My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 44

My legs felt weak as I lowered myself back into the chair. Immediately the whispers started again.

“She never even talks in class.”

“How the hell did she land that?”

“That company works with the Department of Defense.”

I stared at my notebook. My pen hovered over the page.

The lines blurred for a second.

Professor Adler turned back to the board and began the lecture.

“Today we’ll continue discussing neural network optimization…”

His voice faded into the background.

I could still feel the eyes on my back like everyone in the room was trying to solve the same question.

How someone like me, someone quiet, awkward and barely speaking in class ended up with a job at Orion Vector.

But now I knew for a fact that I couldn’t lose this job. It maybe my Stepbrother's company but Orion Vector wasn’t just another internship someone could shrug off and replace. People fought for positions there. Students with perfect transcripts. Perfect speaking voices. Perfect resumes.

People who didn’t stumble over simple sentences.

If I worked harder than everyone else, maybe I could keep up. Maybe that would be enough. I didn’t have the luxury of giving up halfway through. I just had to push through it, one day at a time.

This internship wasn’t only about grades or credits on a transcript. It meant something bigger than that.

It meant independence.

It meant not needing anyone to carry me.

I wanted a life where I could stand on my own feet. Where my mother didn’t have to worry about whether I could make it in the world. Where my little sister could look at me and see someone strong enough to hold things together.

So I would stay up later.

Study longer.

Check every line of code three times if I had to.

I would fight through every report and every meeting and every humiliating moment in that glass building if it meant keeping that position.

Because I wasn’t going to lose this opportunity just because my brain made words harder for me or because my stepbrother thought pushing me around was some kind of game.

“Good morning,” she said. “You must be Ms. Toricelli.”

I nodded once.

“Yes,” my voice came out smaller than I meant it to.

She stood up and walked around the desk, offering her hand, “I’m Aileen. Operations manager,” her handshake was quick and firm, “First day?”

I nodded again.

“Right on time,” she said and turned, gesturing down the hall, “Come on. I’ll show you where you’ll be working.”

I followed her, trying to keep my steps even. Every few steps my heels burned harder, the skin pulling under the tape. The pain made my back straighten automatically.

Don’t limp.

Don’t slow down.

Be perfect.

The hallway opened into a large workspace filled with rows of desks and tall monitors. Screens everywhere. Some showed lines of code. Others showed moving graphs and long streams of numbers.