All Chapters of My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Gianna ━⊰ ❦ ⊱━ I was still frozen, when Madeleine came jogging back down the stairs. She had a thick textbook tucked under her arm and a bright smile. The normalcy of it felt strange after the moment I’d just had with Raphael. "Ready?" she asked, her voice light. I nodded quickly, not trustring my voice. I just wanted to be outside of this house so I could breathe. We walked out the front doors and toward a sleek, dark SUV idling in the driveway. I expected to see some guard in a suit. But when we reached the car, the driver’s door opened, and Adriano stepped out. "I thought we had a driver," I muttered, my voice low. "We do," Madeleine said, her eyes softening as she looked at him, "He just doesn't like anyone else behind the wheel when I'm in the car." I slid into the back seat, pressing myself against the door and pulling my backpack onto my lap. A second later, Adriano climbed into the driver's seat. The whole car seemed to shrink when he entered, he was too big, too loud

Raphael ━━ ⛓ ━━ I leaned against the cold marble wall, my glass heavy in my hand. My brothers were all around me, a solid wall of dark suits, expensive cologne, and mean faces. We stood in the shadows of the hall, watching the reception like it was a funeral. Across the room, our father was actually smiling. It made my skin crawl. He looked soft. He looked weak. He was standing there with Hazel, who looked like a piece of white glass that would shatter if you breathed on her too hard. "This is a fucking shit show," Adriano muttered. He was messing with his cufflinks, his knuckles still bleeding from a job he’d finished an hour ago. "He’s acting like a clown," Dante added, "He treats that kid, Jules, like she’s his own blood. It’s pathetic. And don't even get me started on the older one..." "Gianna," I said. The name tasted like smoke on my tongue. I could still see her face from breakfast two days ago. People usually shake when we enter a room. They look at their sho

Gianna ━⊰ ❦ ⊱━ I stood in front of the full-length mirror, my hands shaking so much I had to tuck them under my arms. I was dressed in a white button-down shirt and black slacks. I spent ten minutes pulling my hair back, brushing it until every stray strand was flattened into a sleek, tight bun at the nape of my neck. I wanted to look sharp. I wanted to look like the kind of girl who never made a mistake, someone who saw the world in perfect, straight lines. But my world wasn't straight lines. It was a jumble. I looked down at the thick leather folder on my bed. Inside were my documents, my official transcripts and my resume. Every time I looked at the letters on the page, they started to dance. "Data" looked like "Date." "Linear" looked like "Learner." I thought about my mom. I thought about the way she bragged at breakfast, her eyes shining with pride. Top of her class. A genius. A 4.0 student. Every word she had said felt like a heavy stone being added to my pockets. I had l

Raphael ━━ ⛓ ━━ The Minister of Defense had been speaking for twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds. A blue map of the city flickered on the wall, covered in red dots that moved and changed as our behavioral AI predicted the next hour of traffic and crime. I sat at the head of the long glass table, my hands folded. To everyone else, I was listening. I was the CEO of Orion Vector Technologies, the man who sold them the future. But inside, my mind was running a different program. An image of Gianna flashed across my brain. It was like a static screenshot. I saw the way the light hit her hair. It was a light brown color, pulled back into a bun so tight it looked painful. I remembered the small, stray strands that had escaped near her ears. Then there were her eyes, bright green, wide, and full of a panic she couldn't hide. My mind moved down to her face. Her skin was pale, her lips looked full. They had been trembling slightly when I stepped behind her chair. I looked at the M

Gianna ━⊰ ❦ ⊱━ R. Capone I stopped in front of it. The pain in my feet pulsed, my fingers tightened slightly around the papers. Then I raised my hand and knocked. The door didn’t open with a handle. Instead, a sharp, loud buzz echoed through the wood, and the lock clicked open on its own, just like his bedroom door. I pushed the door open, and the office was huge. He was sitting behind a massive black desk, his back to the window. He was leaning back in his chair, a phone pressed to his ear. "...The Ministry doesn't care about 'potential' threats, Elias," his voice reminded me of the words he said to me last night, "They want the behavioral AI to flag the target before he even buys the burner phone. If the algorithm isn't predicting the movement with 99% accuracy, the contract is dead. Fix the back-end lag or I'll find someone who can." I stood there, my feet throbbing as I held the folder out, my hand shaking just a little. Without stopping his conversation, Raphael reached