All Chapters of Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance : Chapter 191 - Chapter 200

Days to the final fiddle trill, the worn-out laughter, and the crystal glass memory of days past. Yet the taste of it all lingered with Harrison. He hadn't seen her since. Initially, it hadn't affected him this much. He'd sat and thought to himself that Leya was pouting, always just out of his grasp. He'd imagined she was in her bedroom, crying or pacing, starving until she relented again. And he'd teased her for it, laughed. Let her pout. Let her learn. She would crawl back when she was done with her pout. That's what he'd been telling himself. Days passed. The house was spacious but not infinite. His servants complained as they darted toward him, catching his eye but he did not wish to see even a hint of her anywhere—outside the dining room, outside the gardens, outside the solitude of his own bedchamber. And yet for pride, would not give in. Until tonight. Something held him there at her door down the hallway. A silence that ran deeper than a grievance in his heart. Some

The sound still lingered in the house, but the mood had altered. Champagne and roars once burst with room between, but now the guests talked in clusters, looking up the stairs where Harrison had gone to deliver his verdict. Leya wasn't anywhere to be found. Words stuck like poison, fogging around the room. Samuel Blackwood was at the far end of the formal dining room table. He gazed, a man never, with the urge to rush to strike. The music was finished in screams. The talk ended. Everybody's eyes are on him. "Gone?" His calm did not conceal the impact of his words, which boomed down the hall like thunder over the plain. He spoke to Harrison, steadfast and immovable. "Explain." Harrison swallowed, pride shaking before his father's gaze. His face went pale, fists clenching into hard, tight-looking fists. "I have searched her room. She has undressed. The wardrobe is empty." There was heavy silence after that, heavy with something to swallow. Samuel's face set hard, temple vein bea

The mood in Germany was unlike any other; it was Bitter and cold, and the scent of rain and metal clung to the streets, The family descended from the train at the station and into the cacophony of foreign and harsh sounds. The ground under the feet was paved over, the sound of each step out like the building to announce they were not there.They stood there, arms full of bags, eyes scrunched up towards the vaulted arched ceiling as strangers walked past with worldly assurance. It was just another Tuesday to the world. To them, it was birth.Shayla put her back ramrod straight, chin up, but her stomach was coiled up in incredulous spasm so bad she knew she was going to double up and go crashing to the floor. On each side of her, Leya had her belly clutched in one hand and her sister's elbow in the other, her own face stretched wide with horror and astonishment. And trailing behind them, the parents went, shoulder to shoulder, mutely, burdened with bags that grew heavier with each pace.

Thirty days since Leya had disappeared. Thirty days of Samuel's wrath heaped atop each other. Thirty days of men searching, letters written, and coins invested in nothing. Thirty days of silence wherein her smile—tears—once rang between manor walls. And in the thirty days, Harrison worked behind the scenes. He'd talked himself into thinking she was pouting. That she was standing behind the door, pouting in tantrums of barbs. That, obstinate child-like, she was holding her breath waiting for him to come back to her, to shout for her, to beg her to come out from behind the door and find home. He'd so firmly believed this lie—until now. The room was silent, too silent. Closet door ajar, its emptiness slashes lines of wood. The bare shelves consumed most of them. The makeup table she'd sat at to brush her hair, her tiny perfume vials, the earrings she'd worked so hard on—lay bare. She'd removed everything but a letter, its crease. It lay on the table like a ghost, waiting. Harrison

The corridor was quiet, quiet enough to wrap around their necks in a noose. Harrison's fists were at his waist, the letter trembling on the table in front of them like an unforgiven vice that not one among them had the manhood to clutch. Vivian rose from the settee with a slow, tap of high heels on marble, her stride shortened to the short steps of an angry queen, measured steps and glinting furious eyes. "Think we spoiled her high?" she sneered, a smile that quivered at the corner of her mouth. "No, Harrison. You spoiled her high." --- His head jerked up, his eyes blazing with rage "You don't dare—" "Dared I not?" Vivian spat, her voice venomous now, her finger pointing between them. "You would not have stood up for your own wife. No. You let Eleanor rip her to pieces with words. You let Samuel vomit on her pride. And you—" she jammed her finger into his chest now, tearing the tape of his shirt with her nails, "—laughed. Rose drowned her." Harrison flinched but did not back away