Semua Bab Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance : Bab 41 - Bab 50

Dinner was over—but the game wasn't.Leya inched slowly from her chair as the rest retreated, plates still half full, words lingering behind with poison-filled glares.Nathaniel sat frozen alone, glass brimming but untouched, eyes thrown into shadow.Vivian kissed Harrison's cheek softly, lingered an extra moment longer than needed, and breathed low and soft against his ear.Harrison's eyes flared once—to Leya.Then nodded.Vivian's stilettos clicked hard on marble as she and Eleanor vanished into the corridors of the east wing, their laughter snapping behind them like a viper's tail.Leya swept her skirts up high, her step faltering, lovely, protected.She could sense it—the weight of Harrison's eyes boring into the back of her neck.She didn't glance back.Not until she'd moved past the doorway.Step one out of the room, and she'd be breathing again.One step—"Leya," Nathaniel's voice cut the tension like a knife.She shut up.The entire room was silent.She turned, very slowly.Na

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. Everything

The rest of the day dragged like molasses-slow, heavy, too heavy. Leya did not eat. Could not. Not because there was nothing to eat—but because she could not assure it was safe. Every bite is a risk. Every shadow, a killer. Every glance from a servant, a secret message. She walked barefoot across her room in stealthy steps, ticking off the planks on the floor from the force of habit. She had done it before, the all-nighters in solitude. It was how she did not slide—how she kept count on herself when the world around her conspired to scrub her out. > And the door stood now a fraction of an inch open. Worst of all. Because it signaled they wanted her to float. To converse. To tumble. To believe she was free. --- Evening – Dining Hall Vivian sat back at the head of the table, ivory shawl draped on her shoulders in cobweb folds. She filled her glass with wine daintily, her very narrow fingers struggling to close the glass. Eleanor is on Vivian's left. Harrison is on Vivian's

The door closed on Leya.Not slam. Not shudder.But the quiet kind of finality that shattered in more vigorously than rage ever could.She did not cry.Not as she went down the corridor.Not as she went by the gilded mirrors that had unsettled her with faces she barely recognized.Not even when she arrived at her door.She bolted it.Fair and right. Top bolt. Bottom latch. Handle in position.And she just stood there for a moment or so, leaning against the cold wood, her body trembling due to the poison Harrison had injected into her like venom.The words would still have been echoing in her mind, over and over and over—not because they hurt—But because they meant something.Something real.> "Perhaps they should have finished what they started."It ought to have crushed her.Ought've crushed what remained of the girl who'd entered into this home with borrowed strength and muffled appetite.But it didn't.Something was shattered instead.Not her.The illusion.The illusion that Harri

The house whispered differently now.There was something in the air. Something that had slept but had opened its eyes.Leya could feel it each time her bare feet touched the shining floor.Each time her fingertips touched the banisters.Each time her eyes met a servant's and stayed one second too long.She was being watched.But not all eyes were unfriendly anymore.Some were curious.Some were scared.And one set… had saved her life.No word was spoken, though. Silences like gold and worth more than lies here.---Leya's Room – MorningShe was sitting by the window, lap full of notebook, fingers clasped around the pen.She was not writing. Not yet.She was thinking.Joining up.Relating.The Clara visit. The note on the door. The fares are tucked away. Nathaniel's refusal of everything. Harrison's rage. The whisper down the corridor.And most of all—The silence.The ominous silence which had descended upon the house since Harrison's outburst.Vivian hadn't summoned her in.Eleanor h