My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 775

Chapter 775

Another violent convulsion tore through Giovanni’s body. The restraints dug into his skin. His head snapped backward. Blood appeared where one of the sensors had torn free.

“Stop it!”

My voice echoed through the hidden room. On the screen, Dr. Vance finally moved but still not toward Giovanni, toward the monitor, toward the data.

As if the machine mattered more than the person trapped inside it.

Then the door burst open.

Dad.

He stormed into the room so fast the camera struggled to keep up. I had never seen him move like that before. His face looked wrong.

He was terrified.

Absolutely terrified.

For a split second, Dr. Vance turned toward him.

Dad looked at Giovanni, then at the machine, then back at Giovanni and something in his expression changed. The next few seconds happened so fast I almost missed them.

Leone came through the doorway behind him. Dad shouted something. I couldn’t hear it over the alarms. Then Leone hit Dr. Vance hard. The clipboard flew across the room. The camera shook violently.

Dr. Vance crashed into a table.

Dad was already at the machine, his hands slammed against the controls, trying to stop it, trying to shut it down.

The alarms continued.

Giovanni’s body continued convulsing. Dad hit the controls again. The camera tipped sideways. Someone had knocked into it. The image spun and crashed to the floor. The rest of the recording showed only fragments.

Feet.

Furniture.

Shouting.

A glimpse of Leone dragging Dr. Vance across the room.

Then the recording ended.

I sat frozen in the chair, the screen faded to black. My chest hurt. My brother had almost died. He had almost died in that room because of them.

Because of Dad.

Because he had allowed this to happen in the first place.

A few hours ago, part of me had still been searching for excuses, looking for reasons, trying to understand.

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Trying to find the father I remembered. The man who carried me on his shoulders. The man who kissed my forehead and called me his little girl.

That part of me felt very small now.

Very far away.

Because no matter how frightened Dad looked in that video. No matter how hard he fought to save Giovanni once everything went wrong. He was still the man who put him in that chair. He was still the man who brought us into that room.

He was still the man who kept choosing Dr. Vance over and over again.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand and forced myself to breathe. My eyes burned as I pushed his file aside. I couldn’t look at it anymore. If I stared at those pages one second longer, I was going to scream.

I stood up and looked around the room, there had to be something else. Something that explained why Dad had kept all of this.

Why he had never stopped.

Why he had destroyed so many lives.

My gaze drifted farther down the shelves, near the end of one cabinet sat a thinner section of folders. Unlike the others, they carried small colored tabs clipped to the side.

Green.

Every other file in this room had been plain gray.

These weren’t.

I walked over and pulled out the first one, the folder was surprisingly light..Inside were only a few reports..I scanned the first page with my phone.

SUBJECT STATUS: SUCCESSFUL OUTCOME

I frowned.

Successful?

I hurried to the next page, the doctor’s handwriting appeared across my screen.

“Subject demonstrates normal reading fluency following completion of treatment protocol.”

“Symptoms of developmental dyslexia no longer detectable.”

I stared at the words.

No longer…

Detectable?

My heartbeat picked up..I grabbed another folder. The same green tab.

“Subject achieved age-appropriate reading performance.”

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