My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 305

Chapter 305

Raphael

The morning light hit the pale skin of her inner thighs.

Hazel went completely still.

Every muscle in her mother’s face froze, the tears halting on her cheeks. Her mouth fell open in a horrified gasp

I knew what she was looking at. The bruises on the side of her thigh. Those bruises looked like they had been pinched hard, and right beside them, small, round, angry red marks, faint, circular burns.

Those weren’t marks from some accident. They were self-inflicted, I knew that, I fucking knew. It was the secret I had been waiting for her to trust me with, the truth I had patiently hoped she would one day tell me herself.

“Oh, God,” Hazel whispered, her voice barely a breath, her fingers trembling violently where she still held Gianna’s ankle, “Gianna… I knew it…”

Hazel let go of Gianna’s ankle as if the skin had suddenly burned her. She stumbled back a step, her weak left leg giving out slightly so that she had to catch herself against the foot of the bed.

“I knew it,” Hazel whispered again, she shook her head, tears streaming down her face, “I knew it… I knew you were doing this again. No matter how much you try to hide it from me, Gianna. No matter how much you lock yourself away… I always know.”

She pressed her trembling right hand against her mouth, trying to choke back her cries.

“Why?” Hazel cried, as she reached out, her fingers curling into empty air as if she wanted to grab her daughter but was too terrified to touch her. “Why, Gianna? Why are you doing this to yourself again? What is so wrong that you have to hurt your own body like this? You don’t need fixing. You’re so perfect. I wish, I wish you could see how perfect you really are…”

Gianna lay on the bed, her bathrobe still parted, exposing the marks on her thighs. She didn’t try to pull the fabric down anymore. She didn’t try to fight. She just stared up at the ceiling, her chest rising and falling in fast, shallow

gasps.

Then, slowly, the first tear slipped from the corner of her eye, tracing a wet path down her temple into her damp hair. She didn’t sob. She just lay there, silently crying, her face turning pale and empty.

Her face flushed a deep, angry red, and her eyes flashed with panic.

“He didn’t hurt me!” she snapped, “He was trying to help me! He was just trying to make me strong!”

“Strong? Is that what you still think after everything?!” Hazel shook her head in sheer disbelief, her face twisting in pain as she stared at her daughter. Her shoulders slumped, the anger draining out of her to leave only a deep, hollow exhaustion.

“What if…” Hazel’s voice trailed off into a weak, shaky whisper.

She stared at the floor, her eyes filling with a deep, hopeless terror that seemed to age her by ten years in a single second.

“What if I am not here anymore?” she whispered, her lips trembling. “What if I am gone, Gianna? Who is going to watch you then? Who is going to take care of you? Who is going to save you from yourself when you don’t even know the difference between right and wrong anymore… between what is love and what is pain?”