My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 789

Chapter 789

Ciro answered immediately, “On it.”

The helicopter descended into the darkness and I smiled.

There was nothing happy about what came next. I smiled because the men who had taken Gianna still believed they had time.

They didn’t.

гел

Vincenzo sat at the head of the table, his jacket still buttoned, one hand resting beside his phone. Across from him, Adriano sat with his elbows on the table, his expression hard.

The private jet carried them toward New York for the emergency Council meeting.

On Vincenzo’s request, the meeting had been called in NYC instead of Sicily. The shorter flight meant less time wasted in the air and, more importantly, less time before they could put everything Gianna had uncovered in front of the Council.

Silvio had been silent for nearly twenty minutes. He had barely looked up since opening the files Gianna had sent. At first, he had sorted them quickly, then he stopped sorting.

Now he was reading every page.

His face had lost its color.

Vincenzo noticed, “What?”

Silvio didn’t answer, as he turned another page.

Adriano leaned forward, “Silvio?”

Silvio finally looked up, “These aren’t just research files.”

“Then what are they?” Vincenzo asked.

Silvio placed several photographs on the table. There were medical records, treatment logs, dates, everything that Gianna had sent.

Vincenzo’s eyes moved across them, “How many?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet, there could be thousands,” Silvio swallowed and opened another file, “Gianna found records going back decades. Children were brought into this program under the excuse of treating neurological disorders. Some of them were barely old enough to understand what was happening.”

Adriano’s fingers slowly curled into a fist, “Treatment? So, it wasn’t just Gianna?”

Silvio gave him a look, “No, and they only called it treatment but it wasn’t, clearly.”

He pushed another photograph across the table.

“These records describe electrical procedures, cutting into their skin, repeated waterboarding, physical restraints, constant monitoring.” Silvio’s voice grew colder with every word. “And look at how they refer to them. Not patients. Subjects. Numbers on a page.”

1/3

Adriano stared at the photographs for several seconds before dragging a hand over his face.

+15 Behus

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered. “And I thought we’d done some fucked-up things,” His eyes hardened as he looked back at the files, “This isn’t another level of fucked up. This is a whole different fucking world.”

Vincenzo remained still, “What did Gianna find about herself?”

Silvio hesitated, “Her file is one of the largest.”

That was enough.

Adriano looked away for a moment.

Silvio continued, “She was used as something called the primary subject. Her father believed the research could somehow change his own condition. Vance built an entire theory around it.”

“And the results?”

Silvio gave a bitter laugh, “Fake.”

Vincenzo’s eyes lifted, “Completely?”

“Apparently.”

Silvio tapped a report, “Gianna found independent reviews commissioned after Vance disappeared. Different specialists. Different countries. Different teams. They examined the records, the scans, the claims, the supposed successful cases,” he shook his head, “They couldn’t reproduce the results. Some of the people Vance claimed to have cured didn’t even meet the original diagnostic requirements.”

Adriano leaned back slowly, “So twenty-five years…”

“Built on manipulated data.”

Vincenzo looked at the files again, “And Toricelli knew?”

“According to this, he only realized it, two years ago,” Silvio’s voice hardened, “I think that was when he finally accepted that this research was fraudulent, instead of knowing what he already knew deep down.”

Adriano stared at him, “And he shut it down.”

Silvio slid the next report across the table, “That’s where this gets worse. We have hit the Gold mine, brothers.”

He pointed toward the financial records.

“After Vance left, Philadelphia spent a fortune trying to prove the research had value and they got nothing. They nearly destroyed themselves financially trying to prove Vance wasn’t lying but then the operation changed,” he placed another photograph on the table, “According to these records, the facility became part of an organ- trafficking operation.”

Adriano’s face went completely still.

Silvio nodded once, “Children were kept alive long enough to become viable sources for organs.”

Vincenzo’s hand slowly closed around the edge of the table.

For all the blood their families had spilled over the years, there were lines even men like them did not cross.

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