My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 279

Chapter 279

Gianna

I slipped away from Dante’s circle of friends for a moment, and wandered toward a quiet corner of the gallery and that’s when I saw it.

I stopped dead.

The painting was massive. It wasn’t a portrait, it was a scream captured in oil. It showed a woman, or the ghost of one, trapped behind layers of thin lines that looked like iron bars.

Her face was blurred, but her eyes, they were two dark pits of exhaustion. Around her neck, hands made of muday shadows reached out, to keep her quiet.

I felt a cold shiver crawl up my spine, settling in the marrow of my bones. I felt like I knew this woman.

It reminded me of my father’s voice, that tone he used when he looked at my school reports.

“Is a single, basic sentence really beyond your capacity?”

“I’ve wasted years and a fortune trying to salvage what’s left of your mind, and I am finally finished.”

“You aren’t some puzzle to be solved, Gianna, you are fundamentally broken.”

“You were a mistake from the start, a worthless void that no amount of medicine or discipline can ever fill.”

I gripped my handbag until the gold chain bit into my skin. I could almost feel the cold metal of the instruments the doctors used during the treatments he paid for.

“You lack the basic competence to inherit this name, let alone lead anyone. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you have potential.”

“The only value you possess is the bargain Leone is willing to make for you. Without a man to carry your weight, you are–and always will be-absolutely nothing.”

I felt small. I felt like the black silk on my body was just a fancy way to wrap up a person who was worth nothing on her own.

Raphael finally shifted his body, turning slightly toward me. The warmth coming off him was intense, but his face remained as cold as a winter morning.

“That dress,” he started, “It is certainly… effective.”

I raised an eyebrow, “Effective?”

“It does exactly what it was designed to do,” he said, his gaze tracing the deep ‘V’ of the back and the high slit at my thigh, “It ensures that every man in this room, from the waiters to the collectors, can’t keep their eyes off you. It’s a very loud way of telling the world you’re available.”

The way he spat the word “effective made it feel like a dirty insult. He looked at the way the fabric hugged my hips as if he wanted to tear it off, not out of passion, but out of a need to hide me away.

“You look like a completely different person, Gianna,” he added, “I almost didn’t recognize the girl who works in my office or sleeps in my home. I suppose that was the point of tonight, wasn’t it? To make sure no one misses you.”

If he wanted to believe I had dressed up just to hunt for a new pair of hands to hold, I was more than happy to let him choke on that thought.

“I mean, wasn’t it you who said we were open to dating other people?” I asked, as I turned my attention back to the painting, watching the woman behind the bars, “I was the one who said we should stay exclusive, you know, to avoid any messy overlapping or cheating. But… since you insisted on changing the rules, I thought, why not follow your lead?”