Semua Bab Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance : Bab 111 - Bab 120

Harrison – The Underground (Later That Night) The warehouse never slept. It whined and creaked like some beast left wild in metal and stone. Its top windows whined weakly on dock breaths, surrendering strands of city mist to twist on the floor against the walls. Forklifts wheezed and whined. Men bellowed back and forth across the room, their bellowing ringing in the ringing room. The ring of crowbars and crashing crates on the floor was their drumbeat starting. Harrison walked through it all like a wisp of something better than the rest. Step by step, cautious but unhurried, and still the stir he caused among his men was instant. Spines straightened. Voices fell to a whisper. No one dared stand too near to him. He did not wear a crown. He did not need one. Wind whipped past him. Far into the distance, past the latest ships in from the wharf, floodlights wetted the air with white. A wood crate groaned open to iron tools, their secrets pouring out: offworld bank vault-locked smuggl

The underworld was a shadowland—wisps of stale cigar smoke curling through the air, muffled voices mingling with clinking glasses of whiskey, and the acrid odor of blood seeping into the covered walls and Harrison Blackwood was at the center of the blackness of the expansive table, his fists thudding out a slow beat upon the wood. The men around him—soldiers, underbosses, lieutenants—sat awaiting him to speak, waiting. Harrison wasn't sleek like the mythologized-by-the-media billionaire mogul. No perfectly fitted Armani suit, no silk cravat. Black cotton turtleneck sweater hauled up over the elbows, scar tissue, and steel blue webbing on his arms from fights that no one in civilized society even knew he had fought. Cold, dark, unreadable eyes locked on the quivering man who knelt on the sidewalk at his feet. The man was jailed for robbery of the arms shipments—robbery of Blackwood Enterprises, a crime punishable by death. "Do you know what I do to thieves in my world?" Harrison s

Leya – The Chores The broom was too heavy for it to be. Each stroke jarred pain down the aching wrist, but she was not yet courageous enough to slacken. Vivian's sour taunts immediately before resonated within her head — her warning that Samuel would hear if she slackened. The threat of households on the streets had been enough to freeze defiance. So she swept. So she mopped. So she stooped until her back was sore in the small of it and her throat was tied up in a bow. Soap misted in the air, and the scent of damp wood. She pressed her lips shut hard, trying to hold back the tired tears. And then there fell across her a shadow. Eleanor. Her dark shape descended the stairs, glass in hand. "You missed a spot," she said, her tone laced with that professional gentleness that stung sharper than a lash. Leya did not move. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the handle of the mop "I'll get it, ma'am." "See that you do." Eleanor's heels clicked on the exquisitely waxe

Eleanor – The Trap Empty corridors of Blackwood Hall stretched out once more, chandeliers gently swaying when winds shattered glass. The velvet curtains were pulled low and swung forward, air behind them bearing the fleeting aroma of polish, wood, and soap, bitter and astringent. Leya's mop occupied the corner pail. Glassy-smooth, the floor stretched in front of Eleanor's door beneath the soft lamps like glass. Slowness, not duty, had washed every inch. Leya stood against the top of the bottom stair, fists clenched in apron pockets. Wrist ached, brine stung more than burn scalded on skin. Each swipe of the mop had been driven by anger, not fatigue. Anger was warped in strength, behind hidden eyes. She waited. The storm broke at last — gently, muffledly, like a hard queen struggling in her promenade on the boards. Eleanor's heels came down safely, each a marvel in stiffness. She came out of her bedroom in silk, glass in hand, with the faintest intimation of music on her lips. She

Eleanor & Leya – Two Shadows, One House The corridors never deceived her either. Blackwood Hall was always Eleanor's pedestal — shining floors that carried her shadow higher, sweeping stairways wrapped around her foot, chandeliers that shone like a tiara at the crowning of her head. The house would be hers to command. And then she stretched out there on the icy wall, her throbbing ankle in pains, her ruined silk rim, her shaking hand outreaching as bits of crystal falling to the ground like a thousand shimmering spangles and the maids rushed in all at once, their skirts swishing with their eyes wide open, They circled her as if she were a prey and they the scavengers, hands fluttering. Still, never quite daring to touch, their voices skittered across the marble, sharp, hushed, unstoppable. “Miss Eleanor—!” “She slipped—!” “Never thought I’d see the day—” “God’s hand in it…” “Poetic justice…” The words were uttered, worse than the pain in her ankle. There were gasps of s