My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 648

Chapter 648

She’d waited for hours. Hazel had never come, only later did she discover Hazel was gone, and her father had her sole custody.

I knew enough facts to reach a conclusion.

A child doesn’t grow into an adult convinced she’s defective without someone teaching her that lesson first.

My eyes settled on Giovanni again. He looked composed, nothing about him resembled the monster children imagine.

That meant very little.

The most dangerous men I’d ever met rarely looked dangerous. They looked reasonable. And reasonable men justified almost anything.

I didn’t know the full extent of what Giovanni had done to Gianna. Logic demanded I acknowledge incomplete information but logic also demanded something else.

Trauma leaves patterns.

Gianna’s patterns hadn’t appeared on their own.

Someone had written them into her long before I met her.

Whether the man sitting across from Vincenzo had been responsible or whether he’d simply failed to stop it. I hadn’t decided yet and until I did, I trusted neither his reputation, nor his smile.

Vincenzo folded his hands on the desk, “Why are you here?”

Giovanni met his eyes without hesitation, “My daughter.”

Vincenzo’s expression didn’t change, “Why now?”

Giovanni let out a slow breath, “I never stopped looking for her. She was hidden… well. What I stopped finding… were reliable answers. I knew she was alive somewhere, I knew she had escaped. I suspected she’d been with Hazel,” his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, “What I didn’t know was that she was living under your roof.”

My eyes narrowed. He sounded convincing. Convincing wasn’t evidence.

Vincenzo tapped one finger against the desk, “So you expect me to believe that a man with your resources couldn’t find his own daughter?”

Giovanni didn’t seem offended, “No,” he said evenly. “I expect you to believe that people lie. For years, then came to me claiming they’d found my daughter. They took my money, fed me hope, then disappeared. Every lead was false. Every promise was bought. By the time I realized they were only profiting from a father’s desperation… Gianna had vanished without a trace.”

“When I learned who he belonged to, the questioning ended immediately. I had Ciro treated, fed, untied and returned.”

Vincenzo watched him, “You could’ve killed him.”

“I could have but dead soldiers start wars. I wasn’t looking for one.”

“Then what were you looking for?”

“As I said, I was looking for my daughter and while going through the situation, I came across a series of messages between my Underboss… and Gianna.”

My jaw locked.

Leone Caruso.

I remembered every message Gianna had shown me, the relentless calls, the manipulation, the threats disguised as love. The refusal to leave her alone.