Chapter 1
MADELINE RHODES
My mom used to tell me when I was little that the monster under my bed wasn’t real. But that was a lie.
Because I’m one of those monsters.
But she doesn’t know that. Not yet.
Today, I killed one of them.
He raped, murdered, and buried the bodies of his victims like rotting secrets.
And I did the same to him — well, almost.
I didn’t rape him. He wasn’t my type.
Instead, I did something funnier. I cut his dick off. He cried like a baby.
After he was dead, I fed his body to the pigs. You know what they say — pigs eat everything.
It’s just one of the many ways I get rid of the bodies.
All my life, people have called me nuts. Unhinged. Deranged.
A lunatic. A psycho. If only they knew how my mind really works… they’d be terrified.
The only person who understands me is my father. But that’s only because he’s a monster too.
Right now, he’s screaming at me from across his office, just because I killed another monster like us. One of the evil ones. The kind that preys on people like cattle.
He’s being dramatic, as usual.
“What were you thinking?” he snaps, running his hands through his hair in frustration.
“I killed another monster,” I say calmly. “Just like you taught me.”
He exhales slowly, trying to steady himself.
Then he leans back in his chair and fixes his eyes on me.
“I did teach you that. But that doesn’t mean you get to be the last person seen with him — not with a hundred witnesses who could testify.”
Okay, fine. He’s got a point.
The little bastard was never alone. It was now or never — so I chose now.
“Then make him disappear, Dad. Like you always do.” Every time I messed up, he fixed it. Always.
Why would this time be any different?
“This time, I can’t, Madeline.” His voice sounds… defeated.
No.
This can’t be happening.
My dad always fixes things.
I can’t get caught — I’m only eighteen. I have plans. I’m supposed to go to Oxford. To take over the family business. To work side by side with him. This can’t be how it ends.
Panic starts to creep in. My chest tightens. My thoughts spiral.
My father sees it — the shift in my breathing, the shake in my hands — and steps in to calm me, the way he always has.
“I’m sending you away, darling,” he says, voice firm but distant, like the words are coming from the end of a long tunnel. “You’re going to a small town. A quiet place. You’ll enroll in a college there as a scholarship student. You’ll act normal. Invisible. Low profile.”
Invisible?
Is he serious?
He wants me to give up my place at Oxford for some no-name college in a backwater town?
Like hell he does.
“You can’t do this to me, Dad!” I yell, raising my voice for the first time. I wave my hands around the room, motioning to everything I’d be leaving behind. “You can’t send me off to mingle with those people, pretend I’m one of them, and expect me to walk away from all this!”
He gives me a look. The kind of look that doesn’t invite argument.
A sentence passed.
“You won’t be mingling with ‘those people,’” he replies coldly.
“It’s a college for rich kids. The kind of place where wealthy families hide their children from the spotlight. You’ll go in as a scholarship student. Not as the daughter of the president of Rhodes Enterprises.”His voice is stone.
So is my fate.
“Go pack. You leave tomorrow.”
I leave his office in silence, no longer shouting. Just burning.
Resigned, I head upstairs to pack a few things. Nothing flashy. No logos. No designer prints.
No one would believe a scholarship student wore thousand-dollar jackets.
I throw in underwear, shirts, pants, jackets, shoes — basic things a normal girl might need. Except I’m not normal.
My fingers brush over the velvet case hidden in my closet.
My private knife collection.
Each blade perfectly balanced. Beautiful. Deadly.
I wrap them tightly and bury them in my second suitcase, under layers of clothes. In my backpack I toss my laptop, a few notebooks, and my pills — the ones that help me sleep.
Our house, from the outside, looks like a dream. Sprawling, sunlit, serene. The kind of place where champagne bubbles in crystal flutes, and marble floors reflect nothing but luxury.
Four lavish bedrooms. A pristine garden trimmed to geometric perfection. A pool so still it looks painted on the ground.
But beneath all that…
Beneath the stone and silence…
There’s a room the blueprints don’t show. It’s not a wine cellar. Not a panic room.
It’s a space carved into the basement like a secret too dark to confess.
It was built for pain. Not for the innocent.
Only for monsters.
Or at least, the kind my father and I choose to judge.
I finish packing and head to the shower.
No dinner tonight. I’m far too angry to sit across from the man who just exiled me.
His only child — and he sends me away with a slap on the ass and barely enough cash for books.
The water scalds my skin, but I don’t mind. It quiets the thoughts — for a little while.
Afterward, I catch my reflection in the mirror. Red hair clings to my neck, dripping in wet curls. My blue eyes stare back, empty and cold.
I am my father’s mirror. Reddish hair. Porcelain skin.
A mind cracked open like a porcelain doll.
The madness comes from him — the chaos, the logic of killing.
The eyes… those came from my mother. They’re the only soft thing about me.
I dry my hair slowly, untangling each knot like a ritual.
Then I braid it, tight and neat.
Just before bed, I reach for my purse — the one I left lying on the mattress — and pull out the napkin-wrapped trophy from earlier.
An eye.
A pale gray one.
Still perfect, even in death. I walk to my trophy closet,
open the door with reverence, and place the eye in one of the many jars, filled with preserving liquid.
I stare at it for a moment. Admiring it.
The first time I saw that eye, I knew it had to be mine.
I take a step back and admire the collection inside the closet.
Not as vast as my father’s — but enough to speak volumes.
Each jar holds a memory.
A story.
A sin punished.
I still remember the first eye I ever took. The beginning of it all.
I was fifteen. But the urge had lived in me longer than that.
A quiet hum under my skin. Like hunger.
My father knew. So, he took me hunting.
He didn’t say it out loud — not at first.
He just looked at me one morning, handed me gloves, and said, “It’s time.”
We followed the man for days. My first mark.
The moment I saw him, I knew — he was rotten inside.
His hazel eyes gave it away. Too restless. Too cold.
He fit the profile. He was guilty. And we would make him confess. We drugged him. Dragged him into the basement — our chamber of judgment.
And then came the music.
The begging. The sobbing. The screams. He confessed to everything. Every little horror he’d done. And when it was over, Dad handed me the scalpel.
“Take your trophy,” he said.
So I did.
I reached into his skull, and plucked out the hazel eye that had betrayed him. The eye that had screamed guilt from the moment I saw it.
It still sits in the jar — front row.
My first kill.
The beginning of who I am.
I place the jar with the hazel eye back on the shelf, close the closet door, and slip into bed.
I grab the small white pill resting on my nightstand, swallow it dry. It buys me seven hours of silence — if I’m lucky.
The ceiling blurs as my eyes grow heavy, but my thoughts remain sharp. Sharp like the blades buried in my suitcase. Like the hunger buried in my chest.
Tomorrow, I’ll be gone. Shipped off to a town no one’s heard of.
To a school full of spoiled brats pretending to be normal. I’ll play along.
Play the part of the shy scholarship girl with average grades and a tragic backstory.
But inside…
Inside I’ll be watching.
Measuring. Judging.
Because if Dad won’t let me take a life — if I have to put my knife down — then I’ll use something far more powerful: Chaos.
I’ll tear them apart from the inside.
Expose every secret.
Twist every friendship.
Crack every mask.
And when they break?
I’ll be there.
Smiling.
Because I don’t need to kill them to ruin them.
I just need to let them destroy each other.
My very own little freak show.
And I’ll be front row.
