My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 2

Raphael

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Gold-digging whores.

I didn’t even have to look at them to know that’s exactly what they were. The smell of desperation always clung to women like them, no matter how much expensive perfume they sprayed on their wrists to hide it.

Hazel Kinsley. She was the widow of some pathetic senator who had managed to die and leave her with a mountain of debt and a name that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. So, naturally, she did what people like her do best. She found a shark. She latched onto my father like a leech, hoping his shadow would be enough to hide her from the world.

My father, the great Don Salvatore Capone, was a joke. He couldn't even figure out how to be a father to his own blood, yet here he was, tripping over his own feet to play hero for a woman who probably didn't even know his favorite food. He was so eager to take care of her and her baggage. It was embarrassing.

And the worst part about all this was... Hazel was sitting in my mother’s chair.

That chair was sacred. Seeing this stranger—this parasite—sitting there felt like watching someone spit on a grave.

Right next to her sat the older one. Genevieve, or whatever forgettable name she had. She was trying to look small, trying to blend into the furniture, but I could see the way her eyes darted around, probably counting the silverware and figuring out how much she could hock it for.

And then there was the ten-year-old, Juliet. She was bouncing in her seat, looking at the chandelier like it was made of diamonds.

I didn't want them here. I didn't want their noise, their cheap problems, or their fake smiles. This was my home and my father had just opened the gates for a bunch of nobodies.

Every time Hazel laughed, I felt a pulse of pure, dignified hatred in my neck. She looked far too comfortable. Her hands were small and soft, the hands of someone who had never worked a day in her life, someone who had spent her husband’s money until the well ran dry.

Now she was here to drink ours.

I leaned back, taking a slow drag of my cigarette, letting the smoke cloud the space between us. I wanted her to feel unwelcome. I wanted her to feel like an intruder, because that’s exactly what she was.

"So, Gianna," Claire said. As the Donna and my sister-in-law, she was basically the queen of our home, and she sounded way too friendly for a table full of people who looked like they wanted to commit a felony, "You’re in college, right? What are you actually studying?"

I expected her to say something useless. Art history. Philosophy. Something that required zero brain cells.

"Tell them, honey. It's very advanced," her mother added.

Gianna, her name was Gianna...

"I'm studying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning," she said, "Mostly deep neural networks."

I didn't move, but my head tilted just a fraction of a millimeter.

My brain did a quick scan. AI and ML? Deep neural networks? That was the language I used to build the back-end systems that moved our money across the globe.

I finally shifted my gaze, letting it settle on her for the first time. Long, light brown hair. Green eyes that seemed to be fighting to stay calm.

My memory is a filing cabinet of faces, names, and patterns, I don't forget things.

And looking at her, a warning light flickered in the back of my mind.

She looked familiar. It was vague, but I’d seen those eyes before.

Green eyes were a rare find. My brain doesn't make mistakes, and it was telling me right now that this wasn't the first time our paths had crossed.

I didn't know where I had seen her, but the more I stared, the more my skin prickled. I leaned back, my eyes narrowing behind my glasses. I’d figure it out.

"That is incredible," Maddie said. My other sister-in-law's face lit up with that genuine, annoying warmth she always had, "That’s complicated stuff. We actually have a genius in the family who works with that kind of tech all the time. Raphael, you have to talk to Gianna!"

I felt the trap snap shut around me. What the fuck, Mads? Adriano was looking at me from across the table, a smug look on his face. He knew I hated being forced to interact with the help, and that’s all these women were to me.

I took one last pull of my cigarette and crushed it out in the crystal ashtray.

"It's interesting work," I finally muttered as I adjusted my glasses, "You'll need a good server cluster..." I just said.

Most students just play with toy datasets. They don't have the compute power for anything real.

I expected her to look away, to be intimidated by the coldness in my tone. Most people were.

Instead, she leaned forward, "Oh! Are you… building models?" she asked, "For what kind of application?"

I felt a strange, sharp prickle at the base of my skull. I didn't answer her. I couldn't. Because if I told her what I used my models for, I’d have to kill her before the dessert was served.

"Papà Salvatore, do I get my own room?" the little one, Julia, chirped.

Of course. There it was. The real reason these parasites had crawled out of the woodwork and into our dining room.

They weren't looking for a family, they were looking for real estate. They were already measuring the bedrooms, picking out which corners of our legacy they could claim for themselves.

The transparency of it was disgusting

Adriano choked on his wine, and the dinner turned into the train wreck I knew it was always going to be.

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I tossed my glasses onto the dresser. I didn't actually need the prescription, my vision was perfect but when you spend eighteen hours a day dissecting code and staring at glowing monitors, blue-light protection becomes a necessity, not a choice.

I valued my efficiency too much to let my eyes fail me.

During the day, I had a legit tech firm to run, but at night? At night, I ran the Chicago Outfit. I did it all from behind a screen, digitally controlling everything. It took hours of staring at the glass, moving numbers, and watching data streams.

My job was simple: keep us getting richer and keep ruining the lives of anyone who got in our way.

I could drain a bank account before the owner even finished typing their password. If I wanted to, I could erase a person’s entire existence, social security, credit history, birth certificate with a few clicks.

And right now, my only job was to figure out which one of these parasitic women was trying to bleed my family dry. We don’t do "new beginnings" in this house, and we definitely don't do "happy families." We do assets and liabilities.

And these women looked like the kind of liabilities that needed to be liquidated.

I started with the most obvious target. The one leading this little gold-digging expedition.

The mother.

Hazel Kinsley.

I wanted to see the exact moment she decided my father was her winning lottery ticket.

By the time I was done with her, she wouldn't just be out of our house, she’d be wishing she’d never even heard the name Capone.

The click of the lock was the only warning I got.

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