My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 799

Chapter 799

Others sat staring blankly at the floor, their small bodies bruised, thin, and drained of all life. They were being harvested. Kept alive in glass boxes like spare parts for my father’s sick, profitable machine.

A broken, breathless sob tore from my chest. My hands slapped against the cold glass of the nearest cage, my tears blurring the sight of a little boy looking up at me with pale, empty eyes.

He looked terrified.

I felt something inside my chest collapse, “I’m sorry.”

My voice broke but the boy didn’t move. I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand.

“I’ll get you out.”

I didn’t know how.

I didn’t know how many guards were upstairs.

I didn’t know where Vance was.

I didn’t know how many people were trapped down here but I couldn’t walk away, not after seeing them.

I moved farther down the corridor and saw more glass, more children, more evidence of what my father had built.

I couldn’t take pictures of it, I couldn’t do anything and I hated myself for it.

I pressed my palm against my mouth to hold back a sob. They weren’t numbers, they were children.

Someone’s children.

Someone’s little brother.

Someone’s little sister.

Someone’s entire world.

And my father had put them behind glass. I looked at the scars on the next child’s body and tears spilled freely down my face.

For years, I’d thought my own suffering was the worst thing my father had done.

I had been wrong.

Mine had only been one story, there were dozens behind these walls, thousands. I stepped away from the glass, shaking.

I wiped my tears, but more came before I could stop them. My fingers closed around the letter opener inside my pocket. The metal was cold against my palm because everything around me felt like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.

I looked through the glass again, the little boy was still watching me. I pressed my lips together, trying not to cry again, “I’m getting you out,” my voice shook, “I swear.”

I didn’t know how. I didn’t have a gun. I didn’t have my phone. I didn’t have Raphael. I didn’t even know where the fucking exit was but I couldn’t leave them here. 2

My father’s voice echoed in my head.

1/3

+15 Bchus

It’s only business, we need the money. Vance keeps us alive. I wanted to scream, they weren’t money, they weren’t business, they were children.

I looked down the corridor again. The steel door at the end waited beneath the red light. Maybe there were more rooms behind it. Maybe there were more children. Maybe there was a way out.

I moved toward it.

My shoes made almost no sound against the floor. My heart hammered against my ribs. I reached the door and wrapped my fingers around the handle.

I looked over my shoulder one last time, the children were still behind the glass. I pulled and the door opened.

A narrow corridor stretched beyond it, I stepped through, then I heard a voice behind me.

“Is that little Gianna I remember?”

My entire body froze, every muscle locked. My fingers tightened around the letter opener. 1

Slowly, I turned around.

He stood at the end of the corridor. Older than I remembered. His hair had more gray in it, his face had changed but that smile hadn’t.

That fucking smile.

The one I’d seen before every procedure, before every machine, before every room where I had begged him to stop.

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