My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 39

Raphael

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The Minister of Defense had been speaking for twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds.

A blue map of the city flickered on the wall, covered in red dots that moved and changed as our behavioral AI predicted the next hour of traffic and crime.

I sat at the head of the long glass table, my hands folded. To everyone else, I was listening. I was the CEO of Orion Vector Technologies, the man who sold them the future. But inside, my mind was running a different program.

An image of Gianna flashed across my brain.

It was like a static screenshot.

I saw the way the light hit her hair. It was a light brown color, pulled back into a bun so tight it looked painful. I remembered the small, stray strands that had escaped near her ears. Then there were her eyes, bright green, wide, and full of a panic she couldn't hide.

My mind moved down to her face. Her skin was pale, her lips looked full. They had been trembling slightly when I stepped behind her chair.

I looked at the Minister, nodding as he spoke about data encryption, but I was actually seeing the white fabric of Gianna’s shirt. I remembered the moment it opened. I saw the curve of her breasts, the soft rise of her skin against the harsh office lights.

The memory remained fixed, like a three-dimensional model rotating slowly in the dark space behind my eyes. It was not a pleasant memory, just a precise one.

The tactic itself had been obvious.

She had been cornered by the problem on her screen. The code maybe had trapped her in a loop she couldn't escape for a few minutes. The pressure of the deadline had tightened around her. So she reached for the simplest tool available.

Distraction.

I went back to the meeting, but the screenshot stayed in the background. The green eyes, the lips, the open shirt. It wasn't a memory I enjoyed. It was just data.

I leaned back in my leather chair, my eyes tracking the data lines on the wall, but my fingers were restless. I tapped my index finger against the arm of the chair.

Every part of my brain wanted to open a new tab. I wanted to dig. I wanted to see the truth behind those green eyes. My company was built on knowing things before they happened. I had the tools to pull up every text she had ever sent, every photo she had ever taken, and every grade she had actually earned in middle school.

My skin felt tight with the urge to just type her name into our deep-search engine and watch her whole life spill out in black and white. My fingers actually itched, a sharp, annoying prickle under the skin.

But I stopped. I curled my hand into a fist until the itching went away.

I looked across the table at the empty seat where my brother sometimes sat. We were Capones. My brother was the head of the family. He had given his word that this girl was to be treated as one of us. Our father had brought Hazel into our home, and Vincenzo had placed Gianna under our protection.

In our world, words were the only thing that kept the floor from falling out from under us. If a Capone gave his word, it was law. If my brother said she was off-limits for a deep-dive, then she was off-limits. We didn't spy on our own. We didn't go behind each other’s backs. To betray his trust was to break the family, and a broken family was a dead one.