To All the Men I’ve Killed Before

Prologue

Undisclosed location, Los Angeles, California

They all look the same in this moment.

Men.

When they’re about to die.

I’m not talking about the blood, or the sweat that gathers on their upper lip. I’m not even talking about the smell they make when they’re about to meet their maker.

It’s the expression.

That slow, creeping recognition that their strength, their size, their privilege of simply being born a man suddenly mean nothing.

The moment they realise they’re on the ground.

At my feet.

And it’s all about to be over.

He blinks up at me, his body jerking with fast, shallow breaths.

I almost want to tell him to take his time with them, they’re some of his very last ones.

He should be savouring his oxygen. But he’s too busy fighting against the zip ties, straining his wrists against them even though it’s so obviously futile.

They always do this too.

Hope that some last burst of violence will get them out of their restraints so then they can overpower me.

But there’s something different this time.

He’s not just facing one of us.

He’s facing two.

My sister steps into his eyeline and I see the moment he registers her. His pupils dilate in fear.

‘You,’ he says.

‘Yes,’ she says, sweetly. ‘Me.’

His Adam’s apple bobs as he tries to swallow down his panic. But he doesn’t say anything else. I crouch beside him, letting the knife sparkle in the light of the single naked bulb.

‘Any last words?’ I say.

Still nothing.

But he looks up at me now, his eyes pleading with me.

‘What is it?’ I say. ‘You didn’t seriously think I was going to let you off the hook because we bonded a bit, did you? As if that makes up for what you’ve done. It was always going to end like this.’

His eyes flicker now, a spark of panic.

Good.

And now … now it’s showtime.

As they say in Hollywood, action.