My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 212

Chapter 212

Raphael

I tried to focus on the screen at the front of the room. One of my lead engineers was droning on about the new firewall, pointing at charts and lines of code that usually would have had my full attention. But my eyes kept sliding to the left. I kept looking through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls toward the corner desk.

Gianna was there. She was hunched over, her shoulders pulled in as if she was trying to make herself small enough to disappear. She hadn’t moved in ten minutes. She just sat there, staring at a screen that was probably still full of the mistakes I’d just yelled at her for.

Something sharp and uncomfortable tugged at my chest. It felt like a physical weight, pressing down every time I saw the way her head hung low.

Why am I looking at her? I snapped at myself, forcing my eyes back to the engineer.

But then I saw her face again in my mind. Not the face of the girl who had just pushed me away in my office, but the face she’d made when I told Aileen to take the file from her. The hurt in her eyes had been so deep. She looked like I’d just kicked a puppy.

And I don’t kick puppies.

I kill people who kick puppies.

I shifted in my chair, because I couldn’t stop thinking about the way she had looked at me.

Was I too harsh?

I tried to tell myself I was just being a boss. I had yelled at the tech team five minutes before she walked in. I had threatened to fire three developers who had been with me for years just this morning.

I was a hard man; everyone knew that. I didn’t give out participation trophies. If you messed up my code, you heard about it.

I treated her like any other employee…

But the lie felt thin. When I yelled at the developers, I was thinking about the stock price.

When I yelled at Gianna, I was thinking about the way she had pushed my chest and walked away.

I had looked for her weakest spot, the fact that she wanted to be seen as smart and I had hammered it until it cracked.

“You won’t be disappointed,” I replied.

As the elevator doors slid shut, the lobby went quiet for a heartbeat before the usual office noise started up again My employees began to filter back to their desks, the soft click of keyboards and the low hum of conversation filling the air. I turned back toward the executive floor, my feet moving automatically toward my office.

But as I passed the corner desk, my pace slowed. I couldn’t help it. My head turned, my eyes searching for her.

Gianna still hadn’t moved. She was still sitting in the same spot, her back straight and her head bowed over a stack of papers she wasn’t actually reading.

Then, I saw it.

A single, clear drop of water fell from her face. It hit the dark wood of the desk with a tiny splash. It sat there for a second, a perfect shining bead against the surface.

Then her whole body jerked violently, and before I could ask what had happened, Gianna’s hand flew up. With a jerky motion, she swiped her palm across the desk, erasing the wet spot. She did it so fast, so desperately, like she was trying to hide a crime. She didn’t look up. She just tucked her hand back into her lap and stared harder at the paper, her jaw set so tight I could see the muscle jumping in her cheek.