Page 56 of Dangerous Men

I frown. “What does any of this have to do with Alec?”

But I already know the answer.

“Sydney…” Jade pulls a face. “Look, I might not have recognized him when he was coming around the shop, but… even I know the rumors about Mason Sterling. And his… organization.”

My heart sinks a little. Because she’s right. I know the rumors too.

For all his charity work, for all his donations to various causes to help uplift the city, the Sterling name isn’t one tossed around lightly in our city. It carries weight.

It makes people afraid.

“There’s no way those rumors are true,” I insist. “There’s no way Alec is?—”

“—the face of organized crime in Fortune City?” Jade finishes.

I wince.

After I’d graduated college and started paying more attention to local politics, I was shocked by the transformations that my city had gone through. Most of it for the better, sure, but… There was no escaping the rumors surrounding the sudden changes. The abruptness of it all. Politicians flipping their opposition to gambling entirely, and those who were staunchly against it…

Simply disappearing. Some resigned in disgrace from scandal after scandal hitting the news, but others just…vanished.

“He’s a nice guy, Jade,” I insist. “You’ve met him! He’s not some mafia crime boss.”

“People can be more than one thing, Syd.” But when my face falls, Jade backtracks. “Look, I don’t think I fully believe the rumors, either. I mean... for some of this stuff to be true, he’d have to have the entire police departmentandthe city government on his payroll, right?”

I nod, a bit reluctantly.

“And that stuff only happens in movies. Or in poorly written novels by authors who have no idea how the mafia works.”

“Hey, those authors do a lot of painstaking research,” I protest.

“I’m just worried about you,” Jade finishes. “You’re my best friend, Sydney, and if I just stood by and let you get hurt again?—”

I flinch, and Jade abruptly stops mid-sentence.

“What do you mean again?” I ask, dread creeping throughmy veins as I stare at my plate. She doesn’t know, does she? There’s no way she…she could know.

Jade swallows.

“You don’t talk about it, Syd, but I think…. I think things between Chase and you were a lot worse than you’ve let on. He wasn’t just a callous dick. I think it’s time to admit that he was emotionally abusive to you.”

I say nothing. And my silence speaks more than words ever could. I fidget with the food on my plate, not meeting her eyes.

“He made you feel small. He made you feelless.” I can hear the anger creeping into Jade’s voice as she speaks. “And I… I should have done something, you know? I should have helped. Because you’re not small, Sydney; you’rewonderful,and you never, ever deserved to be treated like that.”

I look up at her, then, a swell of emotions thick in my throat.

“I feel like I failed you by letting him get away with that for so long,” Jade admits. She stares at the TV screen, like she can’t bring herself to look me in the eye. “Like I should have done more.”

I take her hand. “You never failed me,” I tell her.

“Well, Ifeellike I did. And I feel like if I let you get involved with a mafia boss, without at least making you stop and consider the consequences, that might be a best friend failure, too,” Jade explains.

“He’s not a mafia boss!” I protest, laughing.

“Even if he is,” Jade tells me with a straight face, reaching out to snatch a piece of crust from my plate and tossing it in her mouth, “at least he’s a hot mafia boss.”

As if!Cher declares from the TV.