more delicate. The eyes are different, cat-like instead of round. The cheekbones are higher, more pronounced.

It's the face of someone who could command boardrooms and destroy enemies.

It's the face of Isabella Valen.

"Perfect," I say, and I mean it.

Maya rinses out my hair and blow-dries it into smooth waves. When she spins my chair around to face the mirror, I gasp.

The girl looking back at me is still recognizably Lucia, but barely. The short platinum hair changes everything about my face. Makes my eyes look bigger, my features sharper.

"This is just the beginning," Maya says, grinning. "Wait until after the surgery."

I touch my new hair, marveling at how different it feels. Lighter. Like I've already started shedding my old skin.

"How do you feel?" Salome asks.

I study my reflection, trying to find Lucia Mendez in this new face. She's still there, but fading fast.

"Different," I say finally. "Good different."

"Tomorrow will be harder," Dr. Reyes warns. "Surgery is always traumatic, even when it's voluntary. This will hurt more than you think. Not just your face. Everything. Your body will fight the changes. Your mind will try to reject who you're becoming."

She pauses, studying my face carefully. "And there's something else you need to know. We've received some concerning intelligence. David and Yvonne have been asking questions. Trying to find out where you are."

My blood turns to ice. "What kind of questions?"

"They're worried you might still be alive. Apparently, they want to make sure you can't cause them any problems." Salome's voice carries a warning I don't like. "We need to move fast. If they discover you're not really in that facility..."

"They'll what? Try to finish what they started?"

"Exactly."

The room goes quiet. Everyone watching me, waiting to see if I'll run or fight.

"How long do we have?"

"Days. Maybe a week if we're lucky."

I feel my jaw clench. They're still trying to destroy me, even now. Still not satisfied with taking everything I had.

"Then we do this tomorrow. And we do it fast."

The thought should terrify me.

Instead, it fills me with something I haven't felt in weeks.

Hope.

"Good," I say, meeting her eyes in the mirror. "Lucia Mendez was weak. Isabella Valen will be untouchable."

Salome's reflection appears behind mine, and her smile is sharp as broken glass.

"Yes," she says. "She will be."

I look at myself one last time, memorizing the face I'm about to lose forever.

Tomorrow, I'll wake up with a new face.

A new name.

A new life.

And David Rodriguez and Yvonne Castillo will think they buried me deep enough to stay down.

They should have made sure I stayed dead.

Because the woman rising from Lucia Mendez's grave isn't coming back for forgiveness.

She's coming for blood.