My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 680

Chapter 680

My fingers tightened beneath the table. I already knew where this was going.

“One way or another, you’re going to remain a Capone,” he looked at me, “Isn’t that right, Raphael?”

Every eye in the root shifted toward me. I didn’t answer. My heartbeat stayed perfectly even. My face/stayed blank but inside, everything stopped.

I looked at Gianna and she finally dooked back at me. For the first time since she’d spoken, her eyes/searched mine, waiting, hoping, and afraid.

A month ago…

I would’ve answered without thinking.

I would’ve told Vincenzo that she deserved time, space, choice but now, none of those answers came easily because love without trust wasn’t stable. It was dependency.

And I refused to build a future on that.

I still loved her enough that saying the wrong thing now could destroy whatever was left between us, enough that saying the right thing hurt even more.

So I kept looking at her, trying to find the woman who used to tell me everything, trying to understand whether she was still standing somewhere behind the silence she’d built between us.

I wanted to help her, that hadn’t changed. What had changed… was how.

I slowly shifted my attention back to Vincenzo, “I don’t believe people should be kept somewhere against their will. But…” I leaned back in my chair, fixing my glasses, “I also don’t believe someone in her current state should be making life-changing decisions.”

Gianna’s expression immediately tightened, “I’m perfectly capable of deciding where I want to go.

I looked at her, “No,” the word came out calm, “You aren’t.”

A flash of hurt crossed her face.

But that didn’t stop me from telling her the truth, “You’re grieving. You isolated yourself for nearly a month. You’ve withdrawn from everyone. You’ve made decisions based almost entirely on that. None of those things make you weak. They do make your judgment unreliable.”

She stared at me, “So now you think I’m crazy?”

“I didn’t say that.”

She glared at me, “You implied it.”

“I didn’t… imply anything. I simply said you’re emotionally compromised right now. My opinion would be exactly the same if this were Vincenzo, Adriano, Dante, or myself.”

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify