My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 143

Chapter 143

The meeting in the library dragged on for another hour until Claire finally called Vincenzo and told him to end it as it was five in the morning.

One by one, my brothers drifted out. I walked through the dark halls of our estate. I climbed the stairs, my mind stuck on the sick irony of the word adoption.

I reached my wing of the house but as I rounded the corner to my suite, I stopped dead.

A small, shadowed figure was leaning against the wall right next to my door.

Gianna.

She was wearing a thin, silk tank top that looked like water in the moonlight, her shorts sat low on her hips, the faint rise and fall of her breathing visible if you looked long enough, her light brown hair a messy silk curtain around her face. She looked small but her eyes were wide and burning with a frantic, desperate light.

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I just stood there in the dark, my hand tightening on the strap of my laptop bag.

“I thought you told me to stay away from you,” I said but I stepped forward anyway.

Her back pressed flatter against the wall as I got closer, but her feet stayed planted. Her chin lifted just slightly, like she was forcing herself not to shrink.

“I did,” she said, her voice quieter than I’d ever heard it, “And you should.’

I stopped a few feet away, close enough to see the faint mark still blooming along her throat. Close enough to remember exactly how it got there.

“Then why are you here?” I asked.

“I’m not here for you.”

My gaze dropped, just for a second, to her mouth. Still slightly swollen then back up, “Doesn’t look that way,” I murmured.

She pushed off the wall, straightening, forcing space back into her posture even though there wasn’t any space between us anymore that mattered.

“I’m here because of Aileen. Please, don’t do anything to her… definitely not what you did to Ciro,” she said, “She didn’t do anything wrong.”

My eyes narrowed involuntarily at her words, “Aileen knew exactly what she was doing.”

Gianna’s jaw tightened, “No,” she said quickly. “She didn’t. She was just” She stopped herself, exhaling sharply. “She was being nice.”

“You came all the way here,” I said quietly, “to protect her?”

“Yes,” she paused and then added softly, “I don’t want her to lose her job because of me.

“You should be more concerned about yourself,” I said.

Her lips, full and pink, parted slightly then pressed together again.

“I am,” she said.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify