My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 699

Chapter 699

They all looked at me as though the answer had been sitting in front of me my whole life and I was simply refusing to see it.

Maybe they were right.

Maybe they weren’t.

That was the problem.

No one seemed willing to accept that I was the only person who had actually lived those years.

“I may not have all the right answers for you but I know what Hazel told me,” his voice was gentle, “I know what she was afraid of.”

“My mother isn’t here anymore,” the words left my mouth before I realized how cold they sounded, “She can’t explain what she meant.”

“Hazel spent years trying to get you away from him,” Salvatore said quietly, “She gave up everything to keep you safe. And now you’re walking back to the very man she spent years protecting you from. You’re choosing him, Gianna. You’re choosing him over the family that has stood beside you. Over the people who love you. Over us. And he hasn’t done a single thing to deserve that choice.”

My chest tightened, everyone seems to think that I was choosing Dad over them. If only it were that simple.

Maybe they thought they were protecting me and they really were but none of them lived inside my mind.

None of them knew what it felt like to carry the same questions year after year until they became part of you.

Questions that refused to stay buried.

Questions that followed you into every room.

Questions that whispered to you every time you failed.

Every time you hesitated.

Every time you looked at yourself and wondered whether you could have been… different.

Some promises refused to die, no matter how old they became. Some questions refused to stop asking for answers. I had spent years trying to silence them.

They always came back.

“You think this is about loyalty,” I spoke quietly, “You think this is about choosing one family over another.”

“It isn’t?”

“No,” my fingers laced together, “It’s about finishing something that was never finished.”

He looked at me for a long time, “And if finishing it costs you… us?”

The question landed harder than I expected, so I looked toward the front of the cabin again. Raphael still hadn’t looked at me. A dull ache settled in my chest.

I loved him.

With everything I had

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Enough to let him hate me if it meant reaching the end of this road.

Because I couldn’t spend the rest of my life wondering.

Wondering if there had been an answer.

Wondering if one conversation could have changed everything.

Wondering if I was truly worthy of Raphael and the love he gave me so freely.

Wondering if he was quietly holding himself back for my sake, settling for less than he deserved because he loved

Wondering if we could ever build a life together without the shadow of my doubts following us.

Wondering if I should have faced all of this before making choices that would bind our lives together forever,

Those questions would never leave me.

They would follow me for the rest of my life.

And I wasn’t sure I could live with that.

But there was one thing I knew with absolute certainty.

I would never let Raphael spend the rest of his life carrying a burden that belonged to me.

He deserved better than that.

If there was something about me that could be changed, I had to face it myself. I wasn’t going to hide behind his love and pretend everything was fine.

And I wasn’t weak enough to run from it anymore.

Raphael

Our convoy rolled through the old iron gates one car at a time before stopping in front of a sprawling Sicilian estate built centuries ago.

The mansion sat high above the cliffs, carved from pale stone that had weathered hundreds of years of storms without ever bowing to them.

Olive trees stretched across the hills. Ancient cypress trees lined the long drive. Beyond them, the Mediterranean crashed against the rocks below.

Exactly the sort of place where men decided who would keep breathing.

I stepped out of the car, the sea breeze carried the scent of salt and old earth.

Men in dark suits stood every few meters, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses despite the fading afternoon sun.

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