Page 13 of To All the Men I’ve Killed Before

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘He doesn’t come across as the most likeable man in the world.’

She stabs angrily at her pasta. ‘He’s precisely the reason why we need to collectively stop telling mid white men that they’re exceptional.’

I nod in agreement.

‘I can’t believe he’s still got a career after everything he was accused of.’ She glowers darkly at her plate of food. ‘He should be in prison, not approaching women in hotel bars. He shouldn’t even be allowed around women at all.’

Ron Wilde’s name came up a lot when all the #MeToo stuff first started kicking off online. Three women accused him of sexual misconduct and it looked like he was cooked. The #RonWildeIsOver party was in full swing. But a year later the cases were dropped due to ‘lack of evidence’. Within months he was back on set and the women had to go into hiding due to online harassment. One of them was even doxxed and had to move states. I learned all this from a gossip magazine I picked up during a keratin treatment. Now Ron Wilde is bigger than ever. A clear example that sexual assault allegations do absolutely zero harm to a man’s career if he’s rich and famous enough.

Antoinette is still murdering her food. ‘We should kill him,’ she hisses at me across the table.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Ron Wilde,’ she says. ‘We should kill him.’

I glare at her and put my finger to my lips. ‘Shhhh!’

She looks around the restaurant but no one is paying any attention to us, too engrossed in their own food, their own conversations, their own lives. ‘No one’s listening, Kits,’ she says.

‘We’re not killing Ron Wilde,’ I say.

‘Why not? He’s literally right here.’

‘Killing an A-list actor in a super famous hotel?’ I shake my head. ‘It’s a terrible idea, Antoinette.’

‘But Kitty,’ she pleads, ‘those terrible things he’s done. And he’s just gotten away with it.’ She leans across the table. ‘We could do it. It’s giving revenge arc.’

‘It’s giving reckless and irresponsible,’ I say.

‘But—’

‘No,’ I cut her off. ‘It’s a terrible idea.’ Not that I wouldn’t love to end him. Because I absolutely would. But this just isn’t the time. Or place. Even the world’s most famous no-tell motel wouldn’t turn a blind eye to the murder of one of Hollywood’s leading men. Sadly.

We finish the rest of our meal in almost silence, Antoinette throwing death glares at Ron Wilde and his entourage.

7

Therapy 4 U, Eagle Rock, Los Angeles

I arrived early for my thirty-minute introductory consultation session with a therapist calling himself Alex Alexander, convinced it was going to be Aidan Ward. I mean, the name even sounds made up. But, after I’d filled in about a thousand forms with fake personal information and was led into the consulting room by a nervous middle-aged woman with a bubble perm, I realised that this person was absolutely not Aidan Ward.

Alex was about thirty years too old, for a start.

And a woman.

Which Antoinette would have known if she’d bothered looking at the Therapy 4 U website instead of just Reddit.

‘I think I’ve made a mistake,’ I’d said when I saw Alex sitting behind her desk, all huge red Hollywood waves and lipstick bleeding into her smoker’s lines.

‘A lot of people feel like that when they first start therapy—’ she glanced at her computer screen, ‘Doris?’

It was the first name that popped into my head.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I really can’t be here.’

I can’t waste my time here when there’s another therapist I need to track down.

‘Sit down, Doris,’ Alex told me. ‘You’ve paid for the session so you might as well make the most of it. Even if you decide not to come back.’