Page 62 of Dangerous Men (Fortune City Mafia #1)

ALEC

I’ve shown Sydney luxury. I’ve shown her opulence. Up until now, I’ve shown her the very best of what my empire has to offer, in the hopes of winning her heart.

Tonight, I intend to show her something else. Tonight, I want to show her the real me.

I wish I’d cleaned the place better. But I wasn’t lying when I’d told Sydney that she was the first person I’d ever brought here. No one else steps foot inside this room—not my brothers, not our security force, not even the team of cleaners who take care of our compound.

I watch Sydney closely as she sets down her bag and moves through my apartment.

It’s large, but still little more than a studio.

She starts in the kitchen—a kitchenette, really—just inside the doorway, pausing by the sink.

Her fingers brush over the empty coffee cup I left there, waiting to be washed.

A newspaper from last month sits next to it, unread.

My kitchen table is covered in documents and contracts, pieces of work I’ve brought home with me over the years.

For the first time in a very long time, I’m not sure I’ m making the right decision. Maybe I should have trusted Ashton to handle this and waited for him to talk to her first. She’s calm around him. Relaxed. Maybe I should have stayed away and let my brother fix this.

But I couldn’t. If someone is going to set this right, I need it to be me. And if she decides this is too much, if she decides my brothers are too much?

I need to be the one she chooses.

My bedroom is little more than a queen-sized bed, just beyond the kitchenette. When Sydney reaches it, her fingers trail over the dark gray bedspread before her attention shifts to the windows.

The curtains are drawn and thick enough to keep out any light. I’ve been told the view here is as breathtaking as any of my penthouses, but I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen it. I keep the curtains closed, always.

This is where I come when I need to be alone. When I don’t want to be reminded of the legacy I’ve built with blood and sweat and terror.

“What do you think?” I ask. I want her to like it. Simple and bare as it is, I need her to like it.

“It’s not what I expected,” Sydney answers. She runs her fingers over the curtain. For a moment, it looks like she might open them, and my heart skips a beat in my chest. But then her hand falls, and the curtains remain closed.

There’s still blood, dried and flaking, on her knuckles. I don’t believe for a second she cut herself on some glass.

Maybe she fought back against Viper. It’s my fault that no one warned her what a terrible idea that would be.

“It’s nice,” she says, giving me a small smile. A smile so at odds with the blood on her hands. “Your other rooms are so, I don’t know. Expensive?” She gives a self-conscious laugh. “I guess I expected gold paint, and a flat screen TV. But this is nice. Simple.”

It warms something in my chest to hear her say it. I don’t tell her this “simple” studio would sell for more than half a million dollars, if I ever got rid of it.

“I’m glad you like it,” I say. “This place is important to me. I come here when I need to be alone.”

Sydney’s soft lips purse. “Does that happen often?”

I lean against the wall by the door and consider how to answer. “More and more lately,” I say. “I love my brothers, I do. But you know now how… overwhelming, they can be. Sometimes I need my own space. Away from them. From that life.”

A small line forms between Sydney’s brows. “Sounds lonely,” she says.

“It is,” I admit. “But I’ve been lonely for a very long time, darling. Longer than I can remember. And I don’t think I realized how lonely I truly was until I met you.”

She tenses at those words, shifting under the weight of them. The distance between us is suffocating me. I want to hold her. I want to touch her.

I need her in a way that I’ve never needed anything before.

I force myself to look away before I’m too tempted. Sydney doesn’t need that from me right now. What she needs is her space. She needs time to process.

If you hold something precious too tightly, you’re liable to break it.

After a long pause, Sydney finally speaks. “You wanted to talk, Alec. So… talk.”

Where do I even fucking begin? I take a deep, steadying breath. “I care about you, Sydney. Deeply. And I?—"

“Maybe I should talk instead,” Sydney interrupts. Her eyes burn when they meet mine. “Because right now, I’m not sure I trust you, Alec. Or anything you say to me. Not when you keep lying to me.”

“No.” I shake my head, vehemently denying it. “I have never lied to you, Sydney. Not once. Not ever.”

“You have,” she insists. “Lies of omission are still lies, Alec. And you’ve been lying since the first day we met. About your name. About who you are. Lying to me about your brothers.”

“Darling—”

“I want the truth, Alec,” Sydney says in a hard voice. “I want your full honesty, with no more lies. If you can’t give that to me, if you can’t promise me that, then what we have together? It’s not going to work.”

I hold her gaze and know she means it.

“I only wanted to protect you,” I say, hoping she can hear the truth in my voice. “I didn’t want to scare you away, before…”

Before I could convince you to love me, I almost say.

Sydney shakes her head, jaw tight. “You don’t get to make those choices for me. You don’t get to lie to me and pretend you know best.”

You would have left, I want to argue. If you knew everything, you never would have stayed. But I don’t say that to her. I hold my hands up, palms out, in defeat.

“No more lies,” I promise. “Whatever you want to know, darling, it’s yours.”

“Why did you keep Viper from me?” she asks.

There are so many reasons, many of them stained in blood. But if she wants the truth, here is as good a place to start as any.

“I didn’t want to scare you,” I tell her. “And I … I didn’t want him to hurt you.”

It’s an effort not to look at the wound on her lip as I say it. At the cuts on her hand .

“Because he hurts people?” Sydney asks. “Because he’s dangerous?”

I nod.

“Sebastian told me you’re all dangerous.” Her voice drops as she says it, her gaze falling to the carpet. She wraps her arms around herself in a defensive hug, clutching her elbows. “All of you.”

It’s not until she looks up at me, expectant, that I realize it’s a question.

“Anyone can be dangerous under the right circumstances,” I say carefully.

“That’s not—” Sydney shakes her head angrily. “ Honesty , Alec! For once, just be honest with me!”

I’m going to lose her. My heart feels like it’s gripped in a vise as that realization sets in. I might have already lost her.

“We are.” My voice is so soft even I barely hear it. “Sebastian told you the truth.”

She swallows hard.

“Do you hurt people?” she asks.

“Sydney—”

She cuts me off with a fierce glare. “Yes or no, Alec. Have you ever killed someone?”

I don’t answer right away. I want to lie. I want to twist the truth until it’s more palatable. Something I think she can handle. But I promised her.

Slowly, oh so slowly, I nod.

“Yes.” The words are heavy. Weighed down by years of difficult choices. “I’ve killed people.”

Maybe honesty is just as damning as deception. Sydney flinches at my words, hugging herself tighter, and I think this is it—this is how I lose her. This is how I break the most precious thing in my life .

But staring at her now, at the blood on her knuckles, I can’t help but remember the first time I saw her, my woman in red. How my first impression of her was so wrong. Sydney is not the meek, breakable thing she pretends to be.

I’m not the only one here who’s lying.

“Does that bother you?” I ask, straightening from the wall and moving closer to her.

“Yes!” She hisses the word when she says it, gripping herself tighter. “Of course that bothers me!”

I step closer. She’s angry. So angry.

But it’s not all directed at me. And under that anger… is guilt .

There are marks on her arms from where she’s holding herself, the flesh around her fingers white with the force of it. And there’s a flicker of emotion in her eyes I recognize.

When I’m close enough to touch her, I reach out to cup her face. She doesn’t flinch.

“You wanted honesty, Sydney,” I murmur. “Do me the courtesy of granting me the same. Does it really bother you?”

Sydney blinks.

“I…” Her gaze drops.

“Honesty, Red.” I remind her, my thumb tracing her cheek.

“It should!” The words burst out of her. She takes a gasping breath. “It has to, doesn’t it? It has to bother me. Because… because it makes you evil. People who hurt others, they… they’re evil.”

But she’s not arguing with me. She’s arguing with herself.

“I don’t want that sort of violence in my life, Alec,” Sydney tells me, shaking her head. “I promised myself that?—”

She stops, snapping her mouth closed.

“What did you promise yourself, darling?” I ask.

“I promised myself I wouldn’t be that person.” She won’t look at me when she says it. “That I wouldn’t be that violent person anymore.”

When she finally meets my gaze, her eyes are devastatingly sad.

“I’m the reason my parents are dead. Did you know that?

” she asks. “If I hadn’t gotten in yet another fight at school.

If they hadn’t been forced to come pick me up.

If I hadn’t decided to scream at them in the car, tell them I hate them?

They would still be alive. But I couldn’t keep from escalating an already bad situation because of this…

rage I have inside me. And it cost me everything . ”

I open my mouth to argue. “Sweetheart?—”

“If you say it wasn’t my fault, I will leave right now, and you will never see me again,” Sydney warns.

I close my mouth and say nothing. But her pain is a palpable thing between us, tugging at my heart.