My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 56

Gianna

━⊰ ❦ ⊱━

The meeting was in forty minutes.

Forty.

My stomach twisted.

I glanced at the printed notes beside the laptop. Three pages of bullet points that I had rewritten five times already.

Some sentences had arrows.

Some had entire words scratched out.

A few had phonetic notes scribbled beside them so I could remember how they sounded. My pen rested between my fingers as I read the first line again.

Explain behavioral pattern detection.

I whispered the sentence under my breath.

“The system monitors long-term spending habits… travel patterns… device login locations…”

My tongue stumbled slightly over locations.

I flipped to the second page.

My chest tightened when I saw the red pen marks.

Raphael’s handwriting. I stared at it for a second and my throat went dry.

Because the image of blood on his shirt flashed into my head. My fist hitting his face and that horrible crunch. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second.

God.

What had I done?

My knuckles still felt sore. I looked down at them resting on the desk. The skin across them had turned slightly pink.

I had punched Raphael Capone.

In the nose.

Inside his own house.

My stomach flipped so violently I had to grab the edge of the desk.

He was going to kill me, maybe not literally but he would destroy this internship. He could do it with one sentence.

My professor’s voice echoed in my head.

“Internships in your senior year can influence your final academic standing.”

I swallowed. If I lost this position, the department would know. Professor Adler would know. The entire class already knew where I worked.

I grabbed the paper again and forced my eyes to focus.

Focus.

The meeting.

Midland Trust Financial.

A bank.

I didn’t notice how quiet the office had become until a soft knock sounded against the glass wall beside my desk.

My head snapped up so fast my neck hurt. For a second my brain thought it was Raphael and my stomach dropped straight to the floor.

But when I turned, it was Aileen standing there.

She had one hand resting lightly on the edge of the glass partition. She held a tablet against her chest like she always did when she was organizing Raphael’s schedule.

“Gianna?” she said gently.

I pushed my chair back a little too fast and stood up, “Y-yes?”

Aileen gave me a small reassuring smile, “It’s time.”

The words made my stomach twist again. For a moment I just stood there, staring at her like my brain had forgotten what that meant.

Then the meaning landed.

The meeting.

My throat felt dry again.

“Oh,” I said quietly.

My hands immediately started gathering the papers on the desk. I stacked the printed notes together, then unstacked them again because they weren’t straight. My fingers fumbled slightly as I slid them into the folder.

The laptop. I almost forgot the laptop. I grabbed it quickly and tucked it under my arm. Aileen watched me for a second, her expression thoughtful.

“You’ve prepared a lot,” she said softly.

I looked down at the folder in my hands. The edges of the pages were bent from being flipped too many times.