Chapter 19
The walk to The Midnight Menagerie is a fucking nightmare of silence.
Every few steps, I whip my head around, scanning the oppressive shadows of the alleyways, half-expecting to see that towering, predatory silhouette looming behind me.
But there’s nothing. For the first time since he crawled into my life, I don't feel his gaze boring into the back of my neck. It’s unnerving.
The sky is a void, a heavy shroud of charcoal clouds with no moon to light the way, no stars in the sky, leaving me to navigate by the flickering, sickly yellow glow of the streetlamps.
When I reach the carnival, the atmosphere is thick with the scent of ozone and expensive perfume.
The common areas are bustling, a surreal blend of gothic whimsy and dread, but still, he isn't there. He isn't stalking me through the crowds or whispering in the wind. It’s like he’s vanished, and the lack of his presence feels like a physical ache, a void where my terror usually sits.
I reach into my coat and pull out the necklace.
The metal is cold against my palm, a key to a world I never asked to enter.
I use it to slip past the guards and into the VIP section, where a party for the gothic elite is in full swing.
The air is saturated with the smell of incense and old money.
I scan the room, searching for those piercing eyes, but I don't stop for anyone.
I don't care about the masked aristocrats or the decadent displays of wealth. I have a purpose.
I bypass the party entirely, my boots clicking sharply against the marble as I head upstairs.
No one stops me; it’s as if the house itself knows I belong here, or perhaps they simply fear the man whose domain I’m invading.
I climb the stairs until I reach the heavy oak door of his office.
I stop for a heartbeat, my breath hitching in my throat, before I raise my hand and knock.
"Come in, my cracked doll," his voice drifts through the wood, smooth as velvet and just as suffocating.
I push the door open and slide it shut behind me, the click of the lock echoing in the silence.
Rhys is sitting behind his desk, watching me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.
The room is bathed in a dim, moody amber light, cast by a few scattered lamps that leave the corners in deep shadow.
Behind him, the floor-to-ceiling windows offer a panoramic view of the night, but there is no moon or stars—only a vast, oppressive blackness that makes the glass look like a mirror, reflecting the interior of the room back at us.
I make a note to not look back at it completely.
"I didn't expect you to knock," he says, his voice a low purr.
"And I didn't expect you not to stalk me all the way here," I snap back, though my voice trembles. "Where the fuck were you?"
He leans back in his chair, a slow, predatory smirk playing on his lips. "I was simply waiting for your arrival, Ophelia. I knew the truth would eventually drive you back to me." He gestures lazily toward his lap, his eyes darkening. "Come here. Sit on my cock. I've missed you."
I ignore him. I don't move toward his lap; instead, I march to the front of the desk and plant my hands firmly on the polished wood, leaning in. As I do, my gaze drifts to the center of the room.
The corkboard.
It’s massive, towering over me like some twisted monument to obsession.
It’s covered edge to edge in photographs—hundreds of them.
Me. Sleeping, walking, crying. Red strings crisscross the board in a dense, deliberate web, tying one image to another, mapping out my life in a way that makes my stomach churn. It’s a map of my own captivity.
I look down at the desk, refusing to meet his eyes.
"I was at the police station this afternoon," I whisper, the words tasting like ash.
"They told me my sisters' case went cold.
That there were no arrests." I feel a surge of nausea.
"My father... he told me the man who killed them got caught. He told me he was in jail."
Rhys leans forward, and I feel the shift in the air. The playfulness vanishes, replaced by a cold, clinical seriousness. "What do you remember, Ophelia? Exactly. Tell me everything."
And I do. I don't even know why I'm telling him. He’s a stalker, a man who treats my trauma like a fucking puzzle, but the words just pour out of me.
I tell him about the screams, the smell of iron, the way the house felt like it was breathing.
I tell him everything I can recall from that shattered night.
"And the man?" he asks, his voice barely a whisper. "The one who butchered them. What do you remember of him?"
"I can't..." I choke back a sob. "I can't remember his face. It’s just a blur of shadow and malice. But I remember the knife. A heavy, wide-bladed butcher’s knife that caught the dim light of the living room."
"I know," he says simply.
I snap my head up. "How the fuck do you know that?"
"I just knew," he replies, his eyes locking onto mine. "Remember what I told you, Ophelia? That something happened the night Cordelia and Rosalind died. Something you've spent seven years forgetting."
I look up at the ceiling and let out a long, shaky sigh. "Fuck the police and their motherfucking badges, right? Or was that not your motto when you pinched their files?"
I hear the creak of his chair as he stands.
He crosses the room in a few strides, his presence suddenly overwhelming as he wraps his arms around me from behind, pulling my back against his chest. "I love how smart you are," he murmurs against my ear, his breath hot.
"I took them because I wanted to find the truth about you.
The police let the case go cold because they were lazy and incompetent. They weren't helping you."
He rotates me around, forcing me to face the corkboard. He doesn't just show me the photos now; he points to the documents pinned among them, the ones I had missed during my previous panic attack.
"Look closely, Ophelia. Look at the things that didn't add up."
He points to a report. "The tragedy was known, yes. But there were no traces of anyone entering or leaving the toy shop or the house. No forced entry, no witnesses to a stranger. The only person anyone saw entering the shop that night was Thomas."
My heart skips a beat. "My father?"
"The murder weapon was never found," Rhys continues, his voice cold and rhythmic.
"And with how brutally the girls were stabbed, the killer would have been drenched.
Blood would have been on their shoes, leaving a trail of prints across the shop and down the street.
But the only blood-covered shoes found? They belonged to your father, as he walked to the landline in the toy shop to call the police.
The other prints went to the attic where they didn't find any suspect hiding.
And prints did show the person leaving the attic so it is assumed he went there and then came back to the living room because the rest of the bloody show prints only belonged to your father. "
I feel the world tilting. "No... he couldn't..."
"And then there's this," Rhys says, pointing to a clinical, typed report. "The bodies of Cordelia and Rosalind were stolen from the mortuary right after the autopsy, their dresses and shoes along with them."
"But... Papa told me he buried them next to Mother!" I cry out, my voice cracking.
Rhys taps the paper with a long finger. "Right here, Ophelia. The official police report. Bodies missing from the morgue. Your father was a suspect for a while, of course, but the police had no concrete proof to arrest him. No weapon, no confession. Just a grieving father with bloody shoes.”
I stare at him, not in the eye, my chest heaving, the air in the room suddenly feeling too thin to breathe. I shake my head, a sharp, jagged movement.
"You're talking absolute bollocks, Rhys!
" I snap, my voice cracking. "My Papa had blood on his shoes because he fucking saved me!
Like I told you, he came in, grabbed me out of that bloody carnage, and dragged me downstairs to the toy shop to call the police.
The entire floor was a fucking lake of blood—of course his shoes were covered in it! He stepped in it to get to me!"
Rhys doesn't flinch. He doesn't even blink. He just looks at me with that infuriating, knowing expression, his eyes tracking the frantic movement of my pupils. He reaches out, sliding another folder across the desk toward me with a slow, deliberate motion.
"Is that the story he fed you, Ophelia? The brave father rushing in to rescue his only remaining daughter?" He lets out a low, mocking chuckle that sends a shiver straight down my spine. "Look at the forensics, you silly beautiful girl. Look at the splatter patterns."
I glare at the papers, the ink blurring before my eyes. "Fuck your forensics! He's my father!"
"He's a man who knows how to play the victim," Rhys counters, his voice dropping an octave, becoming a dangerous purr.
"The blood on his shoes wasn't just 'stepping in it.' The patterns suggest he was standing over them. Stationary. Watching. And the fact that the bodies vanished from the morgue? That’s not a police blunder, love. That’s a cleanup operation.
Someone came to make sure those corpses never saw a courtroom or a proper grave. "
"You're fucking mental," I hiss, stepping back from the desk. "You've just spent days stalking me, pinning my photos to a wall like some twisted prick, and now you expect me to believe my Papa is a fucking butcher? You're just trying to get inside my head!"