Semua Bab Scarred Hearts: A Mafia Billionaire Romance : Bab 61 - Bab 70

---- Blackwood Mansion – Front Entrance, Two Days Later Someone knocked at the door. It had the ring of the crack of a gunshot in a house built on hush. Three staccato knocks on the oak doorway—measured, patient, stubborn. Gresham stayed where he stood halfway down the corridor, scowling. No one had passed through the gate. No one had inscribed in the book, Eleanor shrieked along the corridor every day. And yet. He pushed it open a bit, then pushed it wide. She jammed her fists into pockets, slouching to the shoulders but snapping with eyes. It was like a navy trench coat folding the shape around her, but it wasn't concealing the authority in the air. "I am requesting to see Leya Morrison," said the woman. Gresham blinked. "She's—she's not receiving visitors." "She'll see me," the woman replied, her voice as hard as it was cruel. "Tell her. It's Mia." She did not knock to enter. She stood and waited. Which made her that much more deadly somehow. --- Upst

---Blackwood Mansion – Dawn the Next MorningThe sky was gray.Not storm-heavy gray, but dull, overcast gray that clung like held breath. The sort of sky that seemed to reflect the way it was inside Leya—muted, stretched, and on the verge of snapping.She brushed her hair in front of the little mirror in her room without glancing at herself.Her thoughts were on Mia's list.Five names. Three with lines drawn through them.No phone calls.No goodbyes.Only holes where lives once were.She hadn't wanted to think about it after Mia departed in the hours. Had tried to persuade herself into thinking that the paper could still remain folded, hidden under the floorboard with the rest of her secrets.But it would not remain secret.Not now.Because now she knew—this was not cruelty.It was designed.---Same MorningVivian's Breakfast TableVivian stirred her tea with ice crystal poise, her ring ticking delicately against the china cup. Eleanor sat to the left of her, playing with the food g

--- Blackwood Mansion – Morning After the Necklace Incident Today's home quiet was not the same. Not the neat, familiar quiet Leya had grown accustomed to—the sort that clung between marble pillars and muffled arguments. Today's quiet was the lookout. Redolent with disdain. As claustrophobic as a hangman's noose. Every servant's glance had changed now. The way Gresham skirted around her down the corridor. The way Juliet refused to look her in the eye when Leya came strolling down the dining hall corridor. Clara, who had tried to help her before, said sorry with a strained, wrenching smile and vanished without speaking. Everyone in the house knew. Or at least thought so. Vivian's necklace was found in her bedroom. Laid out on the bed like a trap. A clever trap of silk and poison. But where one was at the Blackwood estate, appearance was everything. And appearance meant Leya was a thief. --- Hours Earlier – Vivian's Sitting Room The storm had started in the guise of an order

--- Blackwood Mansion – Two Days after the Necklace Incident Storms had brewed all morning. Not the thundershowers. The hot ones—the thick, gray-clouded suffocation that drained color and air and made the entire mansion feel older than it was. Leya wandered like a ghost in its halls. Not because she had a secret to hide. But because nobody wished to look at her. Even silence, eventually, is exile. Ironed sheets. Emptied breakfast trays. She did the sidestep along the lower wing when she took the additional step, simply so she wouldn't have to encounter Harrison in the upper wing. Not that she was afraid of him. But because there was still this idiot, pain spot in her that… hoped. Hoped he'd listen to her. Or ask what actually happened. Or remember, for a moment, she hadn't come into this world to bring him down. She hadn't signed up to join the family. Or the house. Or the battle. But she had persisted. Every. Single. Day. And now, not being wasn't enough. --- Outside Ha

--- Blackwood Mansion – Just Before Midnight The house wrapped its silence in silk—silence, velvet-covered and concealing something even though it was rotting in decay. Leya glided down the east corridor with a dusty elegance and fibers of frayed glory. She didn't bother to go out of her way to avoid tread. She was tracking it. Eleanor had a ritual, too. A clockwork evening ritual. Ten minutes in front of the mirror. And then her nightly "self-care"—alien wine in bottles, lavender oil, and moans only the wallpaper heard. Tonight, though, Eleanor was not alone. Clara next door, cloth in hand, was doing as she dusted the shelf above the armoire. Eyes once in the direction of Leya, now on the floor. Message received. Leya stood before Eleanor's door. Knocked once. Hard. Not polite. A pause. Then footsteps. The door creaked open. Eleanor's shadow began to emerge in the light of her vanity. She glared at Leya as if she'd slammed the door in her face—until something in Leya's