Read I Kill for Free Online Page A

to the bottom of the sea, where he starts swimming towards the girl, reaching her in moments. He looks up and sees her above him, a
dark stain against the light on the surface of the water. He rises unhurriedly, breathing very slowly so that the air bubbles do not betray his presence. When the girl is within arm’s reach,
he grabs her by the ankles and pulls her brutally down.
    Arianna is stunned by the violent thrust underwater. She has no time to fill her lungs with air. Almost immediately, the grasp on her ankle is loosened. She instinctively kicks to push herself
upwards but two hands are placed on her shoulders and their weight pushes her further down towards the bottom, far from the film of water shining above her head like a mocking promise of air and
light. She feels the slimy contact of the wetsuit, two predatory arms gripping her like a belt above her breasts, and an unknown body attached to hers as her assailant pinions her pelvis with his
legs.
    Terror encloses reason within a wall of ice.
    Wildly, she tries to free herself, whimpering, but her lungs, already lacking oxygen, quickly burn out all her reserves. As her need for air intensifies, Arianna feels her strength fade, still
at the mercy of the body clutching hers, pulling her down towards the moonless night at the bottom of the sea.
    She senses that she is about to die, that someone is killing her and she doesn’t know why. Salty tears of regret intermingle with the millions of drops of indifferent water around her. She
feels the darkness of that embrace expand and become part of her like a bottle of black ink pouring into the clean water. A cold, pitiless hand starts exploring every part of her, inside and out,
trying to extinguish any tiny flame of life, until it reaches her young woman’s heart and stops it forever.
    The man feels the body suddenly slacken at the moment that it is abandoned by life. He waits a second, then turns the girl so that her face is towards him, puts his hands under her armpits, and
starts kicking with his fins to rise to the surface. As he heads upwards, the young woman’s face is no longer a dark blotch outside his goggles. He sees her delicate features, small nose and
half-opened mouth from which a few last air bubbles escape. Her magnificent green eyes are immobile as they approach the light that they can no longer see. He looks at the face of the woman he has
killed like a photographer developing a particularly important negative. When he is completely sure of the beauty of her face, he smiles.
    The man’s head finally emerges from the water. Still holding the body, he swims to the ladder. He takes the line that he had attached to the metal box and winds it around the woman’s
neck so that it holds her as he removes his tank and mouthpiece. The body slips underwater, rippling slightly; the girl’s hair remains afloat, lapping like the waves against the hull, moving
softly in the moonlight like the tentacles of a jellyfish.
    He removes his fins and mask and puts them down carefully, silently. When he is free, he grabs hold of the ladder with his left hand and loosens the rope holding the body, grasping it with his
right arm. Without any apparent effort, he climbs the wooden steps, carrying his victim. He observes her for a while and then leans down to pick up the bathrobe she was wearing before her night
swim.
    In a belated gesture of pity, he spreads the robe over the woman lying on the deck, as if he wanted to protect the cold body from the chill of a night, which, for her, would never end.
    ‘Arianna?’
    The voice is suddenly heard from below. The man turns instinctively towards it. The girl’s companion might have been awakened by the sense that he was alone in the whitish moonlight
flooding the cabin. Perhaps he had stretched his leg to seek contact with her skin and felt only emptiness. Perhaps he had called and there had been no answer, so now he was coming to look for
her.
    Covered by the