An Extremely Overpowered God Of War

Chapter 8

 The room around Raymond continued its quiet murmuring.

But Raymond wasn't hearing any of it anymore.

The rage that moved through him in that moment was the kind that doesn't announce itself loudly it doesn't shake a person's hands or raise their voice or make them dramatic. It goes deep and cold and absolutely still, and it is far more dangerous than anything loud. He wanted to reach out and close his hands around something. He could feel the restraint it was taking not to.

Because before he left. Before he walked out of this house five years ago and gave everything he had to a war that asked everything of him in return they had made him a promise. Victoria had made him a promise. That his mother and his sister would be looked after. That they would not want for anything. That they would not suffer a single day while he was gone.

That was the agreement. That was what he had left on.

And now he was standing here being told his mother had been turned out of her own daughter-in-law's house to live at the far end of the city in a numbered building on a street he had never heard of. And his sister had vanished entirely, and the woman telling him all of this was doing it with the casual ease of someone who felt no responsibility for any of it.

His eyes moved to Victoria.

When he spoke, the anger was still there every bit of it but it had been pressed into something quieter and more precise, shaped into words that cost him something to say.

“I trusted you.” His voice was low and completely controlled. 

“I trusted you with them. You stood in front of me and you promised me you promised me that you were going to take care of them. That they would not lack anything. That they would not suffer while I was gone.” His jaw tightened. 

“So why. Why would you do this to them?”

Victoria looked at him like the question itself was an insult to her intelligence.

“Didn't you hear what my mother just said?” Her voice was sharp and impatient, the voice of someone who has already closed a door and finds it tedious to keep explaining why. 

“Your mother didn't want to do anything. She was too proud, too above everything, and she walked out by herself. And your sister ran away with a man which, as my mother already told you, runs in your family.” She opened her hands slightly, a gesture of false helplessness. 

“What exactly were we supposed to do? Hold them down? Force them to stay? That's not something we were willing to do, and honestly, it's not something we should have had to do.”

Then something shifted in her expression the sharpness giving way to something that looked almost like wounded pride, the performance of someone who had been waiting for the right moment to deliver their version of the story.

“And you know what, Raymond, while we are being honest —”

Immediately Raymond Interrupted her with a low but deadly voice.

“I was the fool. I was the big, embarrassing fool who spent years thinking everything was fine. Thinking you were you were here building something, becoming something, taking care of things the way a wife is supposed to. I was doing everything on my end, absolutely everything, making sure things moved, making sure doors opened, carrying the entire weight of it —”

 he stopped himself, reset, and when he continued his voice was colder and more deliberate. 

“And what did I get in return? Nothing. You did absolutely nothing.”

he shook his head slowly.

“You knew the condition my mother was in. You knew she wasn't strong. And still, this is what happened. So no. I'm done saying anything more about it, all the new doors that was supposed to be open, will be closed from now on.” 

Raymond looked at her for a long moment after he finished.

Then, without a word, he reached out and took the envelopes from Victoria's mother's hand.

He opened the larger one. Pulled out the divorce papers. Set the envelope aside.

He didn't read through them. Didn't pause to consider them. 

He simply took the pen that was in his jacket pocket and signed where the signature was required, quickly and cleanly, the way a man signs something he has already made peace with in his mind before his hand ever touches the page.

He set the papers down.

The envelope containing the fifty thousand dollars he left exactly where it was. 

He didn't touch it. Didn't glance at it. He simply turned from it as though it were not there and began walking toward the exit.

Victoria's mother's voice followed him immediately, sharp and quick. 

“The money he didn't take the money —”

Victoria watched him walk away, and for just a moment something crossed her face that wasn't contempt or satisfaction or boredom something quieter and less certain than any of those things. But it passed quickly, and she lifted her chin and looked away.

“Let him leave it,” she said, her voice recovering its composure. 

“It's not a loss. None of this is a loss.”

Her brother's voice rose above the murmuring that had started up again among the guests, loud and celebratory, carrying the particular energy of someone who had been waiting for exactly this outcome.

“Finally!” He clapped his hands together once, grinning broadly at the room around him. 

“It's done! This bastard we all thought was dead has signed and gone, and now —” He spread his arms wide and looked around at the decorated hall, the guests, the flowers, the luxury of everything around them. 

“Now the real party begins!”

**

When Raymond stepped outside, the noise of the celebration followed him briefly through the open door before it was cut off behind him and replaced by the ordinary sounds of the street traffic, distant voices, the city moving through its day without any awareness of what had just happened inside that house.

He stood on the pavement for a moment.

Then he raised his hand and a taxi pulled in toward the curb without much delay, the driver leaning slightly to look at him through the passenger window.

Raymond pulled the door open and got in.

“Z Street,”he said. 

“Take me to Z Street.”

The driver looked at him in the rearview mirror for just a second something in his expression shifting slightly. Then he put the car into gear.

“You going to see someone your loved ones?” the driver asked, keeping his eyes on the road as he pulled out. 

Raymond looked out the window.

“Yes.”