My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 698

Chapter 698

“I did!” Jules protested.

“You walked straight into the wall, Jule-for-Brains.”

She gasped dramatically before swatting his arm, “Because you distracted me.”

Silvio chuckled from the seat beside them, “You’ve created a monster.”

“I know,” Dante answered proudly.

I watched them quietly. Jules laughed so easily around them now. She belonged here. She looked safe, loved and protected.

A small ache settled inside my chest. I was happy for her. I truly was. But I couldn’t stop wondering if she looked at me differently now.

If she believed I had chosen Giovanni over all of them.

My eyes drifted through the cabin.

Raphael sat near one of the windows. A file rested open on the table in front of him. He hadn’t looked at me once since we boarded. His attention never left the papers in front of him.

The distance between us wasn’t measured in seats. It felt measured in miles. I lowered my eyes to my hands.

“I’ve never seen him like this,” Salvatore’s quiet voice pulled me from my thoughts.

I looked towards him, “Me neither…”

Salvatore sighed softly before folding his hands together, “I shouldn’t have told them.”

My head lifted, “What?”

He stared down at the polished wooden table between us, “I told my sons everything Hazel ever told me about you and Giovanni. I couldn’t keep it from them. I couldn’t watch my sons walk into that Council meeting blind.”

I lowered my eyes.

So that was it.

That was why Raphael had looked at me the way he had. Why he’d held me so tightly. Why did he say my father’s name as though it belonged to a monster.

“He doesn’t understand,” I whispered.

Salvatore studied my face for several seconds, “Neither do you.’

I looked up sharply, “My father loved me. He took care of me in every way he could.”

Salvatore’s shoulders sank, “Gianna…”

“He did!”

“He also hurt you.

I shook my head, “No.”

“You were a child.”

“We argue louder than anyone. We hold grudges. We say things they don’t mean.”

I thought about the night before.

Raphael’s red eyes, his shaking hands. The way he’d refused to look at me.

Salvatore gently squeezed my hand, “But when the anger burns itself out. We always find our way back to one another.”

A sob caught in my throat, “I really don’t know how to make you all understand me.”

“You start by telling the truth.”

Truth.

Everyone kept asking me for it. Everyone spoke as though it was simple. As though it was sitting right in front of me, waiting to be picked up but what if the truth wasn’t as simple as they believed?

“What truth?” I held his gaze, “Yours? Mine? Or the one everyone else has already decided belongs to me?”

His brows drew together.

I continued before he could answer, “You told me yourself that I wasn’t enough for Raphael. You said I’d ruin his future.”

“I was wrong.”

“Were you? Or do you simply regret saying it now? You believed every word when you said it. You can’t expect me to forget that overnight.”

I placed my hands together in my lap, keeping them still even though my chest felt tight.