My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 448

Chapter 448

Gianna

Then his gaze landed on me and something shifted. The tension in his shoulders loosened a fraction, Close the door.”

I obeyed immediately. The lock clicked behind me as he pointed toward the screens.

“Come here.”

I approached carefully, “What’s wrong?”

Raphael dragged a hand through his hair, “I’ve been staring at this for two hours.”

I blinked.

Two hours?

That alone was concerning.

Raphael didn’t spend two hours on anything. He solved problems before most people finished identifying them.

He tapped a key and several reports appeared side by side, “I know something is wrong. I know someone altered these files. I know they’re hiding something.”

I stared at him, then at the screens, then back at him.

My disbelief must have shown because he narrowed his eyes,

“What?”

I opened my mouth, closed it and opened it again, “You need my help?”

The words escaped before I could stop them.

Raphael stared, “Yes, Gianna.”

My eyes narrowed, “You already know the answer, don’t you?”

“No.”

“You’re testing me.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

A frustrated sound escaped him, “Would you stop arguing and look at the damn reports?”

I stared, then, unexpectedly, he pointed at the screens again.

“Please.”

The single word nearly knocked the breath out of me. Raphael never said please, not because he was rude because

he never needed to.

For some reason that made my chest hurt. I looked away before I could think about it too much before I could think about him too much.

Before my stupid heart started doing stupid things again.

Work.

Just work.

I stepped closer to the screens. Rows of numbers immediately filled my vision. Most people would probably start reading from left to right.

I couldn’t.

Entire lines seemed to twist when I looked at them too long. So instead, I did what I had always done. I looked for the patterns and shapes.

Things that felt wrong.

The room fell quiet behind me. The only sounds came from the faint hum of computers and the distant noise of the office outside.

My attention never left the reports.

I was too busy chasing patterns, too busy trying to untangle whatever mess had driven Raphael into a rare bad mood.

Raphael shifted beside me, and my concentration immediately cracked. I became aware of everything again. The warmth of his presence beside me. The way neither of us had moved very far from the other. The way silence seemed to settle differently when it was just us.

I hated that my heart noticed these things. Even more, I hated that it remembered them because nothing would ever come from it.

Nothing could.

Raphael was Raphael.

A man with an entire empire balanced on his shoulders. A man responsible for thousands of things every single day.

And I was…

Me.

The girl who still had to reread restaurant menus three times before ordering.

I zoomed in on one column and then froze. Something snagged in my brain. My eyes narrowed and I leaned closer.

The same strange feeling returned. Something was wrong. I opened another report, my pulse picked up when I found it.

A tiny formatting difference, almost invisible, a single spacing pattern repeated across multiple files and my brain latched onto it immediately.

Raphael instantly moved, “What?”

I pointed at the screen, “This.”

His attention snapped toward the monitor. For the first time since entering the office, his focus completely left me and I felt absurdly relieved and absurdly disappointed.

“This spacing,” I said.

His eyes narrowed, “What about it?”