Looking back it seemed far too presumptuous of me to assume things would end so languidly. She loved me. I had won. Finally, there was nothing, as there never should have been, keeping us apart. I was a fool to not realize that at the very moment my heart settled in ease, something inexplicable would unfold...Nothing prepared me, not even the faintest of premonitions, for what would happen next.

An hour before the curtain rose for The Magic Flute, I was securing the lock at the gates when I felt a man's presence behind me. I spun around immediately and caught his head in the lasso under my cloak, but as I stared into the startled gaze of those unmistakably curious eyes, I released him and let him stumble backwards a few feet from me.

"I thought you were dead."

"And I never believed for a moment that you were either, Erik," the familiar voice said in flawed French, still with the same compassionate care that irritated and comforted me twenty years ago.

I examined Nadir Khan in the darkness. He looked as though he'd dropped twenty pounds. The creases at the corners of his mouth were now visible, his eyes, a bit more weak in their approach, had crows feet embedded deeply in their corners. Suddenly a wave of guilt overcame me as I realized that his forced progression of age was most likely due to my disservice.

"You've aged, daroga," I said curtly, allowing the sarcasm to veil my unease.

The dark man shrugged his shoulders, "Ah well—you seem taller, my friend. Some things never change."

He was smiling and I found it consequently upsetting. Warmth and morality; these qualities of the chief of police will never cease to infect me with their ethical consciousness—and this was a very bad time for their arrival indeed.

I replaced the lasso into my cloak. "How did you find me?"

"I've been living in Paris for quite a while—but I've heard the rumors about the ghost, Garnier's mysterious fellow architect who he refused to make a decision on a design without," he said rather proudly of his findings, "I didn't want to believe it at first, but it had the markings of your work all over it—the Turkish bath illusion of the Opera Populaire, and the quaint subdued impression of the exterior—But I could not believe it...I had to see for myself. And here you are, my friend," he said with a shake of his head, "The Phantom of the Opera."

I listened to his little revelation grimly and checked the time impatiently. "Yes, very good, detective. Then perhaps you are staying for tonight's performance?"

"No," he replied lightly, "I came to give you something you might find valuable."

I lifted an arched brow in curiosity. "Oh?"

From his breast pocket he produced a slip of paper and held it out to me with a quivering hand. I looked down at the harmless sheet folded into four sections in his palm, and studied Nadir's expression. When I could not decide whether it was one of excitement or fear, I took the slip from him and opened it slowly.

The lantern in my hand fell onto the ground and burst into flames of blackness. I threw the paper aside and advanced towards the Persian with menacing speed. Grabbing him by the white collar of his shirt I slammed him up against the gate in savage rage.

"What is this?" I growled into his unyielding face, "What are you doing?"

He pried his fingers around my fists but I was completely incapable of releasing him. Instead, I pressed him harder into the iron bars as his clenched his teeth in pain.

"Erik—Please!"

I pressed him harder into the metal, and whispered in barely contained madness—"Tell me what you know Nadir, or friendship or not, I swear I will kill you without remorse."

"He is your brother!"

I searched his eyes for a hint of doubt, and when I found none, I dropped him onto his feet and turned from him so he could not see the shaking of my shoulders. The pain dawned on me like morphine, shooting up my left arm, spreading through my veins into my chest and my brain. Except there was no euphoria at the end of the tunnel this time.

Just illogical, unbearable, insurmountable cruelty...

"I don't understand," Daroga said with bewildered terror. "God has given you a brother, is that so maddening?"

I glanced down upon the letter laying face up at me and ran my eyes over the lines that betrayed me with each rolling syllable.

This is what you've always wanted, wasn't it Madeleine? Some normalcy in your life after the state of terror I left you in when I was only nine...How smart of you to send your ordinary child to Paris, not to sing but to admire the girls on stage who do! What horror you must feel if you knew your sons would be fighting for the love of one woman....

Well I forgive you, Madeleine, because you are dead. There's no point for me to hold you to your sins now. I shall leave that to God and his infinite wisdom.

But it does alarm you in your eternal sleep that your imperfect creation has prevailed over this bitter war between light and darkness, doesn't it? Why you said so yourself, that darkness was good for me, don't you remember? It protects me now like the blanket of cashmere around my shoulders ….

Holding my arms together in unbearable ache, I turned back towards Nadir. "God is a sadist, but it is not he who mocks me."

Daroga was silent. A moment later I heard him gather himself together and felt his hand lightly fall on my shoulder. He sighed softly and perhaps shook his head. "You should be grateful for what little family you have left."

There was nothing left in me but the thralls of my cold mechanical laugher that echoed throughout my body in currents of desperation. As I left him alone in the dark, my laughter followed me with the irony of my twisted fate and my new miserable discovery.