All Chapters of The Killer's Kitten: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

33 Chapters

01 The Jazz Bar

Eight months ago. Los Angeles. A jazz bar tucked into a nameless street downtown.Vincent had just finished a job. His suit sleeves still held their press lines his collar stiff, a neat bourbon on the table in front of him. He sat in the darkest corner, back to the wall. From this position he could see every entrance and exit. Professional instinct. The only posture he'd known for years.He planned to finish his drink and leave. He never lingered. He never needed conversation.But tonight he didn't move.Because of the woman by the window.She was alone. A glass of red wine barely touched. Her fingers tapped absently with the Miles Davis track drifting through the smoke. Her gaze was fixed somewhere far away—not lost, just somewhere else. She wasn't the type who came to bars like this looking for something. She was too bright for it, like a planet that had fallen into the wrong orbit.He'd been watching her for one track. Maybe two. He wasn't counting. Watching people was what he did.

02 Two lies and one truth

Three weeks passed since the night at the jazz bar.gaby didn't wait by the phone. She went to work. She submitted her resignation letter. She had one last conversation with Tom—the kind where neither of them said anything new, but both finally admitted the break wasn't temporary and hadn't been for months. They'd tell their families eventually. For now, the silence between them was heavier than any announcement.She thought about the man from the bar sometimes. Not with longing—with curiosity. The way his body had shifted in that split second outside. No wind-up. No warning. She'd never seen anything like it. And then, right after, he'd stood on the curb holding her napkin like he wasn't sure what hands were for.He was interesting. She'd given him her number. If he used it, he used it. If he didn't—she'd still been right about the quarter-second smile.The call came on a Friday. Past eleven.Vincent had just finished a job. Three days of surveillance, two minutes of action, and then

03 Crème Brûlée

About a week after "Two Lies and One Truth."Vincent sent a message: "There's a photography exhibit. If you're free."When she came downstairs she saw his car—a black BMW, immaculately polished, parked beneath her building like a dormant beast. She got in, running her fingers over the leather stitching. "You make decent money." She said it casually, no prying."Perks of the job," he said. No further explanation. She didn't push.The museum was downtown, a black-and-white documentary photography exhibit. They walked side by side past fragments of lives pinned to white walls, and she noticed the way he looked at the images—not appreciation, but analysis. He could read what a photographer was trying to hide from a single composition choice, from the way shadows fell, like a decoder who saw the entire world as a cipher that needed solving.They stopped in front of a large print: a woman with her back to the camera, standing alone on a balcony, facing a vast gray sea. Her silhouette was cu

04 You Should Leave

About two weeks had passed since the museum night.Neither of them reached out. He told himself he was resetting. She told herself she wasn't going to chase a man who didn't text back. Two different silences, same result.She finished her last week at work. She said goodbye to her colleague at the corner after farewell dinner. She didn't notice the black car parked across the street.Vincent sat in the driver's seat, engine off. He'd told himself he was just passing through before tonight's dangerous job. A dry run before tonight's job—no intention of disturbing her, of knocking on her door, not even of letting her know he was here.Then he saw her laugh goodbye to her colleagues. Saw the wind catch her coat.He put his hand on the key. He meant to turn it.He didn't.He sat in the dark for another minute.Then he opened the door.The knock startled her. She opened the door in her pajamas,"Hi...""Passing by," he said."You've gotten bolder." She leaned against the doorframe."Who pass

05 After that night

She sat up, the blanket slipping to her waist. She stared at the back of his head. "After sex you say this?"He didn't turn around."You pull me out of a parking lot with blood on your hands, kill a men, put me in your car, spend the night in a motel with me—and the first thing you say is ‘you should leave.’" Her voice was steady but barely. "That's what I am to you?""I'm always this way." He fastened his cuffs, picked up his jacket from the chair. "This is what I do. I don't—" He stopped. Whatever he'd been about to say, he swallowed it. He walked to the door. His hand paused on the knob. "You're better off without me.""Don't tell me what I'm better off with." She pulled her shirt from the floor, yanked it over her head. By the time she wrenched it down, he'd already opened the door a crack. "You don't get to decide that. You don't get to—" Her voice cracked. She hated that it cracked. "You don't get to hold me all night and then tell me to leave before the sun is even up."He did

06 What He Said

She went home. Fell onto the bed. Buried her face in the pillow.Everything from last night played like a film that didn't belong to her—the knife, the blood, his body moving in that silent, lightning-fast way she still couldn't understand. She'd knelt at his feet, cleaned the blood off his arm, smoothed the band-aid down with her thumb while he told her he'd had worse. And then he'd pushed her away. Farther than ever before."Why bother." She said it into the pillow. "If he doesn't want to take another step—why keep holding on."She pulled the covers over her head. But her body still remembered. Every touch. The weight of his forehead against her shoulder blade. The way the entire world had gone silent when he'd cupped the back of her neck.She hated herself for remembering.But that wasn't what kept looping in her head. It was what he'd said after.*I'd sooner put a bullet in my own head.*She'd watched his face when he said it. The color had drained from him. Not the controlled pal

07 The Good Man

Saturday. The apartment. Late afternoon light slanted through the curtains they'd picked out together six years ago—back when everything in this room had felt like a promise.He was already there when she arrived. Sitting on the sofa. Not the armchair—the sofa, where they used to curl up under the same blanket. He stood when she walked in. For a moment neither of them spoke."I've been thinking," he said. "About us. About what went wrong.""I know what went wrong.""Then tell me. Because I don't—" He stopped. Started again. "I don't understand. I gave you everything I had. Everything you said you wanted."She looked at him. "You gave me things, Tom. A beautiful apartment. A comfortable life. Jewelry every time I was upset." Her voice was steady, but it cost her. "You just stopped giving me you."He stared at her. "That's not true.""When was the last time you looked at me—really looked at me—the way you used to? Like you

08 The Crack

The days blurred after that. She stopped counting.In the month that followed, Vincent broke every rule he'd made for himself.He drove past her apartment at least a dozen times. Never stopping. Just slowing—enough to see if her light was on. It usually was. She was awake at two in the morning, three, four. So was he. He never knocked.He went to the jazz bar twice. Sat in the corner. Watched the door. She didn't come. The second time he ordered a bourbon and didn't drink it. He sat there asking himself what he was doing. He'd told her to leave. He'd meant it. He still meant it. He also couldn't stop seeing her face everywhere.By the fourth week he accepted the silence. She wasn't coming back. This was what he'd wanted.He told himself it was easier this way. Safer. For both of them. He'd spent thirty-five years learning to be alone. One woman shouldn't undo all of that in a single night. But she had. And now he was the one waiting&mda

09 The Question

　The streets were empty. The city at five in the morning was silent and gray and indifferent. She walked past everything that used to anchor her—the convenience store, the office building where she'd spent years waiting for something to change, the coffee shop where Tom used to meet her after work—and kept walking until she stopped in front of his building. She looked up at his dark windows. She didn't plan this. She didn't decide. She sat down on the step, leaned back against the doorframe, pulled her knees to her chest. The concrete was cold through her coat. She'd lost weight—she felt it now, her hip bones pressing harder against the stone. She couldn't remember her last full meal. She didn't knock. She just sat there, curled against his door, too exhausted to leave and too afraid to stay. Vincent opened the door at five-thirty and found her there. Curled on his doorstep. Face pale in the gray mornin

10 His Wrist in Her Hand

Silence settled between them. Heavy. Loaded. Neither spoke first.He leaned back. His expression was unreadable, but something in his jaw tightened."You want to know why I need clarity," he said finally. "Why I can't do the in-between.""I know why. You told me. Your work. Your life. Gray areas get people killed.""That's part of it." He paused. "The other part is—I've never done this. Any of it. I don't know how to be someone's—" He stopped. The word wouldn't come. "I don't know how to wait. I only know how to act. You're asking me to stand still, and I don't know if I can."She looked at him then—really looked. "I'm not asking you to wait forever. I'm asking you to give me more than five minutes after I've been up all night and haven't eaten in two days."He held her gaze. Then his eyes dropped to the dark circles beneath them, the way her hands still trembled around the water glass, the toast she'd abandoned after two bites."You're right," he said. "That's fair.""Thank you.""Bu

1 2 3 4

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP