All Chapters of Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance : Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

They wept in the room. The air was so charged with salt, the walls so close in clenched proximity, that they had crept forward like thieves to see what no crystal-lined chamber below ever would. Shayla had inserted her sister's fingers into her own and was refusing to let go. She fought and jammed her knuckles obstinately in protest at being forced to let go. Her dress was rumpled, her hair disheveled, her tears streaming down her face — but for the first time in years, she wasn't Anderson's daughter with fins anymore. She was Shayla Only, a girl who loved her sister more than the golden cage she'd been born into. She took a deep breath, her own voice breaking on the out-breath as she said the words out loud one more time, half-pleaded: "You may not come here tonight, Leya. Never." Leya was still, face white, breast heaving with gasps for breath. Her puffed, red-streaked eyes darted to the door in surprise at night outdoors. She still heard half-audial on the edges of her mind the

Dry and dusty was the air, thick with the odor of aged perfume — the trace, lingering remembrance of a life not her own. Open stood the wardrobe, half the life concealed, loose shade between garments racks pulled open like wounds. Flickering low on the desk was a candle, its wavering flame unsure on the paper, on the nakedness of night. Leya hunched over the desk, shoulders bowed in, as if she could wriggle down small enough to slip out. Her fingers dangled over a fresh sheet of paper for an eternity. A quill pen rested between her fingers like a small sharp sword; the inkwell waited patiently like a famished beast. The silence within the room was so dense that it would have been a fist around her throat. How do you put a heart in a bottle and insert it into ink? How do you tell a man who once meant the world to you that his love was not great enough to make you whole? Shayla was in the background of the window, her eyelids red, towel slapping across her face as if it were suppress

Outside Blackwood gates, the world was tough. It was big, black, and silent — the sort of silence that pressed against ears until it grumbled. No crystal. No chandeliers. No violins. No crystal laughter, cut like knives. Just the fretful susurration of wind in leaves and the dry crunch of gravel beneath Leya's feet. For the first time in months, she was by herself. No gold eyes looking back at her from artfully crafted environments, no toxic smiles breaking up behind crystal goblets of champagne, no fingers clenching at phantom strings at her wrists. She was free. And freedom wasn't a taste of victory. It was a taste of loss. Her feet lagged behind, every step an awkward struggle. Her dress remained clinging wet and sour to her skin, cream and wine stains stiff with modesty. The night breeze sliced against her, nipped more keenly with every slash of wind. She clutched her bag around herself as if to warm her, to protect her from remembering, from yearning. Her op

It inched in on its weak, shy light. The sort which never really manages to make it past the floor before it's gone, like it is as afraid of the world that it has to encounter as the world of it is. It inched into the black cloak of night with soft gray and pink edges.Her legs ache from walking, her body bruised by the pain of not only her weight, but weight-bearin' pain of her sorrow. Step by step a question: Was she doing this? Should she be doing this? And yet here she was, walking down an unfamiliar road, with nothing in her marrow but weariness and an innocent child's heart to spur her on to the why she walked.And then—"Leya!"Her cry ripped the stillness.She spun about, gasp knotted in her breast.Shayla.Her sister skidded around the curve of the road, cloak streaming behind her, hair pulled back and wind-tossed, cheeks red, rosy pink-red, face smeared with wet, but eyes aflame, brazenly staring into Leya's. When at last she arrived close enough to her sister, she said not

Rhythms were woven into mornings.Light sliced in mornings, through mist-veiled, coldly filtered glass and streaming in bars of yellow across floors. The Corner Bakery bread was more in demand when Leya opened the window wide to let cool air in It wasn't done to excess. Old floorboards were groaning everywhere and the ceiling groaned whenever there was a gust of wind. But it was real. Not pretended. There was nothing there covered with plastic over rot and Leya was safe, finally, for the first time in a very, very long time.---She started modestly.She just sat in the window and stared out over the world. Children played in the street, playing basketball with sticks. Peddlers yelled in the alleys at old women. Men were unloading wagons of crates, their laughter hanging, wild and uncontrolled.No one looked sideways in her direction. No one sneered when her dress was creased, her hair disheveled. She was respectable there—and she liked it.Later, when bravery returned, she shopped w