My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 606

Chapter 606

Mine didn’t.

To me, guilt belonged to the individual responsible for the act.

To Gianna, guilt spread through grief until it touched everyone left standing.

Eventually…

It would reach me.

She wouldn’t see a calculated investigation.

She would see the man who allowed her entire world to disappear in a single night.

I looked down at her sleeping face. The muscles around her eyes still hadn’t relaxed. Even unconscious, she looked exhausted.

She had already lost enough.

Until I knew exactly what role those girls had played…

They remained an unresolved variable and I didn’t eliminate variables without evidence.

I assessed them again.

Denise had already admitted she designed the entire operation. Cole had confirmed the sequence of events.

Everything after that became less certain.

The three girls… I didn’t know whether they had participated willingly. I didn’t know whether they had been threatened into cooperating. I didn’t know whether they had simply no choice but to do what Denise told them.

Assumptions were a poor foundation for judgment.

They were ordinary women from a neighborhood where people with money preyed on people without it.

No powerful surname stood behind them. No convoy of armed men was coming to pull them out when they made the wrong decision. No one was teaching them how to survive.

People like Denise and Cole had been making those decisions for them.

I looked from one frightened face to the next.

To my brothers, they were loose ends, potential witnesses, potential accomplices, potential liabilities.

To Gianna…

They had names.

Memories.

Inside jokes.

He stopped, then lowered himself into a crouch. Morgan was directly in front of him. She couldn’t have weighed much more than Gianna. Her face was streaked with tears. Mascara had run down both cheeks. She was shaking so violently her teeth clicked together.

Vincenzo noticed, he closed his eyes for a brief second and let out a quiet sigh. When he opened them again, his voice remained calm, “Look at me.”

Morgan tried but her eyes kept dropping to the floor.

“I said…” he waited, “…look at me.’

She finally managed it.

“How old are you?”

“E-eighteen,” her answer barely came out.

“Eighteen,” Vincenzo repeated the number to himself. He studied her face for another moment then slowly shook his head, “You’re a child. You shouldn’t be in places like this.”

His gaze moved to the other two girls.

“You,” he pointed toward the brunette, “And you,” then the blonde, “Did any of you wake up one morning and decide this was the life you wanted?”

The brunette immediately shook her head, “No…”

The blonde followed, “No, sir.”

Morgan was crying too hard to speak. She only managed a frantic shake of her head.