My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 764

Chapter 764

I reached into a drawer and removed a small anti-static kit. A pair of precision tweezers. Magnification lenses. A bottle of electronics-grade cleaning solution. Conductive tape no wider than a thread.

The damaged shell came apart with almost no effort. Inside sat the actual flash memory package was intact.

I let out a slow breath. The corner that had broken away had missed the memory chip entirely. The damage had severed part of the connection between the contacts and the board, nothing more.

It was annoying but recoverable.

I cleaned the fractured contacts carefully before securing the board inside a specialized recovery adapter designed for damaged flash storage. The adapter held the broken circuit perfectly still, replacing the pressure the missing corner had once provided.

The adapter locked into place with a quiet click. I connected it to an isolated forensic workstation and the monitors flickered.

Nothing happened for atleast ten seconds.

Then…

Unknown removable media detected.

The corner of my mouth twitched, “Come on.”

The system tried reading the card, failed and tried again. This time using a slower protocol.

A warning appeared.

Read instability detected.

I disabled automatic repair immediately. The last thing I wanted was software trying to “fix” evidence. Instead, I instructed the workstation to perform a sector-by-sector image.

The progress bar crawled forward, three percent.

Nine percent…

Fourteen percent…

It slowed every time it reached the damaged portion of the card. I watched the error counter climb, then stop, and then climb again..

The only sounds in the room were cooling fans and the faint tapping of my fingers against the desk.

Fifteen minutes after I’d walked into the office, the progress bar reached one hundred percent. A message appeared in the center of the screen.

Disk image completed.

Data integrity: Partial.

Good enough.

I never touched the original card again. I removed it from the adapter and set it aside before opening the forensic copy, folders appeared, and then filenames.

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15 8gnus

None of them had names.

Only numbers.

My pulse slowed.

A directory caught my attention. I opened it and the screen refreshed.

Files started filling the screen. My eyes kept moving as a row of video files filled the monitor. Every one of them carried the same date format. Every one of them had been recorded days apart.

I stared at the list without moving, twenty-two recordings. My hand drifted toward the mouse. It stopped just above it.

For the first time that night…

I wasn’t afraid of finding nothing.

I was afraid of pressing play.

I clicked the first file, for a second, the screen stayed black then static crawled across the monitor before the picture steadied.

The angle was wrong.

Too high.

Too far away.

Whoever had placed the camera hadn’t wanted it seen. It looked down from the upper corner of a white room, catching only part of what was happening below.

A chair sat in the middle of the room, metal, bolted to the floor. A girl sat in it, weak and frail. Her feet didn’t reach the ground, they were strapped to the legs of the chair, leather restraints circled both wrists and another held her waist against the backrest. A wider strap crossed her chest.

She couldn’t have been older than fourteen.

My breathing stopped.

Gianna.

She stared straight ahead at something beyond the camera’s view, the timestamp blinked in the corner of the

screen.

Years ago.

A man walked into the view, carrying a clipboard, white coat, grey gloves. He never looked at the hidden camera. Instead, he walked toward another camera positioned somewhere in front of Gianna.

The one recording the official session.

He pressed a button, a small red light turned on. His posture changed immediately.

“Primary Research Subject,” he said into his own camera. “Session one hundred and twelve.”

He glanced briefly toward Gianna before returning his attention to his notes.

“Objective remains unchanged. Continued observation of accelerated cognitive intervention for developmental

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+15 Bgnus

reading impairment.”

Reading impairment.

My jaw clenched. He didn’t say her name. He didn’t say child. He didn’t even say patient.

Subject.

As if she wasn’t human.

He set the clipboard aside and picked up two small circular sensors connected by thin wires. Without asking permission, he brushed her hair back. She flinched but he didn’t react.

He pressed one transmitter against her right temple, then another against her left. Cold adhesive caught in strands of her hair.

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3/3

+15 Bonus