Chapter 21 Marcus
MARCUS
She sits too straight in the chair.
Most new patients don’t. They fidget, adjust their bag on their lap, and glance at the mirror mounted discreetly on the wall. But she doesn’t touch anything. Her hands are folded, ankles crossed.
“I’ve done a lot of research,” she says immediately. “So I know exactly what I want.”
I nod and don’t interrupt.
“I’m looking for definition,” she continues. “Nothing dramatic. Just subtle midface support, a little projection at the cheekbone apex, and maybe a conservative adjustment along the mandibular angle.”
She watches my face as she speaks, tracking reactions that don’t come.
“I don’t want to look done,” she adds quickly. “That’s important to me.”
“Of course,” I say, keeping my tone neutral despite her explanation sounding less like preference and more like a rehearsed list of clinical terms.
She relaxes a fraction. “You’re known for that. I’ve read what your patients say.”
“Thank you.”
“I brought reference photos.” She slides her phone across the desk, already unlocked, her gallery queued. “This is the aesthetic I’m aiming for. Strong, but still feminine.” She zooms in. “It’s not volume. It’s structure.”
I lean back and study her face, not with any intention of altering it, but watching the moments between her explanations.
I watch the pauses while she searches for what to say next, the tension around her eyes when she talks about structure, and the faint, unconscious press of her lips after each sentence, as if sealing something in.
“Miss Allen, how old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“You submitted identification with your registration?” I ask.
“I did,” she says, bright and confident.
I lean forward. “I’m going to be very clear with you. Whatever document you uploaded doesn’t reflect your actual age.”
Her expression sharpens. “Dr. Lockwood, that’s insulting.”
“No,” I say evenly. “It’s observant. And I don’t move forward with patients unless I’m confident I have the truth.”
She folds her arms across her chest.
“Fine. I’m sixteen,” she mutters. “But my friends do this all the time.”
“Not here,” I reply. “And not with me.”
She lifts her chin. “I’ll go to Dr. Gabor. And I’ll tell people how you treated me.”
I don’t raise my voice, and I don’t rush to reassure her either.
“You’re free to see whoever you like,” I say. “But no reputable surgeon will operate on a minor for cosmetic enhancement without a medical indication. Especially not facial alteration.”
The edge of her confidence dulls just a touch.
“How about just a nose job?” she bargains.
I shake my head.
“Come on,” she blurts. “My friends already had surgery, and now they have perfect noses. Like…actually perfect.” She then gestures at her own. “Model noses. Not like this.”
“What does ‘model’ mean to you?” I ask. “Tell me.”
She hesitates. “Like…them.” She tilts her phone toward me.
The Hadid sisters.
I nod. “They’re beautiful, yes.”
I let the silence sit. She has learned how to describe faces, but she hasn’t learned how to inhabit her own. And I’m not going to operate on a teenager because the world has made her hate her own face. But I don’t say anything more. I turn to my laptop instead.
A few clicks. A search. Then I rotate the screen toward her.
“Look,” I say.
I scroll slowly through models with presence, not for how closely they conform. I show her noses with strength, length, and slight deviation, and faces that hold attention even when symmetry is taken out of the equation.
“Kai Schreiber,” I say, tapping the screen. “Sixteen, opening shows for Valentino. Beautiful? Yes. Conventional? No.”
I move to the next image. “Alex Consani. Gen Z icon and current face on major campaigns.”
One more.
“Mica Arganaraz.”
I leave the screen there and say nothing else. She leans forward.
“They didn’t succeed because they fit a single template,” I continue. “They succeed because they’re recognizable. Because you can draw their faces from memory.”
I glance at her again, adding, “I’m not telling you these are standards you should aspire to. I’m telling you that beauty isn’t a shortlist. It’s a range. And it keeps expanding long after people stop trying to narrow it.”
She sits back, quiet now.
I return my laptop to its place and say, “There’s nothing I can do to improve your face. And no one else can either.”
There’s no guarantee she won’t walk out of here and find someone willing to take her money and make her insecurity profitable. I can’t control that. But I’ve disrupted the certainty she walked in with. At her age, that matters.
She stands without another word, her shoulders squared, and leaves the room.
I wait for the door to close before checking her registration. I shouldn’t need it, but I won’t move forward on assumption.
Out front, the clinic is subdued in the way it always is mid-morning. The receptionist looks up as I approach, a new face filling in while our usual is still recovering from the flu.
“Keep my afternoon clear, please,” I say.
She nods immediately. “Of course, Doctor.”
“You processed the booking for Miss Allen?”
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
I pick up the tablet from the counter and angle it toward her. “She’s a minor.”
Her brow furrows. “I checked her ID.”
“I know,” I say evenly. “But two things didn’t line up.”
I tap the screen. “First, the issue date. It doesn’t match the state’s current format.”
Another tap, lower down. “Second, the photo metadata. It’s been altered. Slightly, but it’s enough.”
She leans closer now, color draining from her face as she sees it.
“I’m so sorry, Dr. Lockwood,” she says quickly. “I didn’t—” She nods, swallowing. “It won’t happen again.”
“I know,” I say.
I leave Avelis a few minutes later. I might not be able to save Jennifer Allen’s world, but I’ve got to try to save mine.
I find Theo at the edge of the garden, settled into his favorite chair. The position is familiar, but the oxygen is new. A tank sits beside him, tubing tracing up to his face. The small table beside him is empty.
“No coffee?” I say.
Theo looks at it, then back at me, and lets out a short laugh. “I’m losing my edge,” he says. “Couldn’t manage it today. Asked Marta to make it.”
His hands rest on the arms of the chair. The tremor isn’t dramatic, but it’s impossible to miss if you’re paying attention.
Footsteps sound down the hall, and Marta appears with a tray, moving carefully. She sets the cup down within Theo’s reach, adjusting the handle so it faces the right way.
“Your Viennese Melange,” she says. Then, turning to me, she asks, “Would you like anything, Dr. Lockwood?”
“No, thank you.”
Theo watches as she leaves. When Marta disappears, he wraps both hands around the cup. The tremor makes the porcelain click softly against the saucer.
“So, what’s bothering you, son?” he asks.
Son. I hear it differently this morning. He’s always used it loosely out of habit, not affection. But today, it carries weight. Maybe because, for the first time in a long while, I’m aware of what I don’t have.
I don’t answer him.
Has this man ever loved me? He’s done enough to keep me alive, educated, and protected. But that’s not the same thing. It never was, but I never let it bother me.
I push the thought aside. I didn’t come here for that.
“Theo,” I say slowly, “what renovation did I talk about with you?”
He blinks. “What renovation?”
“The Trap.”
“Oh.” He takes a sip of his Viennese Melange as his gaze pans to the garden, to the birds splashing in the stone basin. “That.”
My shoulders tense as I wait for his response.
“The east cellar,” he says. “You were determined to replace the flooring. Foolish idea. For one, it’s original.” He takes another sip. “I bought that house from a prominent Prohibition-era family. You remember that, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then you’ll also remember,” he goes on, “that the patriarch dug a tunnel to an even larger cellar.”
He never told me. But the answer is obvious now. That son of a bitch didn’t stumble onto it by accident that night. He wasn’t clever. Theo told him.
Theo chuckles, shaking his head. “Though the prick didn’t leave a single bottle. Prohibition-era stock like that could’ve paid for a wing.”
His laughter swells, then fades as he tries to suppress a cough. “Good God, Marcus,” he says. “I can’t believe you didn’t know about the passage.”
I curl my fingers into my palm while he remains amused, as if this is a harmless oversight. It isn’t funny. But it also isn’t his fault.
Theo isn’t demonstrative. He never has been. If someone had swapped me out for another kid back then, he wouldn’t have noticed. Whatever instinct fathers are supposed to have, he never developed it.
Now he’s frail, his hands shake, and his memory wanders. He wouldn’t recognize me in a crowd on his best day. Expecting him to question someone posing as me would be optimistic.
And yet…
“Do I have a sibling?” I ask.
He turns his head slowly. “No.”
“Think again.”
“No,” he repeats.
“Who’s my mother?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
The response comes faster than his thoughts usually move.
“Don’t do that,” I say. “Tell me the truth.”
“We weren’t enough?” he says. “Maybe I screwed up. But Adriana loved you like her own.”
Contentious. Adriana was…adequate. Present. Kinder than him, certainly. But love is a generous interpretation.
“I have the right to know, Theo.”
He looks past me, as if I’ve already been dismissed. “Go away.”
“Is she still alive? My birth mother?”
His eyes snap back to mine. “I said go away.”
The fury on his face stops me cold. It’s entirely present in a way he hasn’t been for most of this conversation.
That’s how I know.
He’s lying.
But I don’t press it. I never needed to. I’ve known it for as long as I’ve been capable of thinking for myself. Something has always been off. I just chose not to look at it.
Instead, I focused on what I decided mattered more. How to make money, how to accumulate leverage, and how to read men by the way they drank—bourbon or rye, sweetness or bite, indulgence or edge—and what that told me about what they wanted to be.
I learned those distinctions early. My first drink was at twelve, for fuck’s sake. I could tell you the difference between control and excess before I knew how to ask why no one came looking for me. That was the trade I made.
Outside, the air feels inadequate. I rake a hand through my hair. I could call Liam. I said I would. But this isn’t something I can say out loud yet, not without tearing it open further.
I get in the car and pull away, but I don’t make it far. The brake jolts me to a stop.
I look back at the house and at the door where my mother supposedly left me when I was four, where I was set down and forgotten because one leg didn’t form the way it should have.
I don’t fucking care about my mother. I’ve got no urge to reconnect, nor a burning need for answers. What I want is the son of a bitch who tried to burn The Velvet Trap—and Iris with it.
My fists come down on the steering wheel.
I’ve been lying to myself. All this time, I convinced myself that everything was enough, that what I didn’t have was never relevant.
Until someone said otherwise.
Iris Vaughn.
I search her name on my phone again. I’ve done it more times than I care to admit since that game ended. It never yields anything new, just her social media accounts showing old posts from when she was still at Macy’s, talking about jewelry design. Never photos of herself. Never anything current.
Then there’s Ivy, the artist.
Still unrepresented. No major gallery attached.
I could make a call. LeBlanc would take it.
Rhodes, too, the one every artist, established or desperate, wants on their side.
I could open a door for her without effort.
But I don’t. I won’t take that from her.
She has to earn it. That’s the line I draw, and the only one I’m certain about.
Which raises another problem.
If I care enough to protect her work, maybe I should do the decent thing and ask her out properly. As Marcus. No masks. No rules. Just conversation and normality.
But the idea collapses almost immediately because that would be a different kind of mess, one I don’t trust myself to manage.
Most of the photos of Ivy are years old. She was eighteen when she created Crimson Reverie.
I pause on one image from that auction. She’s standing beside LeBlanc, her gallery boss.
Keller, the critic, is on the other end.
Next to him is Reggie Nygaard, who I now know is her roommate and, I bet, her best friend too, if they go back this far.
And on her other side, his arm slung around her shoulders, is a man I don’t recognize.
I don’t know his name. He looks like the kind of man who eats pussy for breakfast, a different one every morning. I hope they’re no longer together. According to what I can find, they aren’t, and he’s disappeared from her circle. That’s good enough.
She looks young in the photo, and serious too. It’s hard to reconcile her with the woman who spoke calmly about the space between sex and love, and accused me of having an intimacy problem.
I don’t.
But I might have a problem with love.