Chapter 2
Mona drove with a blank expression, her face ghostly pale in the cold glow of the dashboard lights.
Her phone on the passenger seat lit up, flooded with bank deduction messages one after another.
Credit card overdrafts, consumer loans, even high-interest microloans—she'd burned through every financial trick she could find.
"Good that you like it," Mona said flatly. "Did you quit your job?"
"Hell yeah! I was done with that crap ages ago!" Baldwin spat, kicking his feet up on the passenger seat's backrest and scuffing the beige interior.
"That jerk of a supervisor tried to talk me into staying, but I just slapped my resignation letter right in his face. Mona, you were right. We're about to move into a mansion. Why would I bother with a job? From now on, I'm all about investing."
"Well, enjoy it," Mona replied, her voice barely above a whisper.
She shot a glance at Baldwin's clueless eyes.
He had no idea that every penny he was blowing through was money Mona had sacrificed her future for.
This was the final banquet Mona served her family before the apocalypse arrived.
When they got home, the living room was filled with an almost suffocating sense of joy.
The coffee table was stacked with freshly opened luxury boxes and bags—Hermès scarves, Gucci belts, and the latest iPhone.
Mona's father, Stephen, was drinking fine wine by himself, his face flushed red, burping and boasting. "See? I told you Mona's really something. Selling the house was a smart move. We are finally moving into a villa."
Mona stood in the entryway, slipping out of her high heels.
Her gaze flicked to the calendar on the wall. Less than three months left until everything changed.
She pulled out her phone and opened the real estate app.
The downtown penthouse had gone up for sale yesterday. To make it move fast, she slapped on a fire sale price—1 million off the market value.
The agent's phone was ringing off the hook the second the listing went live.
"Mona, you're such a badass," Baldwin said, leaning in and flashing his Rolex at her, totally oblivious to the flicker of murder in her eyes.
"I'm tagging along with you from now on. Now this is living!"
Mona stared at the bulging veins on his wrist, remembering the cold, ruthless way he stabbed her in her previous life.
She gave a faint smile, reached out to straighten his collar, her cold fingers tracing his carotid artery. "Yeah, enjoy it while it lasts."
At three in the morning, the city finally went quiet.
Mona was behind the wheel of a beat-up secondhand minivan, cruising down the highway toward the western outskirts.
Outside, the countryside was pitch black, with the occasional birdcall slicing through the night.
She stopped at an abandoned textile factory out on the western outskirts.
On the surface, it was just a weed-choked ruin, but underground, it was connected to an old civil defense shelter from the sixties.
Mona had shelled out a fortune, using a shell company to secure a twenty-year lease. Officially, it was supposed to be an ultra-cold chain storage facility.
She pushed open the heavy, rusted iron gate, and a wave of cold, damp air hit her.
Mona switched on her flashlight, the beam cutting through the darkness and lighting up the vast, empty air raid shelter.
This was going to be her Noah's Ark.
She pulled out three cheap burner phones from her pocket.
The first one started buzzing nonstop as soon as she powered it up.
"Hello, Mr. Glen Frost? Yeah, it's Mona Wade. I need a thousand boxes of high-energy compressed biscuits—military grade, five-year shelf life. No need for home delivery, just send them to Warehouse 3 in the western suburbs. I'll arrange pickup myself.
"Hello, is this the pharma company? I need amoxicillin, ibuprofen, and antibiotics. If the quantity's not enough, I'll pay thirty percent extra. It needs to go out tonight.
"Water purification tablets and solar power generators—I want everything you have on hand."
Mona's voice echoed through the empty tunnel, carrying a steely calm that brooked no argument.
She was like a diligent ant, systematically stripping the city of its resources before the storm hit.
To avoid attracting attention, she scattered her delivery addresses across eight different corners of the city, changing vehicles every day—like she was orchestrating a meticulous spy game.
After wrapping up her orders, Mona leaned against the icy concrete wall and sparked up a cigarette.
The red ember flickered in the darkness, glowing and fading with each drag.
She pulled up the family surveillance app on her phone.
On the screen, that so-called "family" was lost in sleep. Baldwin lay sprawled out, mouth hanging open, drool soaking his pillow, his hand still gripping the keys to his new car.
Her mother rolled over, muttering "villa" in her sleep.
Mona blew out a smoke ring, the haze blurring the image on the screen.
She wasn't like those vengeful leads in time travel stories, watching her enemies sleep and seething with rage.
Her gaze was eerily calm, as if she were looking at a rat crushed on the roadside, or animals lined up for slaughter at the market.
It was a coldness that surpassed hatred—a sort of compassion reserved for the already dead.
"Sleep..." she murmured softly to the screen, her finger hovering over the "disconnect" button for a moment. "In your dreams, you can have anything you want."