My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 463

Chapter 463

I stared at the blinking cursor on my screen, but I wasn’t seeing the numbers anymore. My fingers hovered over the keys, trembling just enough to make them click softly against each other.

Vincenzo knew.

If Vincenzo knew, then the game was over. He was the head of this family. I respected him more than anyone else in this rotten world. If he told me to stop, I had to stop.

That was the only logical choice.

But for some reason, my brain felt like it was short-circuiting again. That strange pressure in my stomach twisted into a physical knot that made it hard to swallow. It wasn’t an error code I could just delete. It felt like hot acid pouring into my veins, making my skin feel too tight for my body.

“Tell him it’s done,” I said.

Adriano just stood there, watching me, “Raph…”

“I said tell him it’s done, Adriano,” I snapped, my head whipping around to glare at him, “I hear him. Loud and clear. He’s the boss.”

I swallowed hard, looking back at the glowing monitors, though everything was just a blur of green light now.

“The girls,” I whispered, the words scratching against the back of my throat, “Tell Vince… I don’t want them. I can’t. But tell him he doesn’t have to worry about her anymore. I’ll lock it down.”

He let out a rough breath that sounded almost like a sigh, but it was too angry for that. He took two heavy steps forward until he was right next to my chair, shadowing me completely.

“You’re a fucking idiot, Raph,” Adriano said, “You think you can just press a button in your brain and delete a whole person?”

I didn’t answer him. I kept my eyes locked on the screen, my teeth grinding together so hard my ears hummed.

“No, seriously,” he said, “Let’s pretend I’ve suffered a fucking head injury and need this explained to me. How did this even happen? Out of every woman on this planet, how the fuck did you land on the one girl guaranteed to create problems?”

My mind slipped completely away from these walls.

I remembered the nightclub, the scent of smoke and expensive liquor, and the bright spotlight hitting the center of the stage. I remembered her in that tiny, black outfit. It left almost nothing to the imagination, hugging every single curve of her body.

I had a weakness for dancers. I loved the way a woman’s body could move with absolute flexibility, bending and twisting with perfect control, fluid like water. Gianna had been hypnotic. She moved like she didn’t have a single bone in her body, stretching and arching in the sparkling light, every movement designed to drive a man completely insane.

She had belonged to the stage, but that night, her eyes had found mine in the dark.

A small, cold smile pulled at the corner of my lips, “It was before,” I said, “It was like two or three days before she ever came to this house. Before her mother ever put a ring on our father’s finger. She wasn’t my sister then. She was just a girl and I only saw her once.”

Adriano looked intrigued now, his eyes scanning my face for any sign of a lie, “Where? Where the hell did you see her? What did you two even talk about? Did you know who she was?”