Semua Bab Chains of Fortune: Beneath the Blackwood Name : Bab 11 - Bab 20

The shadows in Blackwood Manor didn’t just stretch, they moved.I felt it that night. A breath of cold on the back of my neck. The sensation of being watched, even though I was alone. Or supposed to be.I’d left my door slightly ajar on purpose. Something about being locked in felt worse than leaving myself vulnerable. And Lucien hadn’t spoken to me since the encounter in the wine cellar two nights ago. Not a word. Not a glance. Just silence—a weapon wielded by a man who knew how to make you feel nonexistent.I should’ve been relieved.Instead, I felt like I was being hunted.It was past midnight when I crept from my bedroom barefoot. The marble was cold beneath my toes. I wasn’t sure where I was going—only that I couldn’t breathe in that gilded cage of a room anymore. The walls whispered with memories that weren’t mine, ghosts that didn’t belong to me, and yet clung like frostbite.The hallway was lit dimly by wall sconces. Everything was too still. Too perfect. It made me crav

I heard it again that night.The sound that shouldn’t have existed in a house so thoroughly modern, so aggressively designed to be silent—like secrets had been engineered out of the walls. But secrets are stubborn. They crawl. They linger. They whisper when no one’s listening.I sat upright in bed, my breath caught halfway between sleep and fear. The room was dimly lit by the moonlight slicing through the curtain gaps. My heart beat so loud I could barely distinguish it from the distant creaking sound. Not the wind. Not old pipes.Voices.Soft. Fragmented. Behind the walls.I pushed the sheets off and slipped into Lucien’s silk robe, the one I’d found draped over his armchair a few nights ago. I told myself it was comfort that made me wear it now, not the lingering scent of him. I padded quietly through the room, pressing my ear to the cold marble wall.There it was again. A woman’s voice, sharp and gasping, followed by something heavier—like dragging.I froze.Not imagination.Not a

The silence was the cruelest part of it all.It wasn’t the sharp snap of Lucien’s warning in the elevator, or even the way Jasper had disappeared so quickly afterward—no, it was the silence that followed. It stretched between us like silk soaked in blood. Beautiful. Tense. Waiting to tear.I walked ahead of him through the cavernous halls of Blackwood Manor, the click of my heels swallowed by thick velvet carpet and colder shadows. Every chandelier overhead flickered like it, too, sensed the storm brewing beneath Lucien’s skin.When I reached the door to my bedroom, I stopped but didn’t go in.“Are you going to pretend that didn’t just happen?” I asked. My voice was steady, though my body still vibrated from the memory of his lips crushing against mine, the wild way his control had splintered inside that elevator. The taste of him still lingered like forbidden sin.Lucien didn’t answer at first. He stood behind me, hands tucked in his pockets like he didn’t just rattle the ground bene

The mansion’s walls had learned to whisper.It wasn’t the creaking of floorboards or the sigh of the wind through the glass. It was subtler than that—like the very air had begun to carry secrets. Ever since Lucien’s outburst at the gala, silence between us had turned into something heavier, something toxic. Every glance held a question. Every brush of fingers, a dare.I hadn’t seen him since that night. Three days of avoidance. Three days of being trapped inside a palace of ice with only my thoughts and the occasional cold nod from the housekeeper. And even then, I swore I saw pity in her eyes.I pressed my hand to the windowpane in the east corridor, watching clouds roll over the Hudson like bruises in the sky.I used to believe I could read people.But Lucien Blackwood wasn’t a person.He was a smokescreen wrapped in Armani and silence. A match struck inside a locked room. You didn’t know you were burning until the walls melted around you.I turned from the window.I needed answers.

IvyLucien’s silence was the loudest thing in the room.The phone screen still glowed between his fingers, the message burning brighter than the fire behind him. I could see it in the way his jaw locked—the way his fingers flexed like he wanted to crush the device entirely.You went too far, Lucien. Blood doesn’t lie. Neither do I.The words echoed in my mind like a curse.I stepped closer. “Who sent it?”He didn’t look at me. “I don’t know.”I didn’t believe him. Not because I thought he was lying. But because I could see the fear in his eyes.And Lucien Blackwood didn’t scare easily.I tried again. “What does it mean—‘blood doesn’t lie’?”He finally looked at me. “It means someone knows the truth about you. About Margot. About… everything.”My stomach dropped. “But who?”Lucien’s face hardened. “Someone with access to my father’s records. Someone who’s been watching long before I realized.”A chill crept down my spine. “Watching me?”“Maybe us both.”I turned away, wrapping my arms