My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 344

Chapter 344

Raphael froze.

His face went perfectly pale, his jaw clenching so hard that the muscles in his cheeks popped out like stones. The calm, logical businessman completely vanished.

A deep, dark, and terrifying panic took over his features.

“Gianna,” he sneered, his voice deep, rough. His hands shook just a tiny bit as he cupped my face, his thumbs. wiping the hot tears from my cheeks, “Gianna, look at me. Breathe. Look at my eyes.”

I couldn’t. I just kept shaking, my head rolling back against his arm.

I let out a trembling sob, my vision so blurry from tears that he just looked like a tall shadow. But I focused on the light brown of his eyes, staring into them like a lifeline.

“Breathe with me,” he whispered, his thumbs gently wiping away the hot tears that were streaming down my face. He took a deep, slow, and very loud breath, puffing out his chest to show me how to do it, “In and out, Gianna. Match me. You are safe. I have you.”

I tried to mimic him, my chest jerking as I sucked in a shaky, small breath of air. He kept his eyes locked on mine, his touch so tender that the screaming voices of the three men in my head finally began to fade into the background.

He took my shaking hand and pressed it flat against his own chest, right over his heart.

“Breathe with me,” he instructed softly, his breath warm against my hair. “Feel my chest rise. In… and out. Slowly.

11

The cold room from my childhood started to vanish, replaced by the warmth of his hands.

He waited patiently, keeping his breathing slow until the frantic gasps in my throat finally calmed down into trembling sighs.

Once he felt my muscles stop shaking so violently, Raphael slowly lowered his gaze to look at my chest again.

A heavy, dark stillness settled over Raphael’s features. He looked back up into my eyes, his thumbs still gently tracing my jawline.

“Who did this to you?” he asked, his eyes glancing toward the glass doors of the convenience store for a fraction of a second before locking back onto mine, “Who touched you?”

I sniffled, blinking the remaining tears away as I tried to pull my shirt together to hide the burn. “Let’s just go, Raphael. Please, let’s just get on the bike and leave. I want to go home.”

“Who. Did. This. To. You?” he gritted through his teeth.

The soft, gentle tone he had used to calm me down was entirely gone.

I sucked in a sharp breath, looking at the hard lines of his face. After everything that had happened to me as a child, after the way my father, the doctor, and Leone had treated me, I had made a strict promise to myself. I had promised that I would never ask another man for help, that I would never depend on anyone to protect me or fight my battles.

But as I looked into Raphael’s dark eyes, I realized something shifted deep inside me. I didn’t feel that way about him… not anymore. I trusted him with the broken pieces of my past. I trusted him with… myself.

1/2

“Those men… inside…”

+15 Bartus

And that’s all I managed to say before everything he had just told me on the road, all that perfect logic about keeping his life in separate boxes and keeping his violence strictly under control shattered to absolute pieces right in front of my eyes.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify