2025-01-20 14:18:11Dahlia’s mother and sister stood in stunned silence, their faces pale.
The weight of Malisa’s words hit them like a hammer, shattering their arrogance into fragments.
“Revoked?” Dahlia’s mother stammered, her voice trembling. “you can’t do this,” Dahlia’s sister sputtered, her earlier sneer replaced by wide-eyed disbelief. Her voice cracked, but Malisa’s icy glare stopped her from saying more.
Malisa’s lips curled into a faint, cold smile. “I already have.”
The scene felt heavier as the gravity of their loss sank in. Membership at this bank wasn’t just about convenience—it was a symbol of status, of power, and losing it was a blow that would echo across their social and business lives.
For a family that thrived on connections and reputation, this was devastation.
“Madam, please—” Dahlia’s mother begged, her voice faltering, but Malisa’s icy gaze froze her mid-sentence.
“Don’t waste my time,” Malisa said sharply, cutting her off. “You’ve already wasted enough of it.”
Dahlia’s sister glanced at her mother, panic flickering in her eyes. Her lips parted as if to say something, but the lump in her throat refused to let the words out.
Knowing they had no choice, Dahlia’s mother swallowed hard, her trembling hands smoothing the creases in her coat. “We’ll leave,” she muttered, barely managing to keep her voice steady.
Her daughter followed close behind, her face flushed with humiliation.
As they exited the bank, Dahlia’s mother’s composure finally cracked. Her hands balled into fists, and her eyes blazed with anger.
“That bastard,” she hissed. “I swear, he’s going to pay for this. Just wait. When the bank staff finds out what a fraud he is, they’ll arrest him.And when they do, the consequences will be much worse than anything we’ve faced today!”
Her daughter nodded in agreement, her voice bitter.
“Let him have his moment. It won’t last.”
Leaving the bank completely, Dahlia’s mother wasted no time pulling out her phone. She must let her daughter know what her pathetic ex-husband had done.
Her lips twisted into a feigned expression of pain as she called her daughter.
“Dahlia,” she said, her voice trembling with false emotion.
“You won’t believe what just happened. Raymond, that bastard — he hit me. Right here in the bank!”
“What?!”
Dahlia’s voice carried a hint of disbelief.
“Yes!” her mother continued, her tone rising.
“And that’s not all. He’s gotten himself involved with some theft and fraud gangs. He’s carrying around a fake black card, pretending to be someone he’s not. It’s disgraceful! And because of him, the bank staff banned us from doing business there!”
Dahlia fell silent on the other end, the weight of her mother’s accusations sinking in.
“I just… I can’t believe he would sink this low,” her mother said, her voice cracking dramatically.
“Dahlia. You need to do something.”
“I will,” Dahlia said curtly, her voice clipped.
“I’ll handle it.”
Minutes later, Raymond’s phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, and his jaw tightened when he saw Dahlia’s name.
However he hesitated for a moment before answering.
“Raymond,” Dahlia’s voice came through, sharp and filled with accusation.
“What the hell are you doing? I just got a call from my mother. She told me everything—how you hit her, how you’ve joined some fraud ring, and how you’re walking around with a fake black card trying to scam money from the bank! Do you have any idea what you’re doing to yourself and my reputation?”
At that moment Raymond’s hand clenched around the phone. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to remain calm even as frustration boiled within him.
He couldn't believe Dahlia would just listen to one sided story, and believed her mother.
Immediately Raymond exhaled sharply, his patience wearing thin. “Let me make this very clear,” he said, his voice icy. “I didn’t hit your mother. I didn’t join any fraud ring.”
With that, he ended the call, his grip on the phone tightening for a moment before he placed it back in his pocket.
On the other end, Dahlia stared at her phone, her emotions swirling in a mix of shock, anger, and confusion. She had never heard Raymond speak to her so coldly before.
However she hadn't got much time to quarrel with him now.
She needed to attend a charity event with Caleb soon, where she would be able to link up with the top individuals in the city and it would be a great benefit to her business.
Pushing the thoughts of Raymond aside, she forced a composed smile and walked out to join Caleb, decided to confront Raymond and get to the bottom of everything later.
At the same time, Malisa led Raymond through the bank’s quiet corridors and entered a VIP Room, she opened it with a slight bow, gesturing for him to step inside.
The decor of the room was minimalist yet intimidatingly luxurious. At the center stood a reinforced ATM machine encased in a sleek security frame. With a swipe of her keycard, Malisa unlocked the system, gesturing for Raymond to step forward.
“Please, Mr. Raymond,” she said with practiced professionalism. “You may check your card here.This is a special terminal exclusive for our highest level client.”
Raymond hesitated, glancing at her, then at the machine.
Taking a deep breath, he slowly entered his birthday as the password.
Then the screen blinked, processing for a moment before displaying the balance.
$1,080,998,854,600 !
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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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