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Chapter 66: A Cage of Their Own Making
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2025-05-17 23:56:48
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Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 43: Secrets Wrapped in Silence
The campus breathed the bite of early fall. Leya leaned in the bursar's office, her fingers clenched around the miserable envelope of torn bills she'd fought to gather together in months of vicious night shifts. Her heart pounded, pride and humiliation tangled in her chest. Every tip, every penny, every extra hour she'd worked—the exhaustion that seeped around her bones—had brought her to this counter. "For Dalton Anderson," she said curtly but courteously, pushing the envelope forward. The woman across the glass from her scowled behind bifocals, fingers flying across her keyboard, fingernails clattering with each letter she typed. Time passed. A scowl furrowed the woman's brow. Leya's stomach dropped. Had she waited too long? Had they already expelled him? The woman kept on typing. Scratching. Then straightened to her feet. "Oh," she said, lighter now. "The account's paid. Paid in full two days ago." Leya's eyes scanned. "What?" “Yes, Miss Anderson. Tuition, housing, fees
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 62: Tarnish and Theater
— Blackwood Mansion – Midmorning The knock was not a knock. It was a declaration. Sharp. Clean. Deliberate. Leya froze, one hand still clenched around the rumpled pillowcase, the other hesitating above the linen chest. She did not have to look at the clock. She knew something was off. The hallway was too quiet. The air, too heavy. And when the door creaked open without waiting for her voice, she already knew who stood there. Vivian. Eleanor. Two staff members behind them—eyes lowered, mouths sealed like stone. Leya stood fully. She didn’t say a word. Vivian didn’t bother pretending. “Inventory inspection,” she said with a faint smile. “A family heirloom has gone missing. We’ve decided to begin with your room.” A pause, long and deliberate. “It’s not personal.” But of course it was. It's all in Blackwood's house. Eleanor went in first. In white. The colour of conquest. The colour of innocence. Her heels clicked too merrily on the floor. Leya did n
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 66: A Cage of Their Own Making
Two Months Ago — Samuel Blackwood's Private Study The 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. Discip
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 65: Shattered
--- Blackwood Mansion – Morning After the Necklace Incident Today's home quiet was not the same. Not the neat, familiar quiet Leya had grown accustomed to—the sort that clung between marble pillars and muffled arguments. Today's quiet was the lookout. Redolent with disdain. As claustrophobic as a hangman's noose. Every servant's glance had changed now. The way Gresham skirted around her down the corridor. The way Juliet refused to look her in the eye when Leya came strolling down the dining hall corridor. Clara, who had tried to help her before, said sorry with a strained, wrenching smile and vanished without speaking. Everyone in the house knew. Or at least thought so. Vivian's necklace was found in her bedroom. Laid out on the bed like a trap. A clever trap of silk and poison. But where one was at the Blackwood estate, appearance was everything. And appearance meant Leya was a thief. --- Hours Earlier – Vivian's Sitting Room The storm had started in the guise of an order
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 64: A Name Worth Nothing
---Blackwood Mansion – MiddayThere was too much silence outside Leya's room. Too antiseptic.She'd learned to recognize it—this type of silence that equated to punishment.When the knock came, it was not a knock.A thud, instead.Then the door was pushed open without being asked.Vivian first, Eleanor second. And in Vivian's fist—The necklace."Nice discovery," she said softly. "Imagine my surprise."Leya slowly emerged from bed with a dry throat. "I didn't take it."Vivian leaned back, eyebrow raised. "And yet, there it is. On your pillow."Eleanor tossed her head in a made-up pose. "Did you think leaving it out in the open would make you innocent?""I didn't hide anything," Leya croaked.Vivian approached her."We searched the entire house. All the rooms the servants have. All closets. Yours, out of respect, last. What a shock we had when we saw exactly what we had been hoping to see."Leya shook her head in denial. "I swear… I didn't. I swear to you."Vivian's voice grew colder.
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 63: The Woman in the Mirror
---Blackwood Mansion – Dawn the Next MorningThe sky was gray.Not storm-heavy gray, but dull, overcast gray that clung like held breath. The sort of sky that seemed to reflect the way it was inside Leya—muted, stretched, and on the verge of snapping.She brushed her hair in front of the little mirror in her room without glancing at herself.Her thoughts were on Mia's list.Five names. Three with lines drawn through them.No phone calls.No goodbyes.Only holes where lives once were.She hadn't wanted to think about it after Mia departed in the hours. Had tried to persuade herself into thinking that the paper could still remain folded, hidden under the floorboard with the rest of her secrets.But it would not remain secret.Not now.Because now she knew—this was not cruelty.It was designed.---Same MorningVivian's Breakfast TableVivian stirred her tea with ice crystal poise, her ring ticking delicately against the china cup. Eleanor sat to the left of her, playing with the food g
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 62: Tarnish and Theater
—Blackwood Mansion – MidmorningThe knock was not a knock.It was a declaration.Sharp. Clean. Deliberate.Leya froze, one hand still clenched around the rumpled pillowcase, the other hesitating above the linen chest. She did not have to look at the clock. She knew something was off.The hallway was too quiet. The air, too heavy.And when the door creaked open without waiting for her voice, she already knew who stood there.Vivian.Eleanor.Two staff members behind them—eyes lowered, mouths sealed like stone.Leya stood fully. She didn’t say a word.Vivian didn’t bother pretending.“Inventory inspection,” she said with a faint smile. “A family heirloom has gone missing. We’ve decided to begin with your room.”A pause, long and deliberate.“It’s not personal.”But of course it was.It all in Blackwood's house. Eleanor went in first. In white. The colour of conquest. The colour of innocence. Her heels clicked too merrily on the floor.Leya did not flinch as they began.Her bedding had
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 61: The Uninvited Guest
----Blackwood Mansion – Front Entrance, Two Days LaterSomeone knocked at the door.It had the ring of the crack of a gunshot in a house built on hush.Three staccato knocks on the oak doorway—measured, patient, stubborn.Gresham stayed where he stood half-way down the corridor, scowling. No one had passed through the gate. No one had inscribed in the book Eleanor shrieked along the corridor every day.And yet.He pushed it open a bit, then pushed it wide.She jammed her fists into pockets, slouching to the shoulders but snapping with eyes. It was like a navy trench coat folding the shape around her, but it wasn't concealing the authority in the air."I am requesting to see Leya Morrison," said the woman.Gresham blinked. "She's—she's not receiving visitors.""She'll see me," the woman replied, her voice as hard as it was cruel. "Tell her. it's Mia."She did not knock to enter.She stood and waited.Which made her that much more deadly somehow.---Upstairs – Leya's RoomThe knock, f
Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance Chapter 60: Lies Leave Fingerprints
---Leya's Room – Morning, Just After the AccusationShe still clutched the note in her fingers, but the fire it had ignited in her chest now raged in her.Vivian's warning—"Return the necklace and no further action will be taken"—was a challenge, not a threat.And Leya no longer ran from a challenge.She did not touch the pearls.Not because she was afraid of them, but because she needed not to touch them. Not to touch them. Not to defile them.As she was.She rolled away from the bed and tugged at the edges of her bedspread—slowly, miserably—searching the wrinkles. No smear on the wooden floor. No drawer pulled from square. No hair ruffled.A clever burglar.An inside job.Someone who knew she was too vain to scream, too polite-tongued to yell.Her fingers brushed the edge of the page she’d started earlier. The one labeled:> Theft – Set-Up, Phase OneNow she added beneath it:> Intent: Humiliation, control, narrative hijacking.Suspect: Eleanor.Motive: Deflection, emotional injury
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