Page 25 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

“Dirty, yes. Tricks?” He chuckles, low and promising. “Come on. I gave you exactly what you wanted.”

My dismissive scoff comes out more like a whimper.

“Can I confess something about that night?” he asks, as if he didn’t just hear my needy little whine. “Best sex of my life.”

I blink. “But you didn’t come.”

“Best sex of my life,” he repeats.

The growled words scramble my brain so much that I almost forget to use my lower-register voice when I speak. “It’s my turn this time.”

He props his shoulder against the armoire, keeping me in his line of sight. “To come your brains out in a stranger’s house? It’s actually my turn, but I’m not sure we should do that again.”

“No! I mean, yes.” Good thing I’m in a mask or he’d see the red flush staining my cheeks. “I mean, I agree we shouldn’t do that again. But it’s my turn to do the… thing.”

“The thing?” His eyes, the only part of him visible in his vigilante gear, widen in amusement. “Use your big-girl words, Morticia.”

I sigh. “It’s my turn to kill the person we’re both here to kill, Gomez.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.” I roll myself up into a cross-legged position. “Before you wandered in here to see what I was up to, I checked out Navarro’s computer. And what I saw…”

I swallow hard. If I want to convince Gomez that this is my rightful kill, I’m going to have to actually engage with it.

I close my eyes and force it out.

“He considers women subhuman,” I say tightly. “And from what I saw, a lot of men in this city agree with him. He’s…”

I suck in a deep breath to steady myself. I thought I was immune to the worst things humans could do to each other, but nothing could’ve prepared me for how much these men hate me. How much they hate all of us.

“Navarro’s big into the Ancient Greeks. He even runs a fucked-up forum called the Philosopher Kings.”

“Like from Plato’s Republic?”

When I tilt my head in a “care to share” motion, he holds up his hands. “I know that from grad school, not whatever this forum is.”

I pack that little detail away to study later. Right now, I need to get the rest of this out.

“The guys on the forum are all about Socrates getting canceled by the mob—a.k.a. woke, childless cat ladies—and being martyred for having the intellectual courage to stick by his masculine ideas in the face of social pressures.”

“Yeahhhh, that’s a pretty fundamental misreading of Socrates,” he says. “And Plato. And I’m guessing they’re no better on Aristotle.”

“Ya think?” I snort before sobering again. “The forum’s all local men, all anonymous. Super locked down and full of all kinds of helpful advice. How to drug a woman’s drink without her noticing. Where to place hidden cameras—and a whole forum section for men to share the videos they take. Which judges are more likely to toss out domestic violence cases. And coercion techniques. So many coercion techniques to use on us ‘soft-brained bitches.’” I wave my fingers in furious air quotes.

My eyes burn, and my throat is tight. I survived scrolling through the filth by going somewhere else in my head while I downloaded the files we need, but I’m losing the fight to set aside the casual, jokey references to gaslighting and violence, sexual assault and murders.

“Morticia,” Gomez murmurs, reaching for me. But he freezes when I give a sharp shake of my head. Rage has me coiled tight and trembling, and I need space to get through the rest of it now that I’ve opened the door.

“There’s also a spreadsheet of women’s names, addresses, workplaces, even security codes to their houses.” I squeeze my hands together to stop their shaking. “All local, and lots with ages and physical descriptions.”

Gomez’s eyes snap to mine, glittering in the low light. “Like a sick dating site, but none of the women know they’re on it. And filming them to upload and share? Fucking disgusting.”

I give a jerky nod, pathetically grateful to see him so upset by this. But after what I saw tonight, the bar is on the fucking floor.

“My guess is once we start digging into the list, we’ll find more than one of those women in police reports or in my own—” I slam my mouth shut before I mention the reports I write for my actual job. “Let’s just say I know far too many women who’ve been hurt or killed by men.”

“Motherfuckers.” Gomez’s guttural voice barely sounds human. “How do we access the forum?”