My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 688

Chapter 688

One picture made my hand stop. Gianna couldn’t have been older than ten. Her hair was tied neatly into a bun, every other child smiling proudly toward the camera. Gianna wasn’t looking at the photographer. She was staring somewhere beyond the frame, her expression distant, almost watchful, as though she were waiting for something that never came.

On the next page, I found another instructor’s note.

“Technically gifted.”

“Learns routines faster than most students.”

“Student continues practicing despite bleeding feet. Must be forced to rest.”

I read the sentence twice, then a third time. My eyes remained on that sentence.

Until her feet bleed.

Another page.

A recommendation for rest after repeated injuries.

I continued through hospital records stretching across several years. Sprained ankles. High fevers. A fractured wrist. A mild concussion. Every injury came with an explanation that sounded reasonable on paper.

Every doctor treated what they saw in front of them and sent her home. Yet after reading dozens of reports together, a pattern began forming. She visited hospitals more often than most children. None of the doctors questioned it. None of them connected one injury to another. Individually, they were ordinary.

Together, they left me with an uncomfortable rage.

I reviewed every second of the security footage from six years ago, watching Gianna wander through the streets of Chicago day after day. She searched for Hazel, yet no matter how far she walked, she never seemed able to leave the neighborhood surrounding Rose Garden. It was as though that small corner of the city was the only place she knew.

Morning light slowly crept through my office windows as I closed the final folder. School. Ballet. Hospitals. Jobs. Security footage. Addresses. Assessments. Thousands of pages. Thousands of details. Yet the one thing I needed most wasn’t there.

There was no report describing what Giovanni had done. No witness statement. No police file. No photograph. No medical document that named him. It was as though someone had reached into her childhood and removed every trace before anyone

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