My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 747

Chapter 747

I forced myself to meet Perla’s eyes.

“I want to stand beside him because I deserve to be there. Not because he loves me enough to overlook everything that’s wrong with me.”

Perla looked at me as though I’d just shattered right in front of her, “There is nothing wrong with you,

Gianna. There never was.”

She said it with such certainty that it almost made me angry, just like mom used to do.

A quiet, bitter laugh escaped me, “You believe that but not everyone does. My father spent my whole childhood trying to fix me. And Leone… He didn’t want me. He wanted the version of me that never questioned him. One that stayed quiet, agreed with everything he said, and looked pretty standing beside him. As far as he was concerned, I didn’t even need a mind of my own. Just a body.”

Then I took a deep breath.

“And Raphael’s father looked at me once and decided I wasn’t worthy of his son. How many people have to tell you there’s something wrong with you before you start wondering if they’re seeing something you can’t?”

Perla looked away, wiping her tears.

“My mom…” I smiled, but it hurt, “My mom loved me so much she never saw me as broken. Maybe that’s what mothers do. They love you enough to make you believe the world will too. But then the world reminds you it doesn’t. And she’s not here anymore to fix it.”

Perla was beside me before I realized she’d moved. She wrapped both hands around mine, holding them so tightly they almost hurt, “Gianna…”

I closed my eyes, “I need to know. I need to know whether he was trying to make me into someone stronger or whether he was just breaking me because he could.”

Perla’s grip tightened, “And if finding that answer destroys you?”

“It won’t.”

“It could.”

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