All Chapters of SILENT BETWEEN TWO HEARTS: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The cabin felt heavier after Don left, like he had scraped the air with his bare hands and left it bruised. For hours, Elena barely moved from where she sat curled on the sofa, staring at nothing, lost in a storm Harry wished he could pull her out of.Harry watched her from the opposite chair, torn apart by the helplessness twisting inside him. He had never seen Elena like this. Never. The Elena he knew, strong, sharp-tongued, unbending, was the woman who stood up to him the first day they met. She had challenged him, questioned him, even laughed at him when he tried too hard to look serious. She was fire and calm rolled into one. She was the woman who survived her father’s drinking, her sister’s death, the lies, the heartbreaks. She had walked through life’s worst storms and still carried herself like she owed the world nothing.But this man, Don, had turned her into a trembling shadow in minutes.Harry couldn’t unsee it. The flinch in her shoulders. The way she wrapped her arms arou

While the investigation dragged into its second week, Harry found himself living two lives: one in the lounge, where he tried to be a present father, and the other in his mind, where every thought, every second, drifted toward Elena.His lounge, usually alive with music and warm laughter, now felt different. Dimmer. Uneasy. A shadow followed him everywhere. And part of that shadow was a boy, skinny, nervous, and barely seventeen, who kept hovering around Naomi. Harry had noticed him before, but now the boy’s presence gnawed at him more than ever.Harry wasn’t blind. The boy had eyes for his daughter, and Naomi, in her bright innocence, didn’t see anything wrong with it. She was growing fast. And the boy, skinny as he was, walked with the cocky confidence of adolescence. Every time Harry walked into a room and saw that boy near Naomi, something inside him stirred in a way that reminded him too much of his own youth.He remembered being that boy, head full of dreams, thinking love was e

Elena never imagined that grief could feel this noisy. The cabin was silent, too silent, but her mind was a battlefield. For three nights, she had barely slept. Don Isandro's voice echoed through the walls long after he left. His ultimatum, that ledger, the cruel smirk he wore as if her life belonged to him… it all clung to her chest like a tightening rope.Two days had passed, but her body still reacted to every sound near the windows, every rustle outside. She had locked all doors, bolted all latches, shut every curtain. Yet she felt exposed.Harry had returned the previous night, but they had barely spoken. He sat on the other side of the room, pretending to read a newspaper he hadn’t turned in two hours. Elena could sense his concern, his desire to speak, to help, but she didn’t know how to let him in.Not yet.Not when she wasn’t sure what his intentions were.But tonight, something felt different. He kept glancing toward her as if gathering courage. She saw him look at her hands

Back at Monte Carlos, Don Isandro paced the length of his dim office like a storm trapped in a small room. The air felt heavy with anger, anger that clawed at the walls, anger that tasted like metal on his tongue. His jaw was clenched so tightly a faint pulse throbbed along the side of his face.He slammed his fist against the desk.How had Elena escaped?He had planned everything down to the last detail. Every move, every threat, every means of control. In his mind, she was already tied to his world, bound to him in a way she would never break away from. He had imagined her staying under his authority, becoming a symbol of his power, someone he could present to others to reinforce how untouchable he was.But she slipped away. Because of Harry.That name burned him from the inside out.Harry had walked into Monte Carlos with nothing but a forged marriage certificate and a determination Don never expected. He underestimated him terribly. To Don, Harry had simply been a city man with to

Harry glanced at Elena, the weight of everything catching up with him. “Elena… everything that’s happened… everything you’ve survived… I want you to know, this is your new life now. No more running. No more fear.” Elena wiped her tears and nodded. “I know. And I want to be part of this. I’m not going anywhere.” Naomi looked up. “We’re a team, right?” Harry looked at them at Elena’s tired but brave eyes, at Naomi’s hopeful face, and felt something settle inside him. “Yes,” he said quietly. “We’re a team.” Outside, the sirens faded into the night. Inside, the three of them held onto one another. It wasn’t the end of their story. It was finally the beginning.A few days later, Harry, Naomi, and Elena walked into the old Porto Lagos City Hall. The hall had been abandoned for years, a faded relic in the center of town, its walls cracked, windows clouded with dust, and its once-grand stage swallowed by cobwebs. Most people barely spared it a glance anymore. But to Elena, the moment she step