Page 73 of To All the Men I’ve Killed Before

I slide out from underneath the weight of a collapsed Richard Stone. He makes an agonised groan, part dying animal, part sexually frustrated male.

‘Antoinette! I literally have a knife in my pocket. I wasn’t in danger!’

‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ She has the decency to sound remorseful now at least. ‘I couldn’t help it! It was like instinct or something. I like fully dissociated!’

We stare at Richard Stone, who is clawing at the ice pick sticking out of his neck.

‘You don’t want to pull it out,’ I tell him. ‘It’s literally keeping you alive at the moment.’

He howls again, which makes another jet of blood spurt out of the hole in his throat.

For fuck’s sake.

41

Richard Stone’s mansion, The Bird Streets, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles

He’s staring at us, his stupid brain unable to properly fathom what’s happening to him.

That he’s bleeding out over his own Poltrona Frau sofa.

That he’s not the predator.

We are.

He’s unable to say anything apart from wet gurgles but his eyes are asking that all-important question, why?

I’m more than happy to fill him in on that.

‘Did you think you were going to get away with it forever?’ I ask him as he weakly clutches at his neck. ‘We know exactly what you’ve been doing. Why you get young women to your home. So I’ll ask you again. Did you think you were going to get away with it forever?’

He still doesn’t answer, mostly because he can’t, but I’m not accepting that. I kick him in the groin and he slides off the couch and onto the floor.

‘That’s becoming like your signature move, Kits,’ Antoinette says as she delivers her own blow to his most sensitive parts.

I suppose it is.

I crouch down so my eyes are level with Richard Stone’s and I slowly and excruciatingly pull the ice pick out of his neck. It glides through his jugular like it’s butter. And then the damn bursts. Blood spurts hard and fast from the now-open wound, gushing out like it’s escaping. The redness of the blood still fascinates me even after all this time and … hmm, not quite sure how many kills it is now. The brightness surprises me, almost like I expect something else to run through his veins. Something black and toxic, like oil.

It’s actually a shame that I can’t take my time with this one. The thought of torturing him and making him suffer. The idea of killing him slowly, more of a death-by-a-thousand-cuts kind of approach. I wish I could savour this kill and make him fully regret every single one of his crimes.

But time is something we don’t have on our side right now.

He gurgles something but it’s too late for final words.

He had his chance.

When Richard Stone is dead, I look around at the blood-soaked living area.

Fuck.

How are we going to clean this up?

Usually the post-murder clean-up is one of the things I like most of all. There’s something almost meditative about it, about the mental checklist where I can mark off everything I need to do. The cleaning, the disposal of anything I’ve touched, the routine to it is comforting. But it soon becomes clear that it’s cleaning up alone that has always made it so meditative. It’s not the same almost spiritual experience with a twenty-year-old who was raised by YouTube.

‘Get ready with us as we clean up a murder scene,’ Antoinette chirps into her phone. She sees me watching her and winks.

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ I say, lunging for the phone.