2025-01-20 14:20:17Dahlia’s hands tightened around her clutch, but she forced her face to remain calm, trying to ignore the fact that Raymond had moved on with someone who looked far more capable and connected than she had imagined.
But so what? He was still trying to rely on women to make a living.
Thinking of that, a hint of disappointment flashed in her eyes.
She snorted, forcing herself to look away, and entered the hall with Caleb.
As they entered the glittering hall, the atmosphere buzzed with excitement. Chandeliers cast a warm glow over the room, and the murmurs of influential voices filled the space.
They knew the kind of connection Caleb, and his family can control.
And they would do anything to be in his favor for any kind of collaboration from them.
Caleb, standing tall beside Dahlia, soaked it all in. His self-assured smirk widened as several guests approached them, eager to greet him.
“Mr. Caleb!” A middle-aged man in a tailored suit extended his hand with a wide smile.
“It’s an honor to see you here. Your family’s reputation precedes you.”
Others quickly followed suit, their voices overlapping as they offered their praise.
“Such a powerful couple you two make,” a woman gushed, glancing at Dahlia with admiration.
“It’s inspiring to see two people with such status together.”
“Yes, a perfect match,” another chimed in, nodding enthusiastically.
Hearing their praise towards her Dahlia managed a polite smile, but her thoughts were elsewhere.
The compliments felt hollow. She glanced again toward Raymond who was still standing quietly with the mysterious woman.
Though he wasn’t surrounded by fawning guests, there was an air of calm about him that seemed... different. For a moment, she wondered if she had really misunderstood him.
However she immediately deleted the thought off her head.
Caleb, meanwhile, basked in the attention.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice carrying a hint of arrogance. “We are indeed a great match. I’m lucky to have Dahlia by my side.”
Upon hearing what Caleb just said, the crowd murmured their agreement, and Caleb’s grin widened.
Just then, another guest, an older gentleman with sharp eyes, stepped forward.
“I heard there’s something special at tonight’s auction,” he said, his voice laced with intrigue. “A rare vintage ring—part of Mr. Drake’s private collection. You all know him, of course, the president of the city’s largest business association.”
The mention of the ring drew a ripple of interest from the crowd. Someone gasped softly.
“They say it’s one of a kind,” the man continued, glancing around. “I also heard the starting price alone is enough to make most people hesitate to even considering it, but for someone with Mr. Caleb’s standing…” He paused, smiling knowingly.
“Well, it might as well already be yours.”
Hearing what the man just said and his sweet words Caleb chuckled, his pride swelling even further. “Like you just said, the ring is as good as mine,” he declared, his voice loud enough to draw even more attention.
“No one else here has what it takes to outbid me.”
“Speaking as if you have everything under control,” Malisa scoffed, rolling her eyes with disdain. She’d had enough of his stupid arrogance, “ If Raymond wanted to, he could buy out this entire auction house without even trying.”
Her voice cut through the room like a blade, sharp and unwavering.
Immediately the room fell into a stunned silence, the boldness of her statement hanging heavy in the air. Then, as if on cue, a ripple of laughter spread among the guests, their disbelief quickly morphing into scornful amusement.
“Buy the auction house?” a woman snickered, covering her mouth as though the very idea was too absurd to say aloud.
“Does she know who she’s talking about?”
“He’s just a washed-up ex-husband,” another that knew Raymond as Dahlia ex chimed in, shaking his head.
“What kind of trick did he pull to get someone like her to back him up?”
“Maybe she feels sorry for him,” someone else added with a smirk.
The room buzzed with ridicule, the mocking voices blending into a chorus of false amusement.
Caleb leaned back, clearly enjoying the spectacle, his smirk widening as he met Raymond’s calm gaze.
Raymond, however, didn’t flinch. Their words were meaningless noise, background static he had no interest in acknowledging.
He took a slow step forward, his hands casually tucked into his pockets.
“I’m not interested in buying the whole auction house,” he said, his tone steady and unbothered. His gaze flicked toward the stage where the ring was displayed under bright lights. “But that ring?” He paused, letting his words sink in.
“That’s mine.”
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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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