If Brooke ever dared to do that, now, their friendship would turn into immediate and unrelenting emnity. When she said she was through with being manipulated, she wasn't making an idle comment. It was more or less a mission statement.

"Thank you for your honesty." It wasn't really what Stephanie wanted to hear either, but she could appreciate it was hard for Brooke to say the unvarnished truth. She reached out and took Brooke's hand.

"Brooke, your friendship means a lot to me. It really does. But you need to understand that the Hellfire Club has made an enemy of me." Perhaps, in a theoretical world where Sebastian and Crane and Essex were gone, that could be different. But she doubted it. She suspected that the Club molded people as much as people molded it.

"I know this is putting you in a difficult place. But for me to say anything different would be a lie. And you deserve the truth."