My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 627

Chapter 627

Gianna

Every time I looked out the window, the world kept moving as if nothing had happened. Cars stopped at red lights. People crossed the streets carrying coffee. Someone laughed outside a bakery. Someone walked a dog.

I watched all of it through the passenger window…

How could everything still be normal?

My head ached behind my eyes. The medication left everything feeling slower, softer, almost like I wasn’t fully awake.

Raphael drove with both hands on the steering wheel. The only sounds inside the car were the quiet engine and the occasional click of the turn signal.

Neither of us seemed to know what to say or maybe there was simply nothing left to say.

I folded my hands together in my lap. My fingers wouldn’t stop trembling. I kept seeing Morgan’s smile. Emma laughing so hard she snorted. Brianna rolling her eyes every time Morgan started another argument over something stupid.

I remembered the first time all of us had eaten instant noodles because none of us had enough money for anything else.

It had been my first time eating instant noodles. They laughed when I admitted I’d never tried them before. After that, they made it their personal mission to introduce me to every kind of junk food my father had always forbidden, convinced it would “slow my brain.”

They bought me colorful jelly cups, candy, chips, chocolate bars, sugary drinks, and all the little treats I’d spent my whole life being told to avoid. Every time I tried something new, they watched my reaction like it was the most entertaining thing in the world, laughing whenever I ended up loving it

The memories hurt so much that I squeezed my eyes shut.

No.

Don’t think about it.

The phone call had to be wrong.

It had to.

Maybe the police had made a mistake. Maybe they’d identified the wrong people. Raphael had told me Vincenzo let them go. He said they’d been given enough money to start over somewhere safe. A suitcase with two million dollars. Enough to buy a house in a good neighborhood. Enough to disappear and build a new life.

They were supposed to be alive.

They were supposed to be free.

So this…

Very slowly, he lowered his hand back onto the steering wheel, “…Sorry,” he said quietly.

The single word made my chest hurt. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t him. I wanted to tell him I didn’t understand what I believed anymore.

He had told me he hadn’t touched them. And as far as I knew, Raphael had never looked me in the eyes and lied to me but he had hidden the truth before.

He’d kept my mother’s ALS from me, not by lying but by saying nothing.

What if this was the same?

What if he hadn’t killed them… but one of his brothers had? What if he was protecting them the same way he’d tried to protect me?

I hated myself for thinking it. I hated myself even more because I couldn’t stop.

The car stopped, and the building wasn’t what I’d imagined. It looked almost ordinary. People walked in and out carrying folders and coffee cups.

Raphael parked close to the entrance, the engine went quiet, neither of us reached for the door.