My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 10

Gianna

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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, too much. Madeleine sat beside him, and the moment she buckled her seatbelt, the energy in the car changed.

Madeleine buckled her seatbelt beside him, but Adriano didn’t start the engine right away. Instead, he reached across the console and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, pulling her gently toward him. He didn’t even glance at the rearview mirror. It was like I didn’t exist in the car at all.

"Do you really have to go?" he murmured, "I should lock the doors and keep you here."

"Adriano, stop," Madeleine giggled, though she didn't pull away. She leaned into his touch, her eyes fluttering shut for a second, "Gianna is right there and I have a lecture."

"Gianna isn't looking," he said, his eyes dark and fixed on his wife’s lips. He leaned in, his nose brushing hers, "Are you, Gianna?"

"Looking at the trees," I said sharply, my face heating up.

He let out a low, dark chuckle and finally put the car in gear. As we pulled out of the gates, Madeleine turned in her seat to look at me, trying to be the good host.

"So, Gianna," she started, "What's your first class today?"

"AI lab," I answered, keeping my words short. I tried to focus on the road, but it was hard to ignore what was happening in the front.

Adriano’s right hand wasn't on the steering wheel. It was on Madeleine’s thigh. I heard Madeleine’s breath hitch. She gripped her textbook tighter, her knuckles turning white.

"That... that sounds so hard," Madeleine managed to say, "Do you have to do a lot of math?"

"Some," I said.

Adriano shifted his grip, his hand sliding higher up her leg. He looked perfectly relaxed, steering with one hand while his eyes stayed on the road.

Madeleine’s face turned a deep shade of pink, "Tell me about the campus. Is there a good place for lunch?"

"I usually just eat a granola bar," I replied.

I watched in the rearview mirror as Adriano leaned over at a red light. He didn't kiss her. He just pressed his lips against the sensitive skin right below her ear and breathed in deep, his eyes closing. Madeleine let out a tiny, soft sound, halfway between a sigh and a protest.

"You smell like those flowers in the hall," he muttered against her skin, "I think I'll pick you up early. Forget the library. You don't need to study that hard."

"I have to study," she gasped, her hand reaching up to feebly push at his chest, "Gianna, tell him... tell him I have to stay for the full day."

I looked at the back of Adriano’s head. He loved her. It was obvious in the way he touched her, like she was the only thing in the world that mattered.

But it seemed scary... kind of love that looked like it could swallow someone whole. Trusting someone that much was just asking for them to eventually break you.

"I think he only hears what he wants to hear," I said, looking back out the window at the gray Chicago streets.

Adriano caught my eye in the rearview mirror. He gave me a sharp, appreciative look, like I had finally passed some kind of test. "Smart girl," he said. Then he looked back at his wife, "She’s right, Maddie. I only hear you. And right now, your heart is telling me you want to go home and forget all about these books."

"My heart is telling me I have a quiz," Madeleine whispered, pushing him away.

The car slowed down as we pulled up to the curb at UIC. I didn't wait for Adriano to come around and open the door. I grabbed the handle and hopped out the second the car stopped.

"Have a great day, Gianna!" Madeleine called out. She looked flushed, her hair a little messy from Adriano’s wandering hands.

“Thank you for the ride,” I replied quickly, adjusting my backpack on my shoulder. “Goodbye.”

I hiked my backpack higher on my shoulder and walked toward the entrance. I reached the lab a few minutes before the lecture started.

The door was half open. I stepped in quietly and took my usual seat near the wall, not the front, never the front. The professor liked to ask questions there.

My laptop booted up slowly while I opened my notebook. The page from last week stared back at me.

Words scratched out, letters written twice, arrows pointing everywhere because I could not keep a straight line of thought on paper. It looked messy and childish. I pressed my lips together and flipped to a clean page before anyone around me could see.

The professor walked in a minute later and placed his bag on the desk.

“Today we continue with convolutional neural networks,” he said.

He began drawing a grid on the board. It was small squares, pixels. Then beside it he wrote a 3x3 filter matrix.

Numbers.

My brain caught onto it immediately. The grid moved in my head before he even finished explaining.

Slide the filter.

Multiply.

Add.

Move again.

Multiply.

Add.

The pattern formed so clearly it almost felt obvious like watching gears click together. My pen started moving quickly to keep up.

Convlution.

I stopped. The word looked wrong. I tried again.

Convoultion.

It was still wrong, I know it. My stomach tightened. I scratched the word out harder than I meant to.

This always happened.

My brain could hold the idea perfectly. I could see how the filter detected edges in an image. How multiple filters would find different features. How deeper layers turned edges into shapes.

But when the idea had to leave my head, through my mouth or my hand... everything broke apart.

Letters switched places, words came out backwards. Sentences tangled before they even formed.

Dyslexia.

Dysgraphia.

That was what the doctor called it when I was six years old. And to me it just meant something in my brain was built wrong.

My whole life, reading took twice the time. Writing took three. And speaking... speaking was the worst. Because by the time I managed to push a sentence out, the class had already moved three steps ahead.

I looked down at my notebook again. The page already looked terrible, the crossed words, half sentences, arrows.

It looked like the notes of someone who did not belong in a seventh semester AI and Machine Learning course.

I kept my grades decent enough to pass. I stayed quiet in class. I spent nights staring at code until patterns finally made sense.

The professor’s voice cut through my thoughts, “Gianna,” he said, looking straight at me, “Explain how multiple filters work in one convolutional layer.”

My stomach dropped. The words were right there in my head. I saw the patterns. I saw the numbers, the flow of data, the way each filter caught edges before the next layer stacked them into something meaningful.

But my mouth refused.

I opened it, closed it and then opened it again. The letters tangled up before they left my lips.

“It… uh… each filter… it… um…”

“Go on,” he prompted.

I could feel every eye in the room on me. My hands shook on the desk. My notebook felt heavier than a brick.

“Filters detect… patterns… in images… then… they… um…” I stopped.

My throat ached. My brain was screaming, trying to push the perfect answer out in numbers and symbols, but the words the stupid, simple words refused to cooperate.

The professor sighed and shook his head, “Gianna… you really need to work on articulating your thoughts. You know the material, but you sound like you’re making it up as you go.”

Making it up as I go.

That’s exactly what it felt like. Always like I was pretending. I slumped back in my chair, chewing the inside of my cheek. My ears burned. The voice at the back of my head, the one that never went quiet, started screaming.

Idiot. Worthless. Pathetic. Everyone’s going to see what a disgrace you are. Just shut the fuck up and disappear.

I pressed my fingers into the notebook, crushing the pages slightly. Everyone else was moving on, talking about kernels and pooling layers, but I stayed frozen, trapped in the shame of my own failure.

The professor had moved on too, but I didn't.

The voice didn't just crawl into my ears, it lived in my blood.

“I'm only saying this because I love you. I'm saving you from the embarrassment. Don't open your mouth in front of these people again. They don't want to hear what you think, they just want to see how you look in those jeans. And you look so delicious, baby.”

“You have such a perfect body, why would you waste it trying to be smart? You don't need a brain when you have an ass like that. Just stay quiet, look beautiful.”

The professor kept talking, but I couldn't hear him anymore. The voice in my head was too loud now.

“Why are you even interested in computers, Gianna? You know you can't do it. Do something within your standards. Why don't you go to yoga classes instead? You should work on your body a little bit. You’re gaining a little weight.”

I looked down at my stomach, feeling a sudden, sharp wave of disgust. I felt huge.

“Don't worry your pretty little head. Leave the thinking to the men. Your job is just to stay fit and stay beautiful. If you lose your looks, you’ll have nothing left. No one wants a girl who is both stupid and out of shape.”

A hot tear burned at the corner of my eye. I blinked it away before it could fall.

I wouldn’t let them win.

I turned back to my keyboard, my fingers trembling as they hovered over the keys before finally pressing down. Line after line of code began to fill the screen. I focused on the patterns, the logic, the numbers. The only language that never betrayed me.

I had to prove I was stronger than those voices.

I had to prove my mind belonged to me.

I didn’t need a man to tell me who I was. I didn’t need a brother to stand in front of me or a father to decide my worth.

My heart felt small and bruised in my chest, like it could crack if someone touched it the wrong way. Fear curled low in my stomach, and the loneliness of the crowded room pressed against my ribs but I refused to stop.

I would build my life out of numbers and code and stubborn, relentless effort.

I would be the one who gave Jules and my mum the life they deserved.

And when I was done, no man would ever get to stand over me and decide my worth again.