My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 650

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Chapter 650

His eyes hardened, as he looked at me.

“He already failed once when he took Gianna out of this estate and delivered her into a sex hunt. You gave him the chance to redeem himself. He won’t be getting a third.”

I nodded, “I understand.”

Vincenzo turned his attention to Luca, “Luca. You made today’s decision alone. You allowed another head of a criminal organization onto Capone land without consulting me.”

“I did.”

“You understand what could have happened.”

“I do.”

Vincenzo stood from behind his desk and slowly walked around it until he was standing directly in front of Luca.

“You acted with compassion for Gianna, I don’t punish compassion. I punish breaking procedure because procedures exist to protect this family. For the next thirty days, you’ll personally oversee every security rotation on every Capone property. No delegation. No handing it to your captains. You’ll inspect every checkpoint yourself. Every gate. Every camera. Every guard. You’ll sleep after everyone else does and you’ll wake before they do.”

Luca didn’t seem bothered, “I understand.”

“It isn’t a humiliation,” Vincenzo’s voice softened only slightly, “It’s a reminder. You’ve spent years teaching our soldiers that discipline keeps them alive. You don’t get to forget your own lessons.”

Luca accepted it without argument, “You won’t have to remind me twice.”

I had been standing against the bedroom wall for nearly twenty minutes. She hadn’t noticed or maybe she had. I couldn’t tell

anymore.

Gianna sat at her desk with her back to me. The lamp beside her cast a warm circle of light across the wood. A notebook lay open in front of her.

The page was almost full, not with sentences but with lines. She kept drawing the same short line over and over again. A straight stroke, then another beside it and then another.

୮ When she reached the bottom of the page, she quietly turned it over and started again. There wasn’t any purpose behind it that I could understand. It looked less like writing and more like her hand had forgotten how to be still.