All Chapters of Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance : Chapter 231 - Chapter 240

The heart-shaped envelope on the kitchen table had been worn into a tiny, frayed heart. The paper, close up, was older than the house, with browned edges and on the verge of cracking at the touch of an outraged finger. Even the ink had a sheen of despondency — careful, slow hand of a man writing half-heartedly to console himself against horror he couldn't put into words.Outside, there was no rain, the air thick and expectant but On the Anderson flat the comforting sounds of life grappled reluctant, to persist: the quiet thrum of the fridge, the muffled boom of a TV in someone else's living room, the muffled clang of a tram farther up the street between Leya and Shayla the house had been cut back to a small table, and every other sound from outside an affront.Leya wrote the letter using the tip of her fingernail, as if she'd be scalded. She felt her father's handwriting inscribed just under her skin like an atlas to somewhere — to a man who ventured out into the dark one last time wi

Three days passed before Carrington's return. The sisters existed for three days in wordlessness, exchanging brief words to one another like ill-tempered ghosts within their own home. Each meal congealed on the plate. Each knock at the door sent Leya's heart racing up into her throat. And always, in the dark, she remembered her father's last words, the weight of the envelope, the dirt under her fingers from a grave that—she saw finally—was nothing she'd ever dreamed. It had hardly passed that the storm when Carrington appeared on their doorstep once more, coat dripping, face unreadable. "May I come in?" he growled. The parlor itself carried a bitter flavor of set-down fire smoke. Carrington set down his satchel, opened a folder, and with a magician pulling out cards—but harmless—flapped open what lay within. Bank accounts. Letters. Photos. Shayla leaned forward, caught breath. "What did you find?" Carrington's voice was soft, but beneath the words, there was a struggli

Rain pounded against the windows, came back in time, but inside the Anderson home, a tempest was brewing of a different kind, one to break. Paper and snapshots strewn over the table like bones on the road. Samuel Blackwood hung in the air, a pall as thick as despair, as heavy as sorrow. Shayla's arms were outstretched on the sill, rigid back in rage, standing by the window. Lean and cadaverous was the face against the panes of glass. She hadn't ceased shaking since Carrington'd left. Leya was shoved onto the couch behind Shayla, arms flung up over her face, shoulders shaking unsaid with tears. There were two silences in the room—two silences, one quilted of rage, one of desolation. Finally, Shayla broke the silence, a voice a lash in it. “I swear to God, Leya, I’ll kill him myself.” She turned, her eyes blazing. “Samuel Blackwood. He destroyed Papa. He stripped us of everything. And we’ve been living in the wreckage while he sits on a throne built on blood.” Leya’s head li

Air hung motionless, its silence thick with too much unseen to thump against its walls. All movement, the somnambulant dance of a candle on the table top, its wick rotating, zagging as a hurricane ripped downward through the shattered window. The wax oozed out in slow lumps, hardening in rigid pools — as if time itself hemorrhaged before it. Leya tensed, fists clenched over the letter. Thicker than paper, thicker than lies, it bore their father on it. Shayla sat perched above her, riding atop her sister's hand, their unspoken awareness searing. Silence stretched out before them, but within silence, memory entwined about them. --- Leya's head had whirled nine years ago. She was looking up at him once more — tall, broad-shouldered father, big presence that had engulfed the whole room at home. Cedar and ink in the far distance were what he always smelled, and his burning voice. He had summoned them to his study one evening, after his "trip." The lamp had thrown a golden shadow on the

The plot did not arrive with thunder. It arrived on a breath — gentle, calculated, hardly noticeable until it had already occupied space. They met the night, when light outside the small apartment yielded to the drizzle-gray of oncoming evening. Leon and Aurora slept: Leon heaped upon his sister in a heap of warmth, Aurora's lashes curled into delicate twists. Their small, pinched lives beat for Leya, weak and sacred. That was what she was staking on a war. Shayla spread the papers on the kitchen table like one spreads out a map while Carrington loomed in the doorway, his cheeks stubbled, his eyes streaked with the exhaustion of one who'd spent six months digging through rotten mold Under the light, ae paers gleamed — corporate reports, shell company reports, coded bank reports, bogus project proposals written in creams and steel-grays that made catastrophe look respectable. We need smoke and mirrors, not bullets," said Shayla. Her voice was tight as a string. "He loves projects. H