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Chapter 19: Where Hunger Doesn't Hurt the Worst
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2025-04-19 11:58:42
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Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 20: The Stillness Before the Return
The second night was colder than the first.Leya didn't know if it was cold or not, or if her body had just decided to quit trying to manage anything. She was mounded under blankets on the wooden floorboards, her scarf tightened around her, armory-fashion, but it wasn't even in the running for warm enough.Her lips were parched. Her skin was damp.And in the middle of her stomach—nothing.Even the pain had started to fade away.And maybe that was the most lethal splinter of all.Not the hunger. Not the punching. Not the exhaustion.But the numbness.She had started losing herself. The silence, the coldness, the knife, cutting, numbing stinging sharpness in the bones—it had started peeling off layers of self. No longer could she keep track of the days. Hadn't laughed in years. Hadn't felt sunlight on skin. Hadn't wrapped fingers around one that didn't throb to hurt her.There was only a repetition of her name in her head—Leya. Leya. Leya.She'd remind herself every now and then, just t
Last Updated : 2025-04-19Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 21: Where Hunger Doesn't Hurt the Worst (Continued)
Day ThreeSilence fell over her like a second skin, drawn tight and stretched wide across her breast, and tauter with every cringing second. Second by miserable second, time retreated, dragging her consciousness of it with it.No longer hunger.The waiting.Waiting for the inevitable.Waiting for the next faint spurt of hope.Waiting for the door to open, to find it wouldn't.Her belly had quit pleading, asking for food. It had given up the need, the place where dwelt. No meal—no way to move, to stand up and see. She had tried once to creep, her hands trembling for every inch, but her legs went out from her, and she lay on the hardness of the ground.The pain was another kind.It didn't belong to her. Not all hers.The weight of being left behind, and seeds of doubt that had planted themselves in her. How it had led her to doubt everything she'd ever known and been of Harrison, of herself. The soft-whispered man at the door today, who had her contained in this cold room.She knew what
Last Updated : 2025-04-19Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 22: The Visitor, the Voice, and the Weight of Staying
The voice went on. Soft. Measured. Familiar—and not. "Leya…" She winced in the darkness, her body contorting against the air. Shoving her head back, fists on the bed. No one came in. They did not knock again. They just waited. Not like Harrison. Not like Eleanor. This. this was no threat donning silence. It wasn't that. More, somehow. Doubt. She did not respond. She never blamed the voice. But she recalled—uttering them uttered them back. Clanking footsteps shattered the silence. No squeaking door creaked open. No voice answered. But something within Leya shrieked. Someone still had her name on their lips. Someone spoke it like an object. And that was an object. That was lethal. Because now she remembered why she struggled. Flashback – Weeks Ago The sun was low in the west that afternoon when Leya disembarked from the train, coat pulled tightly around her shoulders as fingers of autumn curled into its folds. The college campus stretched out before her, red-brick
Last Updated : 2025-04-19Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 23: And Then the Door Opened
The door creaked open slowly.Slow.Creaking.Intentional.Leya did not move.Not yet.She was curled tight in the bend of the bed, turned away from the door, towards the wall. She was motionless, breathing even and deep, the only sound in a room still heavy with the scent of silence and stale air.Then there were footsteps.Two sets.Heavy. Deliberate.Harrison.And—Nathaniel.She had their pace now. The way they moved. The way one moved like he owned the world and the other like he never wanted to ever hit the ground.Harrison's feet first on the ground. Closer to the center of the room.Nathaniel is close by the door.Not a sound.Leya didn't turn. She didn't even blink. She let them gawk.Let them know what they have done.She didn’t need to perform pain. It was written on her skin. It bled into the room from the pale blue under her eyes, from the sharp edge of her cheekbones, from the chapped split of her lower lip.She had wasted away beautifully.Harrison’s voice broke the sil
Last Updated : 2025-04-20Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 24: The Undoing Begins
The sound of Leya's footsteps had echoed down the corridor for a seriously good long period since she'd gone.Neither of them stirred.Not Nathaniel.Not Harrison.Not yet.Between them was space—it was charged, a fuse waiting for a spark to light.Nathaniel was gritted, eyes on the open door, jaw so tight the muscle was shaking. Fists white on his hips, fists he didn't even realize he'd made."She's not the same," he whispered.Harrison spoke not a word.Because he knew.He saw it.It wasn't the cuts to her lip or the bruise to her cheek nor the shudder in her arms or the quiver in her voice.It was the way she walked away.As if the world beneath her weren't sufficient, naturally."She lived," Nathaniel interrupted, voice sour. "And that's going to cost us.""She was never in that bargain," Harrison paced now—furiously, agitated paces up and down along the carpet.Nathaniel grinned nastily. "And whose brilliance suggested hiding it in the safe in the study, yeah? Behind a painting l
Last Updated : 2025-04-20Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 25: Vultures in Velvet
Nathaniel closed the door, and Harrison was left standing by himself in the vacant room that had been overrun by them.He did not stir.There was a smell of rose soap that still clung to the air with an unforgiving hold.It was not her fragrance that lingered, however.It was her silence.She never pleaded.She never cried.She never even regarded him as a man.She left him in the sunlight.And did not mind if she might as well murder him. But at least.There was a fist on either side of him.Harrison Blackwood, for the first time in his life, did not have that feeling of the presence of a hunter in the room.He did have the feeling of the quarry.---Meanwhile – East Wing, Vivian's Private Sitting RoomThe drapes were drawn. The fire was burning low. And the brandy in Vivian Blackwood's snifter was older than most of the servants.She stood at the mantelpiece, stiff as a cathedral.Eleanor sat across from her, still on the velvet chaise—cross-legged, unspotted, like an over-indulged
Last Updated : 2025-04-20Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 26: The Cost of Silence
Leya sat in the cold of her bedroom, on the floor, all balled up, knees to her chest, shaking hands hovered over a sheet of paper.A copy of her brother Dalton's school fee invoice.The week after next is when it needs to be paid.$14,200.She stared at the figure as if it was written in an alphabet she didn't understand. That figure might have been a million.She had begged Harrison.Once.Only once.She'd approached him after dinner, pride furrowed in the fold of her dress. She stood before him in the study, speaking softly, eyes lowered.And she'd asked."Harrison… I know you don't want to get involved, but… school fees for my brother must be paid. I thought maybe you could pay them. Just once."He didn't even look up at his scotch."I am not your charity fund, Leya."Her throat was dry. "It's only this once. I swear—"He cut her off with a cold laugh."Of course it is. You people take that oath, don't you? 'Only this once.' Until the hand is left out.'"Her face burned. "They're m
Last Updated : 2025-04-21Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 27: The Double Life
The Crystal Lantern flickered, not so much as flared.Fatigued bar wedged between broken-down buildings and broken sidewalks, it was the kind of neighborhood most women shunned after nightfall. The kind of neighborhood Leya Anderson—Blackwood wife, convict bride, painted china doll of a poisoned manor—shouldn't be a part of.And yet… it was where she lived.She was alone on the sidewalk for a minute before her first shift, fingers buried in coat, the spinning neon sign beating a hard red throb overhead. It throbbed like something sick and terrible.She didn't fit.Not because she'd never fit anywhere anyway. Not since everything.Inside was sticky with spilled whiskey, burnt orange peel, and bodily fluids. Glasses broke. There was a flash of too-obvious laughter. Music thumped through the boards.The bartender—a man named Reed, early forty, tattooed hands and cigarette voice—greeted her with a jerk of his chin."You Leya?" he said, his eyes running over her like a checkpoint scanner.
Last Updated : 2025-04-21
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Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 56: A Cage of Their Own Making
Two Months Ago — Samuel Blackwood's Private StudyThe fire in the hearth was too smoldering to warm the room, but it flared up fiercely in the iron grill with a bad will-a good bad will, as all the rest of the Blackwood house.Harrison stood stiff before it, shoulders squared, jaw locked tight enough to ache."I don't need a wife," he said again, as if the repetition would tilt the ground under his feet.Samuel didn't even look up at the decanter of brandy. "You don't need a wife. You need a legacy."He poured the drink into crystal—measured, controlled. A performance, not a pour.Harrison laughed. "And this is your concept of legacy? Marriage to some desperate nobody so I can impress the board?"No, Samuel spoke softly, putting down the decanter on the side table with a snap. "This is my idea of pruning."Harrison's eyes widened. "I beg your pardon?""You've been flowering like a weed, boy. Playing as if inheritance were heredity by blood. But blood will not buy land. Discipline will
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 55: The Quiet Rebellion
Blackwood Estate — MorningThe sun rose as the sun had risen previously—its light filtering through leaded glass windows, flowing over gold trim and old frames. But the warmth never reached the opposite side of the house.Not to where Leya was, in bare feet on a cold kitchen floor at 5:03 a.m., elbow-deep in soapy water.She'd risen early, before the birds broke day. Her day started before sunup and late in the moonlight that poured on the walls of stone.She worked quietly, the sounds nothing more than clinking dishes and the whistling steam that popped off the stove.Vivian had addressed her so bluntly only three days before:> "You're no longer served here. You serve."And so she did.Because the contract that held her in line did not merely address her as Harrison's wife.It addressed her as the guardian of her family.Two months before, Samuel Blackwood had written a check large enough to hush the wolves barking outside her mother's front porch. Her family's $300,000 debt had van
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 54: A Cage of Their Own Making
Two Months Ago — Samuel Blackwood's Private StudyThere hadn't been one of those yelling, yelling storms in the weather that night, but there was a storm in Samuel Blackwood's study: live, with promise of hidden harm and weight-laden decision.Harrison stiffened before the fire, hands locked across chest, jaw bunched."I don't need a wife," he snarled."You need discipline," Samuel said, not raising his eyes.He poured metallic brandy into a crystal glass. The same glass he used whenever he was signing terms—never to accept them."And what is she?" Harrison sneered. "A leash?""No," Samuel replied. "She's a mirror."Harrison's eyebrows collapsed."Of what?""How about what happens to you when you wield power as a right and not a duty?"The fire spat. The air froze.Samuel turned around, his hand closed around a piece of paper. Thick paper. Blackwood seal. Older binding legal than both of them."The marriage contract for one year. She gets protection. You get the share of the estate yo
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 53: The House She Never Chose
The house never slept.It loomed over them.Even resting, it gasped like a beast, cold and warm in the wrong spots. Creaking at joints. Glaring at them.Leya no longer jumped at its creaks.She was too tired to.Her mop had been wet, pale water in the bucket she had carried down the marble corridor. Her back ached. Her knees pounded. The insidious burn of ammonia stuck to her forearms like something that she couldn't shake off.She had washed the baseboards. Sconces covered in gilt moldings that no one so much as glimpsed. Boiling cabbage and eggs for Eleanor's first breakfast in the dark early morning, and filling Vivian's mug from bent head and shaking hands,, which had not relaxed since the third washing.> And no one ever had dared face her.For she was no longer mistress in the house.She was its shadow.It's cleaner. It's chef. It's a ghost.She hadn't complained.She couldn't.---Flashback – Two Months EarlierShe could still hear the tone of her mother's voice when the envelo
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 52: No Crown Is Given Twice
The house remained silent. But utterly differently. This was a different sort of silence. One that felt… intentional. As though the very quietness had been orchestrated—like flowers at a funeral. Leya leaned against the railing at the end of the second-floor hall, squeezing out a dripping rag along the banister. Water dripped down the oaken rails, tapping the marble below it like a metronome. She no longer felt the jaggedness of her spine. Or perhaps the scent of bleach was still in her fingernails. All she could feel was shadows. Stationary chairs. Rumbled rugs. Open books on tables that no one was going to take the trouble to pick up. > She was being watched. But this time, as opposed to the first, they weren't intimidating her with power. They were watching her to see if she'd break. If the shame would at last take root. If the mask slips. Leya smiled to herself as she buffed a brass doorknob until it shone. Let them watch. She had learned as a child how to become
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 51: The Servant's Silence
The bell rang.Not the ring of breakfast in the east dining room. Not the soft rustle of linens and silver spoons.This was the servant's bell.Cold. Hard. Cruel.It rang at six-fifteen every morning. Before birds fluttered. Before lightening the curtains. Before the family even stirred in their beds.This morning, it rang for her.Leya did not move.She was already awake.Already wearing a grimy apron and loose filthy brown dress. Too tight around the arms and too loose around the waist.There were no dresses left. There were no laces to fasten, no silk.They had been taken.Off her closet floor where she had been sleeping.Instead, stiffened fabric and a crumpled piece of paper in pretty script:"No maid will be sent to assist you anymore. You are to do all the regular housework of the caretaker of this home. That is floors, washing, bedroom, and west garden. – Vivian Blackwood"No battle.No conflict.No voice redefining.She had been dismantled quietly.Gone, as ink from the page.
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 50: Under Every Floorboard (Part II)
Night threw its dark shadows over the east windows, staining the walls of the mansion with bruises of dying light.The halls were too quiet.Again.Leya had grown accustomed to hearing differently now—not to the noises, but to silences.And there was a new one following behind every door she walked through.A silence with teeth.She remembered it most clearly when she was summoned—not by Harrison, not by Eleanor—but by Vivian herself.Diplomatic knock on the Leya door. Not Clara. One of the other domestics. Downtrod head."Miss Vivian wishes to see in the garden parlor."Leya did not hesitate.She stored the crumpled-up piece of paper she had discovered in an envelope and stored the envelope under a lifted floorboard and walked quietly to where she lay in concealment.She didn't possess the phone.She didn't require it.Not today.--- Garden Parlor – Just After DuskVivian posed in front of the French doors, bone-colored robe, bony waist cinched tightly by a belt of silk. Sunlight gl
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 49: Under Every Floorboard
The house whispered differently now.There was something in the air. Something that had slept but had opened its eyes.Leya could feel it each time her bare feet touched the shining floor.Each time her fingertips touched the banisters.Each time her eyes met a servant's and stayed one second too long.She was being watched.But not all eyes were unfriendly anymore.Some were curious.Some were scared.And one set… had saved her life.No word was spoken, though. Silences like gold and worth more than lies here.---Leya's Room – MorningShe was sitting by the window, lap full of notebook, fingers clasped around the pen.She was not writing. Not yet.She was thinking.Joining up.Relating.The Clara visit. The note on the door. The fares are tucked away. Nathaniel's refusal of everything. Harrison's rage. The whisper down the corridor.And most of all—The silence.The ominous silence which had descended upon the house since Harrison's outburst.Vivian hadn't summoned her in.Eleanor h
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 48: A House Built on Doubt
Harrison's research sparks flew with as bad an attitude as his own spat and crackled.He paced back and forth. Couldn't sit still.There was too much flame licking under his skin. Too much agitation behind his eyes.Nathaniel pushed into the room uninvited.That was not unusual.Tonight, however, his quiet had not been unintentional.It had been calculated.By intention.As though he was preparing himself for something that neither of them could afford to overlook."You paid it," Harrison cut in, hard and brusque.Nathaniel said nothing. "Yes.""You were told no.""I was aware she asked you.""And you went out and paid, just like that."Nathaniel shrugged off his coat and let it fall over the chair arm.He did it all the same reliability that Harrison had once loved—before it had started to feel like everything he'd lost."She never asked me for money," Nathaniel said to his brother. "She never mentioned it again. I had to figure it out myself."Harrison's eyes went icy. "You think th
