2025-01-20 14:18:55His breath caught in his throat as he stared at the screen.
He instinctively took a step back. “This… this has to be a mistake.”
Malisa, standing beside him, leaned in slightly to confirm the balance for herself.
Immediately her eyes widened, but she quickly masked her surprise with a composed smile.
“There won't be any mistakes, Mr. Raymond."
Raymond leaned back, his mind racing.
That woman hadn't lied. He was indeed wealthy, so it meant that what she said about his past might be true…
But why did he lose his memory? What happened to him? Was there any conspiracy behind this?
His eyes narrowed. He would find these things out and take back everything that belonged to him!
Then Raymond glanced at Malisa, gave her a brief nod. “Thanks for stepping in back there. I wasn’t expecting things to get that out of hand.”
Malisa offered a polite smile, her tone light yet professional. “It was no big deal, Mr. Raymond. They were completely out of line, and the situation needed to be handled.” Her eyes glinted with a mix of respect and curiosity. “Besides, ensuring our most important clients are treated with the dignity they deserve is part of my job.”
At that moment Malisa glanced at him, her voice becoming more conversational.
“Actually, there’s something I wanted to mention. This evening, the bank is hosting a charity dinner and auction. It’s a relatively relaxed event, and I thought it might be a good opportunity for us to talk further in a less formal setting.”
Raymond raised an eyebrow, intrigued by her casual tone. “A charity dinner?”
Malisa nodded. “Yes. And while the dinner itself is more about networking, the auction does feature a few rare items. Who knows? You might find something interesting.”
Raymond’s interest in social events was minimal at best. He wanted to reject it when his eyes caught a glimpse of the open tablet in her hand.
A list of auction items was displayed on the screen. Though he wasn’t particularly curious, his eyes instinctively scanned the images.
Then he saw it.
A simple ring appeared among the images, its intricate patterns catching his attention immediately.
Something about it tugged at him—a vague, indescribable pull that made his chest tighten. Immediately he froze, his gaze lingering on the image.
Without being told he could tell it wasn’t just a piece of jewelry.
He couldn’t explain it, but something about it felt familiar, significant. He was sure that it must have something to do with his past life.
Without any hesitation, he straightened, his decision made. “Alright,” he said finally, his voice steady. “I’ll attend.”
Twenty minutes later.
A sleek car came to a halt in front of the entrance of the grand banquet hall, Raymond stepped out, straightening his clothes.
Behind Raymond, Malisa remained in the car, her phone pressed to her ear as she handled an urgent call.
However Raymond barely had a chance to take in the elegant crowd milling about when a familiar voice called out, sharp and laced with disbelief.
“Raymond?”
Hearing his name he turned, his expression calm but cold as Dahlia stood a few steps away, her eyes wide with shock.
Beside her, was Caleb.
“What are you doing here?”
Dahlia asked, her voice cutting through the gentle hum of chatter around them. “Are you… following me?”
Immediately Raymond raised an eyebrow, “Why would I?”
Dahlia’s shock quickly turned to anger.
“Don’t lie. You have no reason to be here.”
Immediately Caleb stepped forward, his grin widening.
“Ah, the infamous Raymond,” he said, his voice dripping with mockery.
“Dahlia told me all about your little stunt with the black card. Fraud, wasn’t it? Trying to pass yourself off as someone important?”
Raymond met his gaze with an impassive stare, refusing to rise to the bait.
Dahlia’s expression hardened. “Raymond, how could you do something so reckless? All because of the divorce? Have you really fallen this far?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Raymond said flatly, not wanting to waste any more time on explaining himself to someone who wouldn’t want to trust him.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about!” Dahlia shot back, her voice rising.
“That black card. You stole it , didn’t you? Or got involved in some scam to make a false one! And you even got the information that I would be attending this event so you came here too, just to impress me and make me regret divorcing you, right? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? You could ruin yourself—if you haven’t already!”
“Dahlia,” Raymond said, frowning, his tone icy, “don’t flatter yourself. It has nothing to do with you.”
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Chapter 458
The shockwave from the collision rolled outward through the warehouse in a visible ripple, dust and loose debris thrown outward from the point of impact like water displaced by a dropped stone, and for a moment, both Raymond and Tobias stood locked against each other, neither yielding, the air between them still humming with the aftershock of forces neither ordinary steel nor ordinary flesh had been designed to withstand.Raymond felt it first in his forearms, a deep, bone-level ache where he had intercepted Tobias's strike, followed almost immediately by a colder, more unsettling sensation spreading outward from the point of contact, as though whatever technique Tobias had gathered carried with it something beyond simple kinetic force, something that sought to settle into the body and disrupt it from within.He broke the lock deliberately, stepping back and exhaling sharply, forcing the strange, creeping cold outward through controlled breath, a technique of his own cultivated across
Chapter 457
Tobias studied Raymond for a long moment, and in that pause, something in the wide, dust-choked warehouse seemed to hold its breath along with him. Overhead, thin bars of afternoon light slanted through gaps in the corrugated roofing, cutting pale lines across the concrete floor, illuminating drifting motes of dust disturbed by the movement of four people who had all, in different ways, arrived at this place expecting it might be where something ended."You want a name," Tobias said finally, "as though a name would give you leverage. That is a very ordinary kind of thinking for someone who has already proven himself capable of extraordinary things.""Humor me," Raymond said.Tobias's mouth curved, not quite a smile."The circle answers, ultimately, to the Custodians," he said. "You have likely already learned that much, given how thoroughly you gutted my predecessor's mind before disposing of him. Above the Custodians, there is one voice that has not been meaningfully challenged in lo
Chapter 456
Word of Black's death reached the circle's inner administrative ring within a day, delivered not through any dramatic revelation but through the mundane failure of routine check-ins, missed reports, silence where reports were expected. It took only slightly longer for the death of Melissa's grandfather's brother to be confirmed, his body discovered among rubble that investigators loyal to the circle quietly cleared away before local authorities could ask inconvenient questions.Two deaths. Two senior figures. Both traced back to the same name.Raymond.The circle did not panic. Panic was not how an organization of its age and patience responded to loss. But it recalibrated, quickly and with total seriousness, and within two days of confirming both deaths, a decision was reached at a level high enough that few within the organization ever learned it had been made at all: Raymond was no longer a nuisance to be monitored. He was now a threat requiring direct, decisive resolution.Two ope
Chapter 455
Dawn arrived over the farmhouse slowly, gray light seeping through the gaps in the curtains long before the sun itself crested the tree line, and Raymond, who had not slept at all through the remaining hours of the night, watched the transformation of darkness into pale morning with the same steady vigilance he had maintained since their arrival. His body registered the fatigue of the night's violence and revelation as a distant, manageable pressure rather than genuine exhaustion, the kind of tiredness that experienced fighters learned to set aside when circumstances demanded continued alertness.The old man had eventually fallen into an uneasy doze sometime near four in the morning, his bound body slumping slightly against the ropes securing him to the chair, his breathing settling into the shallow, uneven rhythm of someone whose sleep offered little genuine rest. Raymond had not disturbed him, recognizing that whatever answers remained to be extracted would come more readily from a
Chapter 454
The car moved through streets that grew progressively quieter and darker as the city thinned into its outer edges, streetlights becoming sparser, storefronts giving way to warehouses and then to the scattered, isolated structures that marked the transition between urban sprawl and the open countryside beyond. Raymond drove with both hands steady on the wheel, his eyes flicking periodically to the rearview mirror, checking and rechecking for headlights that might indicate pursuit, though none appeared across the twenty minutes it took to put sufficient distance between them and the compromised apartment.Melissa sat in the passenger seat, her bag clutched in her lap, her eyes fixed on the passing darkness outside the window without truly seeing it, her mind still turning over everything the night had revealed, examining it from every angle as though sufficient scrutiny might somehow soften its edges or reveal some hidden reassurance buried within the horror. It did not. Every pass thro
Chapter 453
Raymond opened his mouth to ask the next question, but before the words could form, a sound reached them from outside the apartment, faint at first, easy to dismiss as nothing more than the ordinary noise of a building settling into its late-night quiet, and then, a second later, unmistakably deliberate: footsteps on the stairwell, moving with the particular controlled evenness of people who did not want to be heard and were nonetheless failing to achieve total silence.Melissa's head snapped toward the door."Someone is coming," she said, her voice dropping instinctively.Raymond was already moving, crossing the small living room in three quick strides to kill the single lamp illuminating the space, plunging the apartment into a darkness broken only by the thin, gray light bleeding through the curtains from the streetlamp outside. He pressed two fingers briefly against the old man's throat, not to harm him, but to check something, some subtle signature Melissa could not perceive, bef
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