My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 532

Chapter 532

The thought sat badly in my chest.

Because Gianna kept calling them friends and sisters. Maybe they were but friendship wasn’t always healthy. Sometimes people dragged each other down. Sometimes loyalty became self-destruction.

And Gianna was already fragile enough.

She didn’t need women drowning in twenty-five million dollars of debt hanging from her shoulders too.

She had enough weight to carry already.

Beside me, Vincenzo flicked ash onto the sidewalk. Then he walked up the cracked front steps and pressed the doorbell.

The door opened barely three inches. Denise Walker peeked through the gap. The moment she saw Vincenzo, all color drained from her face.

Then her eyes moved to me, then behind us. The line of black SUVS parked along the street. The men standing beside them, the guns. Fear appeared instantly.

She knew exactly who we were.

“Ms. Walker,” Vincenzo said calmly.

The woman visibly swallowed, “Y-yes?”

“We need a few minutes of your time.”

Denise’s fingers tightened around the edge of the door. Her eyes kept moving between us, looking for an escape, finding none.

Finally she nodded, “O-okay.”

The door opened wider. Vincenzo stepped inside first and I followed. Behind us came the soldiers, thirty men easily.

The small house immediately felt crowded. The living room wasn’t built for that many people, neither was the hallway. Large men filled every corner, every doorway, every exit.

A coffee mug shattered somewhere in the room. I looked toward the sound. Five women sat frozen around a worn dining table and every single one of them had gone completely pale.

One of them looked seconds away from passing out. Another looked like she wanted to run.

Denise closed the front door with shaking hands. Vincenzo slowly removed his gloves then he looked around the room, “Sit, Ms. Walker.”

Denise practically dropped into the nearest chair. The others remained exactly where they were. I stayed near the wall while Vincenzo walked toward the center of the room.

“I’ll make this simple,” he said, “You have a… friendship with Gianna Toricelli. Do you?”

Denise nodded immediately, “Yes.”

Vincenzo studied her face, “That friendship ends today.”

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Shock flashed across Denise’s face, then confusion, then fear again, “What?”

“You heard me.”

Denise stared at him, “I don’t understand.”

“I know,” Vincenzo folded his hands behind his back, “That’s because you’re thinking about what you want,” his eyes hardened slightly, “I’m thinking about what’s best for my sister.”

Denise found enough courage to lift her chin, “Gianna is like a daughter to me.”

Vincenzo looked completely unimpressed, “No. Gianna is my sister. I don’t care if you love her. I don’t care if she loves you. I don’t care how long you’ve known her. The only thing I care about is keeping my family safe.”

His gaze swept across the room.

“And Gianna deserves a bright future. College, a career. A life that doesn’t involve carrying twenty-five million dollars of somebody else’s failures on her back.”

Denise’s eyes filled with tears. I noticed. It should have mattered. Instead, my attention drifted somewhere else.

Back to Gianna, back to that skimpy outfit she wore. Back to the night at the void when I realized that the woman stripping for me is my own stepsister.

I remembered her standing in the room at the Void. I remembered the offer she’d made. The thought sat badly in my head, not because of what happened but because of what could have happened.

What if it hadn’t needed to be me? It could have been someone else, someone with fewer boundaries. Someone willing to take everything she was offering.

The longer I thought about it, the harder it became to look at Denise.

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