2025-01-20 14:19:41“Then why are you here?” she demanded, believing he was just lying.
“To attend the auction,” Raymond replied simply, his voice steady.
Immediately Dahlia’s jaw tightened, disbelief flashing across her face. “You’re attending the auction?” she repeated, as if the words themselves were ridiculous. “Raymond, do you even hear yourself? You’re making a fool of yourself. Just return the card and stop this before it gets worse.”
Raymond’s gaze remained steady, his voice calm but firm.
“I don’t need your concern, Dahlia. You’ve already made it clear where we stand.”
Seeing Raymond's attitude Caleb smirked with disdain.
“You should leave,” he said, his tone dripping with superiority. “This place isn’t for people like you. You’ll only embarrass yourself further. And Dahlia—stop wasting your time on him. The last thing you need is to be associated with his mess. It’s wise of you to have dumped him. No women would like to be with such trash!”
However, before Raymond could respond, a voice cut through the noise like a blade.
“Darling, sorry for keeping you waiting!” the voice said, warm and intimate.
Immediately the crowd turned in unison as Malisa stepped into view, her presence commanding instant attention.
She was strikingly beautiful, her tailored dress highlighting her graceful figure. Her sharp eyes carried a quiet authority.
Compared to her, even Dahlia’s polished appearance seemed dimmed, her usual poise suddenly overshadowed.
Malisa’s strides were confident, purposeful, and as she reached Raymond, she slipped her arm through his with effortless familiarity, and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, her smile teasing but affectionate.
Immediately Raymond’s eyes widened for a moment, but he quickly understood her intent.
She was trying to help him. He said nothing, choosing instead to play along, though the unexpected closeness sent a faint ripple of unease through him.
At that moment Celeb’s smirk froze, his confidence faltering as he processed what was happening. His eyes flickered between Malisa and Raymond, disbelief clouding his expression.
Dahlia’s lips parted, her voice barely above a whisper. “Darling?” she echoed, the word hanging in the air.
Malisa turned to face her, her sharp eyes gleaming with an almost imperceptible smirk. “Yes, darling,” she said, her tone dripping with gentle mockery. “Is there a problem?”
The crowd, initially silent, began whispering in shock and envy.
Malisa’s beauty and elegance were impossible to ignore, and the way she clung to Raymond with such intimacy shattered the image they had of him as “just a nobody.”
“She’s stunning,” another murmured, their eyes fixed on Malisa.
“How did he…?”Caleb, standing stiffly beside Dahlia, clenched his jaw.
Dahlia’s composure faltered, her fists clenching at her sides. “Raymond,” she began, her voice trembling with a mix of anger and something else—jealousy. “So, this is why you’re here? You’ve… moved on so quickly?”
Before Raymond could respond, Malisa tightened her grip on his arm and leaned closer, her head tilting toward his shoulder.
“We were planning to keep things quiet for a little while,” she said smoothly, her eyes twinkling with feigned innocence. “But I suppose there’s no point in hiding it now.”
Dahlia’s face flushed red, her jealousy barely concealed beneath her anger.
Caleb stood rigid, his eyes narrowing as he watched Malisa lean into Raymond with an easy familiarity. The way she rested her hand lightly on his arm, the warmth in her tone when she addressed him—it all struck a nerve.
He couldn't believe that right after being dumped by Dahlia, Raymond was, already appearing close to a woman who was, frankly, breathtaking.
However he couldn't hide his anger anymore.
“ Well I will advise you to stay away from that man.”
Celeb pointed at Raymond.
“He's poor and useless, and I don't understand whatever he must have said to you, he's a liar and don't allow him to trick you.”
At that moment Malisa's jaw tightened.
“ Do I look like someone who can be tricked in your eyes? Malisa Black, senior director of Sky High Bank, I'm smarter than that.”
Upon hearing what Malisa just said, Caleb’s eyes widened in shock.
“Senior director of Sky High Bank?”
He couldn't believe what he just heard. Sky High Bank is just the largest in the country and has businesses spanning all over the world. Though his family was one of the four major families in the city, they were still nothing compared to the Sky High Bank, that’s why he only managed to get their platinum card.
While as the senior director of the bank, Malisa even has the power to decide on major investments and partnerships in this city.
And he couldn't believe such a woman was clinging onto that bastard!
He glanced at Raymond, his eyes narrowing, then whispered to Dahlia who was still in shock.
“It all makes sense now,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “He was able to get away from the card thief, and get his way here all because of her.”
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Chapter 292
Melissa was quiet for a long moment after Raymond finished speaking.She was looking at him, but her eyes had the distant quality of someone who is simultaneously present in the conversation and somewhere else entirely—somewhere inside her own memory, moving through years of accumulated impressions, testing what Raymond had said against everything she knew about her uncle and finding the collision between the two deeply uncomfortable.Because she knew Raymond was serious.She knew he was not the kind of person who said things for effect, who exaggerated for drama, who built accusations out of nothing. She had seen enough of him by now to understand that when Raymond spoke with that particular quiet certainty, it was because he had a foundation beneath his words that he trusted absolutely.But she also knew her uncle.Or believed she did.She thought about him—the real, specific, human version of him that she had grown up alongside. Not the abstract figure that Raymond's words were pai
Chapter 291
Melissa's eyes searched his face, trying to catch up with where his mind had already gone."Things are making sense?" she repeated, her voice carrying the particular frustration of someone standing just outside a room where a conversation is happening that directly concerns them. "What do you mean by that? What is making sense? What are you seeing that I'm not seeing?"Raymond looked at her for a moment.Then he said, "How about we do this properly."He turned slightly, putting the doors behind him completely, removing them from the immediate field of attention. Whatever was in that chamber would wait. Right now, the more important thing was the woman standing in front of him, who lived in this house, who shared space with whatever her uncle was building in the dark, and who deserved to understand the danger she was potentially standing inside of without knowing it."Melissa," he said, and his voice had shifted into something more direct, more deliberate, carrying the weight of someon
Chapter 290
Melissa stood at the threshold of the double doors and looked at Raymond with an expression that was caught somewhere between confusion and concern."So what are you actually saying?" she asked, her voice careful, measured, trying to read him the way she had learned to read people who said less than they meant. "You don't want to go in anymore? Is something wrong? Did you just change your mind all of a sudden?"Raymond turned away from the doors fully and faced her.He was quiet for a moment—not the uncomfortable quiet of someone searching for words, but the considered quiet of someone deciding how much of the truth to share and in what order. He looked at Melissa's face and read what was there. Confusion, yes. But underneath it, trust. And underneath that, the particular openness of someone who had been sensing something wrong for a long time without having the vocabulary to name it.He made his decision."I don't think you would backstab me," he said, "if I told you what I'm actuall
Chapter 289
Melissa looked at him for a moment after she nodded, and then something in her expression shifted—a small, searching quality entering her eyes as she studied his face.“So,” she said carefully, “don't you want to go in? Don't you want to check it?”Raymond did not answer immediately.He was looking at the house.Not at Melissa, not at the entrance specifically, not at any one detail in particular. He was looking at the whole of it the way it sat in the night, the way the light fell around it, the way the air near it felt against his skin. He had learned a long time ago to trust that feeling, the one that existed below conscious thought and below language, the one that did not explain itself but simply registered, like a compass needle swinging toward something it recognized.Right now, that feeling was telling him something was wrong.“Something feels off,” he said finally, his voice quiet and measured.Melissa frowned slightly. “Off how?”“I cannot pinpoint it,” Raymond said. “I can
Chapter 288
Raymond ended the call and slid the phone back into his pocket in one smooth, unhurried motion.Then he turned and looked down at Jefferson's father.The man was still on the floor, one hand braced against the cold concrete, the other pressed to the side of his swollen face. His breathing had steadied somewhat, but the damage was visible and total. His lips were puffed and split. Dark bruising had already begun to spread along his jaw and cheekbone. Blood had dried at the corner of his mouth and along his chin. His eyes, though still burning with the stubborn ember of a pride that refused to fully extinguish itself, were glassy with pain and exhaustion.He looked like a man who had walked into a storm believing himself weatherproof and had discovered, too late, that he was not.Raymond regarded him for a moment without speaking. Then he said, his voice carrying the same unhurried calm it had carried all evening:“Well. Today seems to be your lucky day.”Jefferson's father looked up at
Chapter 287
He said it simply, without drama, without cruelty. The way a man states a fact that exists independently of emotion.“I have forgiven you,” he repeated. “Absolutely nothing to worry about on that front. But forgiveness and consequence are two different things, and one does not cancel the other.”Jefferson's father stared at him, processing this, and then something shifted in his expression. The relief that had begun to form at the word forgiven collided with the reality of the second half of the sentence, and the result was a kind of desperate, scrambling hope.“If you are forgiving me,” he said quickly, pushing himself further upright, his voice gaining a fragile urgency, “then—then let me go. Just let me go. I will walk out of here and I will pretend none of this happened. None of it. I will not speak of it. I will not act on it. I will simply—”“No.”The word was not loud. It did not need to be.Raymond looked at him steadily, and his eyes carried the same calm certainty they had c
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