My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 20

Gianna

━⊰ ❦ ⊱━

The meeting was in forty minutes.

Forty.

My stomach twisted.

I glanced at the printed notes beside the laptop. Three pages of bullet points that I had rewritten five times already.

Some sentences had arrows.

Some had entire words scratched out.

A few had phonetic notes scribbled beside them so I could remember how they sounded. My pen rested between my fingers as I read the first line again.

Explain behavioral pattern detection.

I whispered the sentence under my breath.

“The system monitors long-term spending habits… travel patterns… device login locations…”

My tongue stumbled slightly over locations.

I flipped to the second page.

My chest tightened when I saw the red pen marks.

Raphael’s handwriting. I stared at it for a second and my throat went dry.

Because the image of blood on his shirt flashed into my head. My fist hitting his face and that horrible crunch. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second.

God.

What had I done?

My knuckles still felt sore. I looked down at them resting on the desk. The skin across them had turned slightly pink.

I had punched Raphael Capone.

In the nose.

Inside his own house.

My stomach flipped so violently I had to grab the edge of the desk.

He was going to kill me, maybe not literally but he would destroy this internship. He could do it with one sentence.

My professor’s voice echoed in my head.

“Internships in your senior year can influence your final academic standing.”

I swallowed. If I lost this position, the department would know. Professor Adler would know. The entire class already knew where I worked.

I grabbed the paper again and forced my eyes to focus.

Focus.

The meeting.

Midland Trust Financial.

A bank.

Thirty million dollars lost last year to identity fraud.

They were here to decide if Orion Vector’s system was worth millions and for some insane reason Raphael had decided that I should explain the model.

My hands trembled slightly as I scrolled through the presentation slides.

My stomach twisted again.

What if Raphael walked into the meeting room and decided this was the perfect moment to destroy me?

I could still see his face that morning, blood running over his mouth, dripping onto his white shirt.

And he had just… stared at me.

My heart started racing again.

I pushed the thought away and grabbed the notes harder, “You explain the prediction window,” I whispered to myself.

You can do this.

I took a slow breath and straightened in the chair.

“Good morning,” I whispered, practicing the first line.

I cleared my throat.

“Good morning. I’m Gianna Toricelli. I worked on the predictive risk model you’ll see in this presentation.”

The words stumbled slightly.

I tried again.

“Good morning. I’m Gianna Toricelli…”

I didn’t notice how quiet the office had become until a soft knock sounded against the glass wall beside my desk.

My head snapped up so fast my neck hurt. For a second my brain thought it was Raphael and my stomach dropped straight to the floor.

But when I turned, it was Aileen standing there.

She had one hand resting lightly on the edge of the glass partition. She held a tablet against her chest like she always did when she was organizing Raphael’s schedule.

“Gianna?” she said gently.

I pushed my chair back a little too fast and stood up, “Y-yes?”

Aileen gave me a small reassuring smile, “It’s time.”

The words made my stomach twist again. For a moment I just stood there, staring at her like my brain had forgotten what that meant.

Then the meaning landed.

The meeting.

My throat felt dry again.

“Oh,” I said quietly.

My hands immediately started gathering the papers on the desk. I stacked the printed notes together, then unstacked them again because they weren’t straight. My fingers fumbled slightly as I slid them into the folder.

The laptop. I almost forgot the laptop. I grabbed it quickly and tucked it under my arm. Aileen watched me for a second, her expression thoughtful.

“You’ve prepared a lot,” she said softly.

I looked down at the folder in my hands. The edges of the pages were bent from being flipped too many times.

“I… I just wanted to make sure I understood everything,” I murmured.

That wasn’t exactly a lie. Understanding the system was the easy part. It was the talking that felt like walking across ice. Aileen nodded slightly, like she understood more than I had actually said.

“The Midland Trust team arrived about ten minutes ago,” she explained, “They’re setting up in Conference Room Three. Mr. Capone will be there in a moment.”

My stomach flipped again, “Okay.”

Aileen studied me quietly for a second, “You’ll do fine,” she said gently.

I nodded once, “I hope so.”

She stepped aside slightly and gestured toward the hallway, “Come on. We shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

My shoes clicked softly against the polished floor as we walked. Aileen stopped beside the door and turned to me.

Her voice lowered slightly, “They’re a little intense,” she admitted quietly. “Bank executives usually are, just explain the model the way you showed it in the internal briefing,” she said, “You know it better than anyone. Ready?"

Was I ready?

No.

Not even a little.

My stepbrother probably wanted to strangle me.

My professor expected me to survive this internship.

And a room full of bank executives were about to judge a system I had built.

My stomach churned but I straightened my shoulders slightly and nodded.

“Yes.”

Aileen opened the door. The conference room smelled faintly like coffee and polished wood.

A long glass table stretched across the center of the room. Screens glowed softly on the wall, waiting for the presentation to begin. Three men and a woman sat on the far side of the table, their laptops open, folders spread neatly in front of them.

Bank people.

Aileen stepped aside so I could walk in first. I placed my laptop on the table near the screen and opened it with fingers that tried very hard not to shake. The presentation file blinked to life. Blue graphs. Clean charts.

Numbers I understood, I forced myself to breathe slowly.

The door opened again behind me. I didn’t have to turn to know who it was.

The quiet conversations stopped when Raphael Capone entered a room.

I mustered up the courage to peek at him. His suit jacket was perfectly pressed, his tie straight, his posture calm but my eyes went straight to his nose.

A thin cut ran across the bridge, the skin around it had darkened slightly.

My stomach dropped.

My fist.

For a fleeting second, his gaze locked onto mine from across the table. It was a look that pulled a memory from the back of my mind... the night I had stripped for him, when he had watched me with that same focus. His eyes... like honey held up to a flame.

There was no anger on his face, no reaction at all. Which somehow made it worse. Then he looked away like nothing had happened and walked to the head of the table. He took his seat slowly, placing a folder in front of him.

“Good morning,” he said calmly.

The bank executives nodded, “Good morning, Mr. Capone.”

Raphael gestured slightly toward the screen, “My junior analyst worked on the predictive model you’ll be seeing today,” he said, “Ms. Torricelli.”

All eyes turned toward me.

“Good morning,” I said, “I’m Gianna Toricelli. I worked on the predictive fraud model Orion Vector developed for Midland Trust.”

The first slide appeared on the screen behind me.

Overview.

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