My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 201

Chapter 201

I rushed to the dressing room. Mama D, Tasha, Em, Jasmine, and Bri were huddled around a vanity table.

“I’ve got it!” I rasped, “I’ve got the money!”

They all sprang to their feet at once. Tasha was the first to reach me, throwing her arms around my neck so hard I nearly stumbled. Then came Em and Bri, until I was buried in a sea of hugs.

“Oh, thank God!” Jasmine cried, pulling back to look at me, her eyes red from crying, “Gianna, we were so scared We thought we lost you for good after last night.”

“That man,” Mama D said, her voice shaking with a rare kind of anger as she stepped forward. She looked at the bruise on my face and gasped, “That monster. He threatened my girls. He told us to forget your name. He sent his/ men and threatened to burn the Garden to the ground with us inside if we ever asked about you again. He said you were his now.”

A hot, sharp anger flared in my chest. Raphael. He had stood in that room acting like he was helping me while he was busy terrifying the only family I had left.

“He’s not a threat, I’ll deal with him later,” I hissed, “I promise. But right now, none of that matters. We have to get Morgan back.”

Mama D’s face fell. She reached onto the vanity and picked up a heavy envelope, her hands trembling, “We emptied every safe. We pooled everything we had. But Gianna… it’s only forty thousand. We’re still short sixty. We don’t have enough to satisfy Cole.”

“It’s okay,” I said, reaching for Jules’s phone, “I have it. All of it.”

I opened the app, the numbers glowing bright. I didn’t have time for cash or envelopes.

“I’m going to wire it,” I told them. “We can send it directly to Cole’s account. We need to get there now.”

Cole Mercer sat in a tattered booth at the back, surrounded by three men who looked like they enjoyed breaking bones for a living.

My heart nearly stopped when I saw Morgan.

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