2025-01-20 14:14:18Staring at Raymond’s back, Dahlia’s lips parted slightly, surprise flashing across her face.
She hadn’t expected him to let go so easily, without argument or demands.
However, for a moment, she felt a pang of loss, a strange emptiness she couldn’t quite name.
But she convinced herself that this was the right decision.
Their lives were heading in different directions, and there was no point in holding onto a relationship that no longer worked.
After leaving the restaurant, Raymond wandered on the street, not knowing where to go.
Was money really that important?
He clenched his fists and let out a bitter laugh.
However at that moment, that woman Sophia's words suddenly occurred to him.
“You’re a trillionaire. If you don't believe me, check the balance.”
Trillionaire?
He frowned. Though it seemed absurd to him, it wouldn't hurt if he went to check it out.
After all, he had nothing else to lose.
Without wasting any more time he grabbed his jacket, and placed the card in his pocket heading towards Sky High Bank.
Not long after he arrived.
As he approached the glass doors, a sharp voice cut through the air.
“Well, if it isn’t Raymond.” a familiar voice sneered.
He turned to see Dahlia’s mother and younger sister stepping out from inside the bank and looking at him with disdain.
“You must have really hit rock bottom if you’re here this quickly,” her sister said with a smirk.
“What are you doing at a place like this? Looking for a loan?”
Raymond straightened, his jaw tightening.
“I’m here for my own reasons,” he said evenly.
Dahlia’s mother let out a laugh, her perfectly manicured nails glinting in the sunlight as she gestured dismissively.
“Your reasons? Who are you trying to deceive, we know you came here to beg for a loan.”
Immediately Dahlia's sister chimed in, her tone dripping with mock sympathy.
“Honestly, we’re just glad she’s free of you now. You were always a burden. ”
Raymond glanced at her, his hands tightening into fists at his sides.
“ I’m here to conduct business at this bank. Please just get out of my way. ”
Hearing what Raymond just said, Dahlia’s mother let out a cold laugh, her disdain cutting through the air.
“Business? You? At this bank?” She exchanged a mocking glance with her daughter before turning back to Raymond.
“Do you even know where you are? This is Sky High Bank, the largest bank in the country. People like you don’t belong here.”
Her daughter chimed in, her tone dripping with arrogance.
“And do you even know what it takes to have an account here? Even a basic bronze card requires a deposit of at least one million.”
She leaned closer, her smirk widening.
“Owning a card here is a status symbol. But you?” She laughed, shaking her head. “You’re nothing. You're not even qualified to be a cleaner in this place.”
At that moment Dahlia's mother brought out her bronze card and showed it off to Raymond.
“You see this?Celeb helped us get it. He’s much better than you. And I’m so glad that my daughter has chosen him over you.”
Raymond sneered, not caring about what card they had at all.
He didn’t want to waste any more time with them, reached into his pocket and pulled out the black card Sophia had given him earlier, planning to get into the bank directly.
However, Dahlia’s mother and sister froze immediately as they saw the card in Raymond's hand.
“The Supreme Black Card? !”
Dahlia’s mother exclaimed with shock.
Raymond’s grip tightened on the card as Dahlia’s mother lunged forward, her hand reaching for his. “That card doesn’t belong to you!” she snapped, her voice shrill.
Immediately Raymond stepped back instinctively, keeping the card out of her reach.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his tone calm.
“You can’t have that card . You’ve stolen it, haven’t you?! ”
“It’s not stolen,” he said simply.
Dalia’s mother scoffed, clearly didn’t believe what he said. Immediately she lunged again, her movements frantic and uncoordinated.
Raymond dodged her grasp, but in the struggle, she lost her balance. Her heel slipped against the floor, and she went down with a loud thud.
Seeing what just happened, a gasp escaped her daughter’s lips as she rushed to her mother’s side.
“Mom! Are you okay?”
Dahlia’s mother winced, holding her ankle, her face twisted in pain. “You—” she pointed a trembling finger at Raymond, her voice filled with venom. “You attacked me!”
Raymond blinked in disbelief.
“I didn’t touch you. You fell on your own.”
But his words fell on deaf ears. Dahlia’s sister had started barking orders to the nearby security guards.
“Arrest him! He just hurt my mother!”
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Chapter 362
And then with the easy, unhurried calm of someone who is about to say something entirely ordinary, something that requires no fanfare, no buildup, no performance she looked at the table, at the assembled faces of the people she had known for years, at Penelope's bright, calculating smile and Serena's frozen neutrality and Eric's carefully controlled expression and Derek's genuine curiosity, and she said:"Raymond is my fiancé."The words landed in the center of the room like a stone dropped into still water.Not thrown. Not hurled with dramatic force or delivered with theatrical timing. Just—dropped. Released from Melissa's mouth with the same casual, unhurried ease that she might have used to announce the time of day or the color of her dress."Raymond is my fiancé."Five words.Twenty-three letters.And in the space of approximately two seconds, the entire social architecture of the room the careful hierarchy that had been built over years of interactions, the established narratives
Chapter 361
Melissa and Raymond were moving toward the section of the room where the principal table was set, where Melissa's place had been held by the implicit social reservation that operates in groups of people who know each other well enough to maintain each other's spaces.They sat.Side by side.Serena watched them sit.Her expression was doing several things at once—processing, calculating, resenting, and performing a neutrality that was not entirely convincing.Penelope leaned slightly toward her."I thought she doesn't bring men anywhere," Penelope said, in a voice pitched below the general ambient noise of the room."She doesn't," Serena said."Then who is—""I don't know."They looked at Raymond.Raymond, who was looking around the room with the mild interest of someone taking in a new environment, happened to glance in their direction at that moment.He met Serena's gaze briefly.Held it for exactly as long as was socially natural.Then looked away.Serena felt, unreasonably and irri
Chapter 360
At the other end of the table, Serena was still talking. Something about the fine that should be imposed for late arrivals—the group had established a tradition, early in their years together, of charging small fines for various social infractions, mostly as an excuse for humor, mostly as a way of generating the kind of low-stakes conflict that gives gatherings their energy."Honestly," Eric said, not loudly, not with particular forcefulness, but with the quiet authority of someone whose relative silence has given their words a weight that louder people in the room have not accumulated, "since Melissa is late, we should start the event. This attitude has gone on for too long. If she comes and we've started without her, maybe that's the message that actually lands." He paused. "We call it out. Properly. Tonight."Around the table, heads nodded.There was the particular satisfaction of a group that has been waiting for someone to say the thing they had all been thinking, and here it was
Chapter 359
Then at the people around her, ensuring she had an audience, which she did."Melissa ought to have been here by now," she said, and her voice carried the particular quality of someone making an observation that is also a performance aimed at the room as much as at the specific people around her. "Why would she be keeping everybody here waiting? She's supposed to be here. She's already five minutes late." She looked around with the expression of someone who is managing a reasonable inconvenience with admirable patience. "She's supposed to be here. Why is she keeping everybody waiting?"The question landed in the air of the room, and several people who had been engaged in their own conversations looked up not because they were particularly concerned about Melissa's tardiness, but because Serena's voice had the projection and timing of someone who has learned how to command a room's attention.The response came from the other side of the table.Penelope.Who was, if Raymond's reading of
Chapter 358
He moved away from the window.Began to pace not the agitated, emotional pacing of Benjamin on the other side of the city, but the deliberate, rhythmic pacing of a man whose mind works better when his body is in motion, who has known this about himself for decades and has stopped apologizing for it.His thoughts moved.Connected.Stretched between points, the way a spider's web stretches between anchor points—thin, nearly invisible, but structured, purposeful, holding a shape that is designed to catch things.*Jefferson's grandfather,* he thought. *The old man told me. He told me that he was going to Flame Fire Mountain. That there was someone he was waiting for. He asked me to come along.*He stopped pacing.*I was busy. I couldn't go. And he went alone.*He resumed.*And the person who killed Jefferson's grandson—the account was that the person ran. Ran into Flame Fire Mountain. Ran directly into Flame Fire Mountain as if it were somewhere they were going, somewhere they intended to
Chapter 357
Not what had he done. Not whether he was guilty of the thing that Mr. Black suspected him of. But fundamentally, essentially, at the root of everything: *who is this person?*Because Aldous Mercer had spent fifty years reading people had built his entire career, his entire survival, on his ability to look at a person and understand what they were and Raymond was someone he could not read.Could not place.Could not fit into any of the categories that fifty years of experience had taught him to use.That, more than anything else, was what bothered him.That, more than the suspicion, more than the picture, more than Mr. Black's carefully hedged intel—that was what made him reach for his phone without wasting another second and dial.The line rang once.Twice.Then Mr. Black picked up, the way he always did—without a greeting, without an acknowledgment, simply present on the line and waiting."I know this person," Aldous said, and he said it without preamble, without softening, because s
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