Page 143 of Dangerous Men
I move to close it, but the photograph on top of the stack of papers immediately catches my eye. Four adolescent boys stare back at me from the dark of the drawer, and though I instantly recognize Ash’s wide, white grin, it takes me a moment to realize the dark-skinned, brooding boy his arm is flung around is Alec.
I lift the photo carefully out of the dresser, only touching the edges to avoid getting fingerprints on the glossy surface.
Alec couldn’t be more than fourteen in this photo, arms crossed, face defiant as he stares at the camera. He looks so angry,and for a moment, I feel an intimate connection with this angry boy.
Photos of me from this age look the same.
Beside him, Ashton grins without a care in the world. But… no. When I look closer, even though the image is blurry and old, I can see a faint bruise darkening one eye. And his smile is strained. Just a little too tight.
Ashton’s other arm is around another boy, short and lanky, and it’s the glasses I recognize first. In all those years, Sebastian never changed the style of glasses he wears.
Unlike his brothers, Sebastian stares at the ground, not the camera, his hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets. He’s younger than they are, maybe twelve, and yet to hit the growth spurt that will end with him being taller than either of them. He looks unfinished.
And sad. So very sad.
There’s one final boy in the photo, shuffled off to the side, like he can’t stand to be touched.
The scar above Viper’s eye is more pronounced in the photograph than it is now. It cuts through his eyebrow and part of his forehead, healed but not yet faded. And he’s painfully thin. There’s no sign of the terrifyingly large man I met for those brief moments in this young boy.
Viper isn’t staring at the ground, or even at the camera. His eyes are focused on something else, out of frame, his face carefully blank.
Above them all, a sign.
Fortune City Orphanage for Wayward Boys.
My heart clenches. I remember this place from the news. It burned down five years ago, though luckily no one was inside at the time. The building had been abandoned, after a new orphanage had been built. Funded by the Sterling Children’s Foundation.
No wonder they’re so close. No wonder they love each other like brothers. They grew up together. They probably had no one else but the four of them.
It makes me love them all a little more. Four boys with no families who made their own.
Smiling and a little misty-eyed, I set the photograph on the top of the dresser and look into the drawer at the next one.
They’re older now, Alec and Ashton. Men, not boys. This one is a Polaroid, with white lining the edges and bottom, and this time Alec is smiling at the camera. The anger from his youth is there but dulled. He looks happy.
The woman squeezed between Alec and Ash—the woman Ashton is kissing on the cheek—looks happy, too.
A wave of jealousy threatens to rise inside of me, and I fight to push it down.
She’s beautiful. Skin so pale it’s milk white, with sharp gray eyes and high cheekbones. She looks like a model. It occurs to me that she could be one.
She isn’t smiling at the camera. But there’s a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes are bright and happy.
I have no right to feel jealous of her. He told me, didn’t he? Or at least implied it. He and Ashton have shared before. This must have been one of their girlfriends.
I reach into the drawer to lift this one out and get a closer look, but something slides off the photograph and falls to the floor as I do, clattering against the wood at my feet. Curious, I bend down and pick it up.
It’s a golden ring, too large to belong to a woman.
A wedding ring.
I stare at it between my fingers, not comprehending what I’ve found. It’s only when I go to put them both back in the drawer that I see it. The document the photo was hiding.
It’s a wedding certificate.
My stomach drops.
Mason Alexander Sterling and Annika Basso.
