Page 57 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

“You’re on the revenge-porn server.” She says it fast, pushing it out, then her voice breaks. “Greg… he used the videos as a kind of tutorial so other guys could make and upload their own⁠—”

If she says anything else, it’s lost in the pounding of blood in my ears.

Greg. Greg recorded me. Shared it with strangers.

A man I trusted. A man I loved.

Greg put me on his disgusting forum, and I had no idea.

I slide down the fence until my ass hits the ground.

“Can you see my scars?”

The question slips out unbidden, interrupting Fi’s flow of words. She falls silent, and my hand drifts up to grip my right shoulder, where the long-healed skin grafts suddenly feel too tight. Those shiny pink flags have been unfurled in front of every sad little Philosopher King who hates me without knowing me, who’d happily pick apart my body, my flaws, my very right to exist, all without my knowledge or consent.

“I’m so sorry, love,” she says. “If it helps, your tattoo looks badass.”

I try to laugh, but it sounds more like a choked sob. “Good. That’s why I got it.”

My nineteen-year-old self had flipped for the idea of surrounding the scars with the image of a phoenix, flaming wings and all. A decade later, my twenty-nine-year-old self is still grateful for that teenager’s idea.

My head falls back against the fence, my eyes fixing on the nighttime sky. No stars tonight, only clouds.

“I broke up with him because he was too nice,” I say in a distant voice. “I didn’t want…”

I trail off because Fi knows all of this already. Greg believes in due process and law and order, while I believe in DIY justice and letting the punishment fit the crime, including the time I engineered an “accident” that sent a serial drunk driver into a concrete overpass. Greg was so upset about his missed chance at a guilty verdict that it shone a spotlight on our irreconcilable differences.

More than that, though, there’s a good chance I’ll get caught someday, and I didn’t want Greg to become tabloid fodder for being the assistant state’s attorney in love with a serial killer. I broke my own heart to protect him.

The irony makes me laugh and laugh and laugh, but when I lift my hands to my face, my fingers come away wet.

“Rue? Are you okay?” Fi’s distant voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts, and I realize I’ve dropped my phone.

“Shit,” I mutter, scooping it up and scrubbing away the tears with the edge of the blanket. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

Greg was smart and fun and good at sex. Couldn’t load a dishwasher to save his life and relied on me for things like changing the smoke detector batteries and booking his tee times for golf with his buddies, all of which became major annoyances by the end. But he loved me. He respected me.

He always acted like he loved and respected me, anyway.

“I knew I shouldn’t just spring this on you,” Fi says miserably. “Especially when you’re trapped there with Dr. Bore.”

“His name is Hugo,” I snap. “And he’s not the problem.”

I’m the problem. How did I not know? How did Greg hide all of this from me? Just like Mom never saw any warning signs in the man who burned her alive and almost killed me and Felicity in the process, am I that oblivious when something’s not written down in a police report and confirmed by Fi’s research?

I pull my legs into my chest and drop my forehead to my knees. As I do, I notice I’m sitting next to several clusters of ferny herbs growing near Hugo’s rosebushes. It’s too dark to see what color they are, but they smell sharp, not floral. I lean closer and inhale, enjoying the heavy, almost pungent odor of the rounded leaves.

“Greg belongs on our list,” I say quietly, reaching out to trace my finger over the curved tip of the closest plant.

“Yes.” She doesn’t even hesitate.

Greg Whitfield has to die. That new mission slots into place over the churning chasm in the center of my chest.

“Send me everything you’ve got.”

“Sweetie, I don’t th⁠—”

“Send it.”