My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 377

Chapter 377

Gianna

My mind went completely blank as I stared down at the glowing screen of my phone.

The small, neat letters of the message blurry before my eyes.

“Gianna, my love, is this you?”

The name Leone Caruso burst through the floorboards, tearing up everything beautiful we had just built in this room. My chest felt tight, the air completely stuck in my throat. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.

Slowly, I forced my eyes away from the screen and looked up at Raphael.

The muscles in his neck were stretched tight, a thick vein pulsing, and his eyes were darker now. He looked so pissed off it made my stomach drop into a freezing pit of ice.

“Your ex-fiancé?” Raphael repeated, his deep voice dropped into a hiss that made the hairs on my arms stand straight up, “It’s the same man you love, right? The one you couldn’t forget.”

“Yes,” I gasped out automatically, the panic making my brain short-circuit. Then, my eyes widened as I realized what I had just said, and I shook my head violently, my hair tumbling around my face, “No! No, Raphael, wait—”

I was so confused, the words tripping over each other as I tried to force them out of my mouth. Leone had been my past, he had been the person I thought I was supposed to be with, but everything was different now.

I found myself waiting for our quiet time together all day long, looking forward to being alone with him every single minute. I hadn’t felt this kind of deep, excited happiness with anyone in years.

Raphael stood up straight, pulling his arms away from my hands. He stepped back just an inch, but it felt like he was moving a million miles away from me. The angry red color in his face slowly cooled down, turning back into that hard mask of stone.

“I won’t stop you from seeing other people, Gianna,” he said.

I frowned, my heart dropping all the way to my feet as a cold wave of panic rushed through me. Does he want me to date other people? Does he actually want me to go to someone else?

“But after this arrangement between us is over, you can go right back to him or whoever else you want,” Raphael continued, “Until we are completely done, though, you belong here. You can’t touch another man. And you sure as hell can’t let anyone else call you those… names.”