Page 49 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

Looks like Marcus Navarro got a head start on removing himself from the population tonight.

“Hoo boy.” I saunter over to the china cabinet and give a low whistle. “You’re in a real predicament, aren’t you?”

“H-hel… help,” pleads the drunk asshole, his words garbled by the shard of glass jutting out just below his right cheekbone.

“Really? Not an ounce of surprise about the masked woman appearing in your home?” I circle behind him to figure out what the hell happened. Everything from his chin down is soaked in blood, but none of it has pooled on the floor yet, which means I won’t leave bloody footprints as I investigate.

Navarro’s feet are on the ground, but the upper half of his body is folded over the lower edge of the glass-front cabinet door that once protected his collection of bongs. Based on the lacerations to his forehead, nose, and cheeks, I’m guessing he tripped—a glance down confirms that, yep, his left shoelace is untied—and fell through the glass face-first. The bottom of the shard poking through his cheek is still lodged in the doorframe.

“C-c-ca—” He coughs, and it turns into a wet gurgle. “Call n-nine one…”

His eyes dart around the room, but he’s not able to look down, which means he can’t see what’s going to kill him. I can, though. The pink froth bubbling around the glass dagger embedded in his chest tells me his lung is punctured, and he’ll drown in his own blood within minutes.

It’s a masterpiece. I wish I could stage an “accident” this horrific. And since he’s not going to survive the night and I’ve jammed all his devices, I indulge myself and pull off my mask so I can enjoy the carnage fully. If I leave behind a stray hair follicle or two, well, good thing I’ll be back in an official capacity tomorrow, shedding hair all over the place.

“Oh, I’m not here to help, Marcus,” I say brightly.

His eyes roll wildly until they settle on me.

“H-hey. I know you,” he slurs.

“Yeah, you do. I’m the low-value female who’s here to kill you.” His choppy breathing picks up as I lean in to whisper in his ear. “Turns out, we are all castrating bitches.”

He turns his head to look at me fully, and the motion widens the existing wound on his cheek, slicing the skin open all the way to his ear. But he’s so far gone he doesn’t notice the fresh rivulet of blood dribbling down his chin.

“No.” He struggles to focus his eyes. “I know you.”

“You don’t.” My voice turns hard. “Now tell me the names of the other Philosopher Kings. What cops are you working with? Who pulled strings to get those three rape charges thrown out last year?”

“W-who’s… who…”

The smell of urine fills the room as his body starts to let go.

“Come on,” I say a little desperately as my opportunity for answers slips away. “Do me this little favor before your one-way ticket to hell. One name.”

Marcus Navarro opens his mouth and laughs in my face. The movement tears the rest of his cheek open, and I watch in fascination as the flap of skin and muscle slowly flops forward to land wetly against his jaw.

“I k-know… y…” He coughs again. “You… s-slut.”

Although he’s still breathing, it’s fast, shallow, and wet-sounding, and his eyes are starting to dull. His dumb ass is dying without giving me the chance to extract a single name. In a last-ditch effort to get something useful out of him, I grab the compliance spray and hit him in the face with it, knowing it’s too late for the chemicals to work yet too frustrated not to try.

But it’s clear he’s done talking forever.

“You’re as useless dead as you were alive,” I snarl.

He’s not dead yet though, which means I can punish him a little more. And I know exactly how to do it. One detail has lived in my heart since Hugo and I talked about Stiletto Guy all those weeks ago, so I find the longest shard of glass on the floor and wrap it in the extra gloves in my backpack. Next, I study Navarro’s trapped torso and splayed legs, trying to calculate the precise angle the glass would’ve had to travel and the amount of force it would’ve taken to penetrate both clothes and skin.

Then I decide, eh, fuck it. I’m the one who’ll be investigating this.

Holding the makeshift dagger carefully, I lift my arm and plunge six inches of jagged glass into Marcus Navarro’s junk.

“Your body,” I whisper into his ear. “My choice.”

And oh, look at that. I’m the one who killed him after all. The scrotal trauma caused a full-body spasm, and based on the dark-red, deoxygenated blood now flowing from his chest wound, the glass inside him nicked his pulmonary artery. His head falls with a clunk onto the one glass shelf that somehow remained intact in his fall, his eyes open and staring and his lips pressed against the big purple dildo bong.

“Well, okay,” I say to the silent room. “I guess that’s sorted.”

I slip out of the dining room and vanish into the night.