My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 606

Chapter 606

Mine didn’t.

To me, guilt belonged to the individual responsible for the act.

To Gianna, guilt spread through grief until it touched everyone left standing.

Eventually…

It would reach me.

She wouldn’t see a calculated investigation.

She would see the man who allowed her entire world to disappear in a single night.

I looked down at her sleeping face. The muscles around her eyes still hadn’t relaxed. Even unconscious, she looked exhausted.

She had already lost enough.

Until I knew exactly what role those girls had played…

They remained an unresolved variable and I didn’t eliminate variables without evidence.

I assessed them again.

Denise had already admitted she designed the entire operation. Cole had confirmed the sequence of events.

Everything after that became less certain.

The three girls… I didn’t know whether they had participated willingly. I didn’t know whether they had been threatened into cooperating. I didn’t know whether they had simply no choice but to do what Denise told them.

Assumptions were a poor foundation for judgment.

They were ordinary women from a neighborhood where people with money preyed on people without it.

No powerful surname stood behind them. No convoy of armed men was coming to pull them out when they made the wrong decision. No one was teaching them how to survive.

People like Denise and Cole had been making those decisions for them.

I looked from one frightened face to the next.

To my brothers, they were loose ends, potential witnesses, potential accomplices, potential liabilities.

To Gianna…

They had names.

Memories.

Inside jokes.

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