My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 579

Chapter 579

And that was the inconvenient part.

He had looked at the situation exactly the way he looked at every problem, remove emotion, identify the risk, eliminate the threat before it became bigger.

Normally, I would’ve reached the same conclusion.

I built my entire life on that principle, reduce variables, control outcomes, prepare for failure before success. It had kept me alive. It had made me wealthy. It had made me dangerous.

It had also completely failed me the moment Gianna walked into my life.

I stared through the windshield.

There had to be a solution. There always was. The mistake most people made was believing they only had two choices.

They rarely did.

Vincenzo believed the answer was simple.

Make Gianna my sister. Bury everything that had happened between us and never look back. I couldn’t.

I believed there had to be another way. A way where I didn’t have to choose. A way where she became my family without costing me the one I already had.

Neither of us was willing to give up what mattered most.

I wasn’t sacrificing either-not the family I shared blood with and I was certainly not losing Gianna.

Which meant this wasn’t a choice between two people. It was a problem that hadn’t been solved yet. And if there was one thing I trusted myself to do…

It was to find the solution everyone else had missed.

My fingers tapped the steering wheel once. There would be one. There always was. I just hadn’t found it yet. I climbed out of the car and locked it behind me.

I unlocked my phone as I walked through the front door.

Me: Awake?

I hit send before slipping the phone into my pocket as I walked upstairs. I pushed open my bedroom door.

If one day she looked at me and told me to leave… I would. Until then, I wasn’t going anywhere.

My phone lay exactly where I’d left it on the bed. I picked it up and found nothing. No reply from her.

My brow pulled together. That was unusual. She normally answered within seconds, even if it was only a heart or one of her ridiculous emojis.

I checked the time.

3:27 a.m.

A quiet breath left me. She’d probably fallen asleep. After last night… I almost expected her to.

The thought made the corner of my mouth lift. I slipped the phone into my pocket and walked into the hallway. I knew exactly which section of the corridor stayed outside the security camera’s angle.

I stopped outside her door, a small smile remained on my face as I reached for the handle, “Asleep already, ballerina?”

I opened the door, and found darkness. Moonlight spilled through the windows and the bed was perfectly made.

My smile disappeared as I stepped inside because the room seemed empty.