Even Tina had figured out that the person who called the bid to a million earlier was Charles, and she guessed that he must be planning to buy it for Sonia. Hmph, she snorted silently. Not in your wildest dreams! Raising her paddle again, she shouted, “1.2 million!”
Next to her, the edge of Titus’ eyes twitched and he hurriedly tried to stop her, saying, “That’s enough, Tina. Stop increasing the bid because this ring isn’t worth that money at all.”
“I don’t care,” she snapped through gritted teeth, her eyes turning red. “I can’t let Sonia get what she wants!”
Frowning, Titus was about to say something when another man shouted, “1.5 million!”
This voice… Sonia thought when she heard the voice, and her face lit up. “That’s Carl, Charles. It’s Carl!”
“I know it’s that rascal,” Charles answered with a nod and raised his paddle. “1.7 million.”
I swear there’s no one I hate more than Charles and that guy who called 1.5 million! Tina thought furiously. I must be cursed to run into them today! Gripping her paddle tightly, she made up her mind determinedly and added three hundred thousand to the bid. “Two million!”
An uproar broke out in the crowd, and Toby knitted his brows in his private suite on the second floor, thinking, What’s up with Tina? Why does she want the ring so badly? “Three million!” he said, pressing down the button.
The auctioneer sucked in a deep breath and announced the new bid with a shaky voice, resulting in another round of surprised gasps from the crowd.
Who’s this big shot that’s able to add a million to the bid just like that? They wondered in amazement and turned their heads to the first private suite.
Narrowing his aged eyes, Titus began to suspect that the one in the first private suite might be Toby, and he was very unhappy about the fact that Toby didn’t allow them into his private suite. After all, I’m his future father-in-law, he thought. Isn’t he worried that I’ll be unhappy if he did that?
“3.5 million!” Charles called a bid once more.
The next second, Carl shouted as well, “Four million!”
“4.5 million!” Zane, who wasn’t bidding all this while, joined in suddenly.
Shaking her head, Sonia uttered, “This is crazy. All of you have lost your minds!”
“No worries, baby,” Charles assured. “Can’t you tell that we don’t even want to buy the ring, but just want to pull a prank on Tina?” he asked with a smirk as he swayed the paddle in his hand.
Rolling her eyes, she replied, “Of course I know what you guys are up to, but don’t forget about the person on the second floor. It goes to show that he must be kind of influential if he can afford a private suite in an auction. He’s definitely not someone we can offend. If he ends up as the one buying the ring instead of Tina, then you guys would have offended him by raising the bid deliberately.”
“Don’t worry about that because we have already offended him a long time ago. The young master of this auction is a friend of mine that I met in university, and I already checked with him who’s the person in the first suite beforehand. Toby’s in there.” Shrugging, he added, “Since Toby is on Tina’s side, getting either of them will be a win for us.”
Surprised, Sonia asked, “Toby?”
“Yeah,” he answered with a nod.
Biting her lip, Sonia was puzzled and felt complicated. So, the one who started the bidding war with Tina is Toby, but why does he want to buy this ring? she wondered. What is he going to do with my wedding band? Give it to Tina? That’s impossible, she concluded and shook her head as she shot down the thought.
Normally, a guy wouldn’t give his ex-wife’s ring to his current fiancée, so she reckoned he must have other motives. However, she couldn’t figure it out, and neither did she want to ponder over it. It was a ring she didn’t want since a long time ago anyway, so she had no reason to think about why someone else was buying it.
“Five million!” Toby bid again from the second floor.
Initially, Tina wanted to raise her paddle again, but Titus held her hand down firmly and looked at her with a somber expression. “I’ll break your legs if you dare to raise the bid again.” She’s the only one silly enough to waste millions on a ring which belonged to someone else, he thought angrily. This is too much even if she’s jealous of Sonia and doesn’t wish for Sonia to keep the ring from Toby.
In the end, the intimidated Tina could only watch as the mysterious person on the second floor won the bid for the ring.
Discussions erupted amidst the people. “The guy upstairs bought a ring for five million! Is he a fool or what?”
Soon, the ring was delivered to the second floor, and Toby stared at the ring in the velvet pouch with an unreadable look in his eyes. When Sonia left the Fullers, she didn’t take anything with her except for this ring, and now it was returned to him in such a manner. From now on, Sonia will have nothing that has any connection to me anymore, he thought as he closed his palm around the ring tightly, and a sharp pain stung his heart.
The auction ended very quickly, and everyone left the venue for the banquet hall upstairs. After everyone left, Toby got up from the couch and hobbled out of the private suite with the crutch. The moment he stepped out, he saw Tina and Titus walking toward him.
With her eyes widened in disbelief, Tina gasped, “Toby… so it’s true that you won the bid for the ring!”
“Yes, I did,” he admitted graciously with earnest eyes.
With a little effort, anyone could easily find out that the person in the first private suite was him, so there was no need for him to deny anything.
“But why?” Tina uttered, biting her lip and staring at him with tears in her eyes as though he had betrayed her. “Why did you buy that ring? Are you planning to return it to Miss Reed?”
With Titus’ eyes fixed on him as well, Toby furrowed his brows and answered, “Nothing like that. It’s because that ring has the Fullers’ emblem engraved on the inside when I bought it back then, and it would be bad if someone with ulterior motives got their hands on it.”
This was really one of the reasons he bought the ring. The other reason was, he indeed didn’t want someone else to have this ring. The thought that the ring might end up with Charles, Zane or another man sent an inexplicable frustration through his heart.
Tina, however, didn’t know what was on his mind. Her tears stopped flowing down her cheeks the minute she heard his explanation. “Really?”
Taking the ring out of his pocket, he then handed it to her and said, “You can take a look at it if you want.”
To his dismay, she really took the ring from him and inspected it. Although he was the one who offered the ring for her inspection, he was still indescribably annoyed when she did it because it showed that she didn’t believe him. Most importantly, she had mentioned in her letter that she would trust him, but in hindsight, Toby didn’t think she had ever trusted him.
While he pursed his lips, deep in his own thoughts, he heard Tina cry out in surprise, “There really is an emblem here!”
Keeping away his emotions, he answered curtly, “Of course.”
“I’m sorry for misunderstanding you, Toby. I thought you bought the ring for Miss Reed,” she said and returned the ring to him.
Bursting out in a hearty laugh, Titus chirped, “Everything is alright now that you’ve cleared the misunderstanding.”
“Yeah,” Toby answered absentmindedly and took the ring from her hand. Subconsciously, he rubbed all around the ring with his thumb and came to a sudden realization that he was doing it because he was disgusted that Tina had made the ring dirty.
“Toby?” Tina called out, waving her hand in front of him, and he was pulled back to reality.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I should be the one to ask you that. Why are you suddenly in a daze?” she asked, looking at him.
Lowering his gaze, he answered calmly, “Nothing. Something was just on my mind. By the way, why do you want to bid for the ring, Tina?” He placed the ring into his pocket again and looked at her with interrogative eyes.
In reply, she hung her head woefully and muttered, “It’s all because you don’t want to give me a ring and said that I’ll only get one when we’re married. So, when I saw the ring Miss Reed donated and remembered that you have the other one with you, I thought I could make it a pair with yours if I buy it and take it as though it’s a gift from you. That’s why I tried to bid for it.”
