An Extremely Overpowered God Of War

Chapter 7

 Raymond looked at Marcus.

Not with the heat he had been carrying since he walked through the door something had shifted in him, settled into something quieter and more deliberate, the kind of stillness that comes before something significant rather than after it.

“So you're the one,” he said, his voice even and unhurried. 

“You're the one standing here telling Victoria you're the reason she has anything. Telling her you're the one who made it all happen.” He held Marcus's gaze for a moment without blinking. 

“You know the truth. You know exactly what you can and cannot do on your own. And you know it better than anyone else standing in this room right now.”

He let that land, then Marcus shifted his attention briefly to Victoria's mother and the envelopes still extended in her hand.

“If it's money you want to take and disappear with, fine. I will make it a hundred thousand dollars instead of fifty and you'll walk out of here without another word. Save yourself the embarrassment of what this is turning into.”

However Raymond didn't show any interest which made Marcus looked at him for a moment and then he laughed.

It started low and built quickly, and the people standing closest to him picked it up almost immediately.

“Just imagine,” Marcus said, shaking his head with the wide, easy smile of a man who felt completely untouchable. 

“He's saying I got my promotion out of his goodwill.” He looked around at the guests with an expression of pure entertainment. 

“This man who doesn't even have a rank is standing here telling people he's the reason I am where I am today.”

More laughter. Louder this time.

“Is he serious?” someone called out from the back.

“There's something wrong with him,” another voice added. 

“Has to be.”

Victoria's sister stepped forward with her arms folded, her face twisted with contempt. 

“First he accused Victoria of owing everything to him. Then he accused Marcus. What's next?” She gestured at him with one hand. 

“This is the height of it. The absolute height.”

“Someone needs to remove him,” her brother said flatly.

Victoria's father's voice rose above the rest, harder and more final than the others. 

“You have embarrassed yourself enough. Leave this place now, before we stop being patient with you. Stay any longer and we will throw you out ourselves and it will not be gentle.”

The laughter continued around the edges of the room, rolling and overlapping, filling the decorated hall with a sound that was designed to make one person feel as small as possible.

Raymond stood in the middle of all of it and said nothing.

He didn't look embarrassed. He didn't look broken. He just stood there and let it wash over him, his expression unreadable, his eyes moving slowly and deliberately around the room the way they always did when he was processing something rather than reacting to it.

And then something stopped him.

A thought. Small at first, then suddenly loud enough to cut through everything else.

He looked around the room again properly this time, not at the guests or the decorations or the faces twisted with laughter but searching. Scanning. Moving from one corner to the next with a focus that had nothing to do with what was happening around him.

His brow pulled together slightly.

“Where the hell is my mother? Where is my sister? I haven't seen either of them anywhere in this room.”

However nobody answered.

The laughter had died down slightly but the room hadn't gone quiet people were still murmuring, still shifting, still carrying on the way guests do when they have decided a disturbance is beneath their attention. 

Nobody looked at Raymond when he asked. Nobody turned his way. It was as if the question hadn't been spoken at all, as if he were simply not worth the effort of a response.

At that moment Raymond's eyes moved around the room one more time, harder this time, more deliberate.

“Where is my mother.” His voice came out sharp and direct, cutting through the ambient noise with enough force that the nearest conversations stopped. 

“And where is my sister. I am not seeing either of them anywhere in this room.”

A brief silence followed.

Then Victoria's mother cleared her throat.

She didn't look particularly troubled by the question. She tilted her head slightly and began speaking in the casual, unbothered tone of someone relaying information they consider entirely unremarkable.

“As for your sister,” she said, “she ran off with some man not long after you left for the military. Just packed up and disappeared. We looked for her briefly and found nothing. Haven't seen her since.” 

She paused and then added with a small shrug, “But honestly, it doesn't surprise me. It runs in your family, doesn't it? Isn't that the same way your mother picked up and ran with both of you when you were still small children? So yes. It runs in the blood. Your sister simply did what came naturally.”

Raymond's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes went very still.

Victoria's mother wasn't finished.

“As for your mother —” She paused here, just briefly, just long enough to make the pause feel intentional.

 “She left this house as well. Of her own free will, I want to make that very clear. She started feeling like she was too important to be asked to do anything around here. Too big to run a simple errand, too big to contribute, too big to be of any use whatsoever. So she walked out. Nobody threw her out she left on her own and she did not come back.”

She looked at Raymond with the flat, even expression of someone who had rehearsed their innocence carefully.

“But since you are so desperate to find her if you go to Zed Street, at the far end of the city, all the way to the end, I believe you will find her there.”She thought for a moment, tapping one finger lightly against her arm. 

“The number what is it I believe it is thirty-two. Number thirty-two, Zed Street. Go there. I'm fairly certain that is where she ended up.”