My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 218

Chapter 218

“No,” he said, “It’s not. She’s already struggling more than she lets on. Sooner or later, Gianna and Jules are going to see it. And when they do…” he let the sentence trail off.

I thought about Gianna screaming at me, telling me she just wanted to be someone her mother could rely on.

“We know what this feels like,” Vincenzo whispered, and for a second, the boss disappeared, and I just saw my brother, “We know what it’s like to watch your mother disappear from your life. We know the hole it leaves. Gianna is about to lose the only person who ever truly fought for her, and there isn’t a single thing we can do. All the money in our vaults can’t buy her one more breath when the time comes.”

He walked over and clamped his hand onto my shoulder, his fingers digging into my muscle.

“So the next time she messes up a document or can’t get a word right?” he squeezed harder, his eyes boring into mine, “You shut your mouth. You keep your temper in check, and you act like it’s the smallest thing in the world Understood?”

I nodded, “Yes.”

I sat on the floor in front of the massive glass enclosure that took up half the far wall. Inside, Medusa was moving.

She was twelve feet of pure, cold muscle. Her scales were a pattern of deep browns and burnt golds. She didn’t have feelings. She just had hunger and instinct. That was why I liked her.

I reached into the cooler beside me. The rabbit had already been prepared. No pain or struggle. That mattered. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I used a pair of long metal tongs to lift it gently, careful not to jolt it too much. It deserved at least that much respect.

Feeding Medusa wasn’t cruelty. It was nature. She didn’t understand substitutes or sentiment. She needed what she was built for.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I reached for it, my eyes still on the snake. It was a text from a girl I’d gone to college with some heiress whose last name was worth more than her personality. We’d moved in the same circles, she religiously attended the parties.

She belonged to a world where sex was a game and people were just toys you played with until they broke. I was part of that world, too, I’d helped build it. But looking at the dark screen of my phone, I didn’t know where Gianna fit anymore.

Love and care for my family was easy, I knew the rules for that. Protecting them was second nature. But caring for, and fucking a woman who was supposed to be my family? That was a different kind of math. It was a knot I couldn’t untie.

I swiped the notification open.

The picture loaded instantly. She was standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror, completely naked. She had her back arched, her hair tossed over one shoulder. She had one leg pulled high toward the ceiling, holding herself completely open for the camera.