2025-01-20 14:21:04Upon hearing what Raymond just said.
Caleb’s face darkened, his jaw tightening as he glared at Raymond.
It was clearly a deliberate provocation to him.
“Yours? Well, let’s see how you can get it, loser!” He smirked scornfully, already planning to teach him a harsh lesson later.
His fingers tapped rhythmically against the armrest of his chair as resentment bubbled beneath his composed exterior.
The other guests exchanged amused glances, their laughter muffled but unmistakable. They whispered among themselves, eager to witness the inevitable embarrassment they believed Raymond was walking into.
“Such arrogance,” one man muttered, shaking his head.
“Let’s see how he plans to follow through.”
“I know he’s all talk,” another woman said, leaning in to her companion.
“This will be entertaining.”
Not long after the auction finally began, the room fell into an anticipatory hush as the first items were introduced. Lavish jewelry, rare antiques, and expensive art pieces were displayed one after another, each met with enthusiastic bidding from the wealthy attendees.
Caleb wasted no time flaunting his wealth, confidently raising his paddle for several extravagant pieces. When he won a diamond necklace, the crowd immediately erupted into polite applause. With a satisfied smirk, he turned and handed the necklace to Dahlia, his actions theatrical and calculated.
“This suits you perfectly,” he said loudly, making sure those around them heard.
“A necklace as stunning as the woman wearing it.”
At that moment Dahlia offered a small, polite smile, but her thoughts were elsewhere.
She couldn’t stop her eyes from drifting toward Raymond.
Unlike the others, Raymond hadn’t raised his paddle once. He sat quietly at his table, seemingly indifferent to the auction entirely. While the crowd buzzed with excitement, he picked at the appetizers in front of him, occasionally leaning towards Malisa and exchanging a few quiet words. Whatever they were talking about, it seemed to amuse them both, as Sophia’s soft laughter filled the small space between them.
Dahlia shifted uncomfortably, her fingers tightening around the necklace Caleb had just given her.
At the same time, Caleb leaned back in his chair, a smug grin spreading across his face. Now he completely sure that Raymond was bluffing early. No money, no power—just a nobody riding on someone else’s coattails.
“I knew it,” Caleb muttered under his breath, loud enough for Dahlia to hear. “He’s just trying to use Malisa's status to make himself look important. Pathetic.”
At that moment the room quieted as the host stepped onto the stage, the energy shifting in an instant. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the host began, his voice smooth and commanding, “we have now reached the highlight of tonight’s auction—the most mysterious and coveted item of the evening.”
Immediately all eyes turned to the center of the stage as an attendant brought out a small, intricately carved box.
The lid was lifted slowly, revealing the antique ring inside.
At that moment the light from the chandelier above caught on its polished surface, illuminating the delicate design and the unmistakable aura of something ancient and feel priceless.
The room buzzed with murmurs of admiration and intrigue, but none were as transfixed as Raymond.
The moment he saw the ring, something deep within him stirred. It wasn’t just admiration or desire—it was something far stronger, almost connected with him.
Immediately his jaw tightened, and he leaned forward slightly, his eyes never leaving the ring.
This was it.
This was what he’d been waiting for.
Sophia noticed the change in his expression and leaned in closer. “You want it, don’t you?” she whispered, her tone calm but laced with meaning.
Raymond nodded slightly, his resolve hardening.
“Now the opening price of this ring is thirty million dollars.”
The host announced the starting price, a figure so high it sent a ripple of shock through the room. Even among the wealthy attendees, the sum was daunting, and only a few raised their paddles with tentative offers.
At that moment Caleb leaned back in his chair, the corner of his mouth curling into a satisfied smirk as he glanced at Raymond.
The man hadn’t moved or spoken since the auction for the ring began, and to Caleb, that was confirmation enough.
He’s all talk, just as he thought.
Immediately he straightened in his seat, raising his paddle high and confidently shouting out a bid that made heads turn.
“Forty million dollars.”
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Chapter 462
For a moment, even the cemetery seemed to go quieter around them.There were still murmurs nearby, still movement from mourners repositioning themselves around the grave, still the distant sound of shoes on gravel and low prayer from the front of the gathering, but within the small circle of tension that now existed between the three of them, everything had sharpened.Damian simply stared.He had not expected resistance. That much was plain. He had expected awkwardness, perhaps embarrassment, perhaps defensive politeness from a man dragged into some social arrangement above his station. What he had received instead was the kind of flat, clean dismantling that men like him never saw coming because they spent their lives being surrounded by people who measured every word around them carefully.Raymond had not merely answered him. He had stripped the scene of its social costume and left Damian standing there in the full, unflattering truth of his own pettiness.The effect of it showed.F
Chapter 461
The man on the rooftop did not move again, not immediately, and for a long, suspended stretch of seconds, Raymond simply held that distant gaze, refusing to be the one who looked away first, refusing to grant even that small concession to whatever silent test the moment seemed to represent. The pressure of the stranger's presence remained constant throughout, vast and unhurried, settling over the warehouse lot like weather rather than threat, and Raymond found himself cataloguing it carefully, memorizing its particular quality the way he might memorize the shape of a blade before deciding how best to counter it.Then, without warning, without any visible gesture or shift in posture that might have explained it, the man was simply gone.Not retreated. Not descended. Gone, in the way that candle flame is gone the instant breath passes over it, leaving the rooftop as empty and unremarkable as if no one had ever stood there at all.Raymond exhaled slowly, the tension in his shoulders easi
Chapter 461
The man on the rooftop did not move again, not immediately, and for a long, suspended stretch of seconds, Raymond simply held that distant gaze, refusing to be the one who looked away first, refusing to grant even that small concession to whatever silent test the moment seemed to represent. The pressure of the stranger's presence remained constant throughout, vast and unhurried, settling over the warehouse lot like weather rather than threat, and Raymond found himself cataloguing it carefully, memorizing its particular quality the way he might memorize the shape of a blade before deciding how best to counter it.Then, without warning, without any visible gesture or shift in posture that might have explained it, the man was simply gone.Not retreated. Not descended. Gone, in the way that candle flame is gone the instant breath passes over it, leaving the rooftop as empty and unremarkable as if no one had ever stood there at all.Raymond exhaled slowly, the tension in his shoulders easi
Chapter 460
His phone rang. He answered it without looking away from the two broken operatives at his feet. "Raymond," Melissa's voice said, steady, deliberate. "I'm just calling to let you know. My grandfather's brother is being buried today. Given everything we discussed, I'm fairly certain his old associates will be there. You'll likely see some of them yourself. Are you coming?" Something in Raymond's expression sharpened at the question, the strategic weight of it settling into place immediately. "I'll come," he said. "We've already decided to take the war to them. You have nothing to worry about. I'll be there." Melissa did not respond with anything beyond a quiet acknowledgment, and a moment later, the call ended. Raymond lowered the phone slowly, looking down again at Tobias and Ren, turning over the full weight of what their presence here actually meant. Black had been strong. Melissa's grandfather's brother had been strong as well, strong enough to warrant real caution before
Chapter 459
Raymond saw the attack coming straight at him. He just smiled. It was not the smile of a man confident in some clever trick, nor the smile of someone taunting an opponent for theatrical effect. It was quieter than that, almost private, the smile of a man who had spent so long calculating exactly how much of himself he needed to reveal in any given fight that the rare moment of simply letting go, of answering overwhelming force with the full, unguarded truth of his own strength, had become its own small pleasure, separate from the violence surrounding it. He caught the attack with one hand. Tobias's strike, rebuilt from whatever reserves he had managed to claw back after being driven to the floor minutes earlier, carried behind it the full, concentrated weight of a technique meant to end fights outright, a technique that had, by his own account, succeeded four times before against opponents who had no answer for it. It met Raymond's open palm and simply stopped, arrested mid-motion a
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
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