My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 263

Chapter 263

Gianna

Red lines appeared, warnings that were hidden before flashed on the screen.

My stomach dropped, oh my God, I did something wrong.

A wave of pure, shaking terror washed over me, the kind that makes your hands go numb and your vision blur.

I felt like I was back in that room, staring at a page I couldn’t read while the world screamed at me that I was a failure.

My legs felt like they were going to give out, and for a second, the room felt like it was closing in to swallow me whole.

My skin started to crawl, a frantic, itchy heat rising under my sleeves. The urge was so damn strong it was the only thing I could hear. I wanted to reach into my bag, to find the sharp edge of the blade, and let the pain on the outside finally match the screaming panic on the inside.

“I didn’t mean to -” I started to apologize, my stomach dropping. “I’m sorry if I broke something.”

Raphael straightened. Slowly, very slowly, he turned his head and looked at me. I turned my head to the side and looked up at him. I expected him to be disappointed but he seemed… manic. There was a dark gleam in his eyes that scared me.

“Do you know what that is?” he asked.

I shook my head, embarrassed, “No.”

“That,” he said quietly, “is a tracking thread. If that stayed in the system,” he continued, “every route connected to it would be exposed within forty-eight hours.”

My chest tightened and I looked back at the screen.

“You found it,” he added.

That made my head snap toward him again, brows furrowing, “What?”

His eyes flicked over my face, studying me in a way that made heat crawl up my spine. Then he turned back to the screen, “If I had asked my best analysts to find that, it would have taken them at least ten to twenty minutes of deep searching. You did it in forty-seven seconds.”

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