I suppose you're all wondering why I brought you here this evening. Ten strangers with no obvious connections, except that each of you have a reason to want to see me dead. So why did I gather you all here, in my mansion of all places, when my apartment in the city is much more accessible? Sure, my apartment is easy to get to, but it'd also be easy for you to get to the door and think, “Nah, I'm not in the mood,” and bail. But you're not going to bail when it took you an hour and a half drive to get here! Quite the little trap I've set, isn't it?
I suppose you're also wondering why I've gathered you all here, instead of doing this over email or Slack? Because I wanted to see the look on your faces when I told you that someone here tried to have me… murdered! And now that I've said that, I'm seeing that I'm not getting much of a read from any of your faces. Unless, Amanda, your face is betraying that you–
No, you're stifling a sneeze. Well that doesn't mean anything. No matter! Was worth a shot.
And I suppose you're wondering why I've gathered you all here, when I could have met with each of you individually. I actually started to do that, but there are ten of you, and by the time I got to the fourth person, I came up with this other idea of getting you all together to play you off of each other in a twisted little game. I like this much better! Though I am peeved that some of you got an extra dinner out of me.
You must be wondering then why I gathered all of you here, but why I'm letting Randall Zoom into the dinner. Thumbs up Randall if you can hear us! Good. But is the reason why Randall gets to Zoom in really any of your business? Or even mine? No! Just give Randall the benefit of the doubt, as I have, that as I unveil my devious plan tonight, something personal is keeping him from attending—diarrhea, it's safe to assume. I'll make sure he's just as involved and toyed with as much as everyone who made it here.
Now you're no doubt wondering why I gathered you all here, with Randall on Zoom, but no Carletta. That's right, each one of us here has a connection to Carletta as well, but one that's not related to tonight's accusations. We all agree, she's a good hang! But I didn't include Carletta because I didn't want her to show up and have everybody think, “This must be a party for Carletta!” or “Carletta must have orchestrated this gathering”—no no, it was I who did the orchestrating here! And I orchestrated no Carletta, much to your dismay!
Surely you're also thinking, “Why did he gather us all here tonight?” It had to be tonight because I learned that another billionaire you all despise was going to gather you for a similar dinner next week, where he was going to offer you his own ultimatum. And I one-upped him! Just picture his dumb face when no one shows up. I mean, hey, feel free to go to his thing too, I'm not stopping you, but you've got a pretty good excuse now not to if you don't want. So, you're welcome.
Then you must be wondering why I gathered all of you here separate from the people who are gathered in the study having cocktails. Those people are my actual friends, and we're going to be hanging out and watching basketball. And to twist the knife even further, Carletta will be there too. But for you, tonight you'll be confined to my estate until you discover who it was that tried to have me murdered. Once you find out… you must kill them! Ha ha ha! And if you fail, then you all will face death at sun up. Quite the sinister proposition, isn't it? Keep in mind, it could still be Randall. He's not off the hook. If it is him, we'll figure out the logistics of how that would work when we get to it.
I suppose you're all wondering then why I've gathered you all here to kill my attempted murderer, instead of killing them myself. This one seems pretty clear: I don't want to get in trouble. Otherwise, I'm not really that big on mysterious get-togethers like this.