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Chapter 22: The Visitor, the Voice, and the Weight of Staying
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2025-04-19 12:38:06
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Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 59: Poison in Pearls
----Blackwood Mansion — Morning That Was Not MorningIt began with silence.Not the whispering kind that welcomes a day, but the whisperingly kind that clings by a grave like a fog.The mansion, as a house of silence, was even quieter somehow. Whisperingly so. As if it had something she did not.Leya had known the instant she entered the hallway— baskets of fresh, ironed napkins spilling down her legs, stiff, rough hands from washing all day, dry mouth for lack of sleep.She'd not spoken a word that day.Not because she shunned them.Because they shunned her.She passed Clara down the hall—normally quick with a flash of a smile—but today the girl dropped her head too abruptly, darted into the other room as if she'd seen a ghost.She passed the butler—normally curt, but honest—but he did not glance her way.Did not even glance.And that was the second sign.The third occurred when she returned to her room.The door was open.Not very far from it.Little.As if someone had been there.
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 58: Even Queens Break
--- Blackwood Mansion – Late Afternoon The conservatory roof was imbibing the final blushing shade of day. Dust sparkled in rays of golden light on creeping ivy and wilted orchids—flowers that were once loved and cared for, now abandoned and allowed to die under the cloak of grandeur. Blackwood Mansion was a master of deception. It concealed its rot beneath jewels. Leya moved down the east hall, an armload of clean laundry, hands raw from scrubbing floors that morning. Her sleeves were wet. Her back ached. But she did not complain. For no one would hear. And she did not weep. For this house was not worth her tears. She stood in front of a mirror and halted, not from vanity, but to lift the face in front of her. Disheveled hair. No lipstick. A plain gray dress—worn, washed, but certainly worn. Not a Blackwood. Not a guest. Just the maid. And they addressed her as such, too. A noise she heard down the hall in front of her. A soft, sloppy catch of breath. Not audible. But
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 57: The Walls Remember Everything
---Blackwood Mansion – One Hour Before MidnightMost of the mansion slept.But Leya woke up.Quietly. Barefoot. With one candle's light in her hand.The tile chill bit at her toes, walking by the portraits whose eyes followed her, by the grandfather clock that had lost its sense of time decades ago. Her own steps were slow and careful, as if the walls of the house would wake up and ring out an alarm to wake the others.The silence in the house was not peace.It was a facade for danger.She stood at the end of the hallway—the one that curved around the servants' pantry and into the wall no one ever challenged. It was a dead end on every map she had ever studied.To her,For in Blackwood Mansion, dead ends were secrets that had perfected the art of seeming to be doors.She jammed her hand against the fretted lion's face on the weathered face of the old grandfather clock. Its cracked face warped slightly under pressure.> Click.There was a soft hiss of trapped breath within.And the pa
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.
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