Page 125 of To All the Men I’ve Killed Before

I narrow my eyes at him. ‘So bad that, even though you did all that to her, you packed up and fled the country. Yeah. That screams deep shame and remorse.’

‘I panicked,’ he says. ‘Let me go and I’ll go back to the UK. I’ll turn myself in.’

‘You’re a coward,’ Antoinette hisses as she stalks over to him and kicks him in his side. He lets out a howl of pain.

‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘I’m a horrible coward. But I promise you that I will make this right. I’ll get on a flight today if you let me. I’ll go right to the police and tell them everything I did to Tor. I deserve to be punished. I do. But I don’t deserve to die.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong though, Aidan,’ I tell him. ‘Even if you’re actually telling the truth and you go back to London and turn yourself in, which I highly doubt, you know as well as I do that your prison time would be short, if at all. I’m guessing this would be your first offence as you were a practising psychotherapist and allowed to work with people. Your first offence on record, that is, because I’m guessing this wasn’t the first time you’ve been violent to a woman?’

‘It was!’ he protests. ‘I’ve never hurt anyone before.’

‘I find it very hard to believe, Aidan, that you went from being a peaceful, nonviolent man to beating a woman half to death.’

‘I was under a lot of stress. And you don’t know what it was like. You weren’t there. Tor provoked me.’

I glare at him and Antoinette gives him another kick.

‘Anyway, the point is that a judge could be lenient with you. First offence, a respected member of society up to this point. You’d do maybe four or five years in prison. Maybe none at all. Maybe you’d just be handed some community service and told to do a fucking anger-management course.’

‘The prisons are horribly full,’ Antoinette says. ‘So it’s possible he wouldn’t even get a custodial sentence.’

‘See,’ I say to Aidan. ‘Do you think that’s fair? Do you think it would be fair on Tor to know that you were still out on the streets after what you did to her?’

‘I wouldn’t go near her, I swear to you. I’d move away.’

I pretend to think about this for a moment. ‘But then how would I keep an eye on you, Aidan? How would I know that you’re not hurting another woman? Only worse this time. Because that’s what happens, isn’t it? When men like you get away with it once. You wouldn’t stop until you killed someone.’

His breaths are coming out in gasps now.

I love it when fear makes men hyperventilate.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I could never.’

‘Sure you could,’ Antoinette says as she squats down so her face is at the same level as his. ‘It’s incredibly easy. Right, Kits?’

‘It really is,’ I agree.

‘And addictive,’ Antoinette says and I nod. ‘It’s actually really hard to stop once you get a taste for it.’

‘So you see,’ I continue, ‘I couldn’t, with a good conscience, let you go.’

He’s almost sobbing now. ‘You can. You can trust me. I’ll never even speak to a woman again. I won’t even look at one. Just please don’t kill me.’

I drop down next to Antoinette and hold his eyes with mine. ‘But I trusted you once already, didn’t I, Aidan?’

I can tell he’s remembering the same moment I am. When I went to see him at his clinic in London. I was concerned when Tor told me she’d fallen for her therapist. I mean, it’s not great, is it? I was convinced he was taking advantage of her. She didn’t even realise how vulnerable she still was after her attack in Mykonos. What sort of a man makes a move on a woman who is entrusting him with her emotional health? The red flags were flapping all over the place. So I paid him a visit. And he convinced me that he had fallen in love with my best friend. Why wouldn’t he? She’s incredible. Turns out Hollywood is the perfect place for Aidan Ward because he’s one hell of an actor. I’ll never not trust my instincts again.

‘I meant every word I said to you that day, Kitty,’ he says now.

‘No,’ I say. ‘You didn’t. Because if you meant even one single word, you never would have done this.’ I take my phone out of my pocket and scroll through to the photos Tor sent me of her injuries. I hold them in front of Aidan’s face. He tries to move his head so he’s not looking at them but Antoinette grabs it and holds it still. ‘Look,’ I say. ‘Look what you did to her.’ I scroll through the photos, knowing he’s seeing images of Tor’s broken face, of the deep, angry bruises on her torso, of the drain in her skull removing fluid from her brain. I watch his face as he looks at the pictures. ‘This is the woman you told me you loved. This is what you did to her. And you’re seriously trying to argue that you don’t deserve to die?’

Aidan’s eyes are wet when they meet mine.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says to me.

‘You’re sorry I caught up with you, that’s all.’

‘Anyway,’ Antoinette says in a sing-song voice. ‘Do you remember that list of injuries I read to you?’