MasukShare
Chapter 34: Whispered Warnings and the Echo of Rage
Terakhir Diperbarui:
2025-04-24 07:24:04
Bab terkait
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 35: Between Ambushes and Allies
The mansion fell softly again. Tonight, silence did not frighten Leya. Tonight, permission was the formality. She dressed with purpose—not out of fear, but because she knew details were essential. Black pants. Pullover pushed high. Topcoat light for the part of the night but precisely what the message required. Not hiding. Not running. Walking proudly as if this world belonged to her at her feet. The burner phone rang again. Nathaniel: Back gate to the yard. Ten minutes. Nobody in sight. Leya stuffed the phone into her jacket pocket, smoothed her hair again, and stood before the mirror. "Back" just managed to squeeze out the word. She didn't look like the captive girl Harrison had held. She looked like something born of agony. The bruises remained—the pale yellow and blue smudges across the curve of her ribs, her collarbone, and jaw. No longer embarrassed. They were proof. Proof. She survived. She floated. Down. The. Hall. Bare feet silent. The east wing. Empty. Even
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-24Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 36: Firelight and Fractures
Morning came—but nothing was new. The sun struggled weakly through the curtains, filtering down to stone floors still holding remnants of the shadows cast last night. In a house like the Blackwood mansion, nothing ever really changed. Walls didn't merely hold people—They held silence, secrets, and sins. But deep within those walls, everything changed. Something had broken. Something was going to be born. West Wing Lounge – 7:00 A.M. Harrison stood before the fireplace, arms folded on his chest, watching ashes dance as dying suns. He had not slept. He did not need to. The buzz of breakfast cooking was from far down the halls, but where he sat in silence with worry. The door opened without apology. Nathaniel stood, coat still on, face unyielding. He shut the door, movements too planned, too measured. "You were with her," Harrison accused, not even bothering to turn around. Nathaniel was silent. There was no use for him to do anything else. "She's manipulating you," Harrison
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-25Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 37: Smoke Has Memory
The Morning After — Blackwood Mansion Grounds The sun tried but failed to cut through the clouds that morning, its beam yellow and subdued, as though cautioned not to burn too bright on this planet. Fog curled over the lawn in a pall, low-floating and enigmatic, over statues and fountains set out singly along the paths of the garden like forsaken memories. Leya lay among the roses, elbows resting in the soil. Not digging. Just. Being. Cold earth concentrated her. Silence gave room for thought. She'd fought to stay alive for three weeks—now she could build something out of sparks. She wasn't naive enough to hope to leave this house unscathed right off the bat. No, if she were going to break out of this house alive—really alive—then she must wait. Wait and demonstrate. And fangs. The chill seeped into the sleeves and the ends of her fingers. She did not crash to the floor, though. Not when she heard Eleanor's gentle laughter outside the west windows. Not when she caught H
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-25Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter Title: Doubts, Ghosts, and Silent Loyalty
The corridors of Blackwood Mansion were never still.When the rest of the world slept, inside the house something breathed.Moved.Watched.Nathaniel leaned against the chill of the stone wall at the rear of the east wing, the mist of his breath foggy in the morning.He hadn't slept.Hadn't even tried.His mind was a war-torn area of old fear and new doubt, each thought colliding with the next.> Leya.Her name resonated off his ribcage like an open sore.---Nathaniel's Study — 3:00 A.M.The room reeked of stale smoke and remorse.Nathaniel was sprawled across his massive oak desk, a whiskey glass nearly full near his elbow. The fire spat, but he'd yet to add another log.Outside, the world slept under a shroud of mist.And here, in this room, so did he.She'd told him she worked nights. She'd told him she did it for her brother. And God have mercy on him—he'd not believed her.Because trust was a risk. Trusting had gotten Harrison killed once—and with him, all of them. Nathaniel t
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-28Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 39: Poison Invitations
The next day was grey and oppressive.Rain lashed against the windows in long, bony fingers.The house creaked resentfully, the stone walls complaining as if the house itself were aware that something was coming.Leya sat on her window seat, knees drawn up to her chest, eyes empty as she looked out as the mist crept over the lawn, There'd been a piece of paper on the floor when she woke that morning.Thick cardstock.Gold edging.No name—because it hadn't been needed.You are commanded to dinner. Formal dress. 8 PM. East Wing Dining Room. Mandatory.No signatures.No apologies.But one order out of politeness.Leya's fingers folded the invitation until wrinkles nipped into the palm of her hand.> Mandatory.Not invited.Not welcomed.Not offered.Ordered.Shiver down the whole length of her spine, but she willed herself to breathe past it.They were doing something.Vivian. Eleanor. Harrison.All of them, maybe.And this dinner?This was not an invitation.It ought to have been.It wa
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-28Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 40: The Devils' Dinner Party
The East Wing Dining Room was never more beautiful.Low, waltzing candelabras in gold frames.The air was heavy with smoky fragrance of roasted meat, wine and herbs.The chandelier above shed a thousand sparkling ice diamonds upon walls and marble floors.It was a party.It was a wake.Leya's arrival cut short the conversation.All eyes were on her.Vivian stood up, silk folds catching on the rug."Darling," she breathed, lifting a crystal wineglass. "So glad you could make it."Leya smiled her wide, signature smile. "You didn't have a choice."A momentary glint danced on Vivian's face—haha, maybe approval. Or amusement.> Good, Leya thought. Let them think me still playing theirs.Eleanor did not even bother to conceal contempt. Her eyes darted from the dress on Leya's body to her hair with a sneer that curled her lip, but she remained silent.Nathaniel sat stiffly, glass unspilled, staring at his plate as though it might charge him with treason.And Harrison…Harrison simply watched
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-29Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 41: Glass Walls and Quiet Wars
Dinner was over—but the game wasn't.Leya inched slowly from her chair as the rest retreated, plates still half full, words lingering behind with poison-filled glares.Nathaniel sat frozen alone, glass brimming but untouched, eyes thrown into shadow.Vivian kissed Harrison's cheek softly, lingered an extra moment longer than needed, and breathed low and soft against his ear.Harrison's eyes flared once—to Leya.Then nodded.Vivian's stilettos clicked hard on marble as she and Eleanor vanished into the corridors of the east wing, their laughter snapping behind them like a viper's tail.Leya swept her skirts up high, her step faltering, lovely, protected.She could sense it—the weight of Harrison's eyes boring into the back of her neck.She didn't glance back.Not until she'd moved past the doorway.Step one out of the room, and she'd be breathing again.One step—"Leya," Nathaniel's voice cut the tension like a knife.She shut up.The entire room was silent.She turned, very slowly.Na
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-29Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 42: A Debt Paid in Silence
The day was bitter and grey when Leya slid out of the Blackwood home.The chill nipped at her fingers despite having on the thumbed-down leather gloves she'd stolen from a dusty drawer weeks prior.Her coat wasn't tip-top.Her boots were stitched up with threads.But it didn't matter.Because today---Today she'd been carrying what she'd managed to scrounge up after working night shifts at the club for weeks.A crumpled envelope pressed under her sweater. Balled bills. A handful of coins.> Not enough. But it had to be something.It had to.Dalton's future hung in the balance.Their family's future hung in the balance.Her last shred of pride hung in the balance.---On the Train – Going to St. Delacroix UniversityThe carriage was half full, misty window kissed by the soft breath of half a dozen drowsy people.Leya occupied the window seat, tightly clutching fists around her bag, the envelope held against her chest like armor.She computed in her head repeatedly.How much she would ha
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-30
Bab terbaru
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.
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
