$100 Million Before Doomsday: My Doomsday Shelter System

Chapter 3: One Hundred Million

Joshua walked fast. His legs carried him down the sidewalk with the kind of urgency that made people step out of his way without thinking about it. The morning air was still cool and the street was just starting to fill up with early commuters, but Joshua wasn't paying attention to any of them. His eyes were locked on the corner store three blocks ahead, the one with the faded green awning and the neon lottery sign blinking in the window.

He remembered this day perfectly. Every detail of it was burned into his memory like a scar that never healed right.

In his previous life, he had been walking to this exact store at this exact time. He had wanted to buy the last scratch ticket on the roll, the one sitting behind the counter with a gold border and a lucky number printed across the top. But when he got there, a fat man in a wrinkled Hawaiian shirt had been standing at the register, already pulling out his wallet. The fat man bought the ticket. The fat man won one hundred million dollars. And Joshua had gone home empty handed.

When he told Elena about it that night, she didn't hug him. She didn't tell him it was okay or that their luck would change. She looked at him like he had personally stolen money from her pocket.

"You're so useless that you can't even buy a lottery ticket on time." That was the first thing she said. And then she spent the next seven days bringing it up every chance she got. Over breakfast. During dinner. Right before bed. Every single time, she found a new way to remind him that he was slow, stupid, and worthless.

Joshua's jaw tightened at the memory. He walked faster.

And there he was. The fat man. Standing at the crosswalk with his hands in the pockets of the same wrinkled Hawaiian shirt, waiting for the light to change. He was humming something under his breath and rocking back and forth on his heels, completely unaware that he was about to walk into the store and change his life forever.

Not this time.

Joshua cut across the street before the light even turned. A taxi honked at him and he didn't care. He pushed through the door of the corner store so fast the little bell above it rang twice, and the old woman behind the counter looked up from her newspaper with her eyebrows raised.

"I want the last ticket on the gold roll." Joshua pulled a crumpled bill from his pocket and slapped it on the counter. "The one right there."

The old woman blinked at him. "You sure? Most people go for the blue ones."

"I'm sure. That one. Right now."

She shrugged and pulled the ticket from the roll. "Your money, honey."

Joshua took the ticket and held it in his hand. The gold border caught the light from the window and for a second he just stood there, feeling the weight of what he was holding. Not the paper itself. The future.

The door chimed behind him. The fat man walked in, already reaching for his wallet, already heading toward the counter with that easy confidence of a man who believed today was going to be his lucky day.

"Hey, do you still have any of those gold tickets left?" The fat man leaned against the counter with a friendly smile.

"Just sold the last one." The old woman jerked her thumb toward Joshua. "This young man got it."

The fat man's smile drooped a little, but he shrugged and bought a blue ticket instead. He'd never know what he just lost.

Joshua walked out of the store and tucked the ticket into his jacket pocket, pressing his palm flat against it to make sure it was secure. In two weeks, when the sky turned green and the rain started dissolving everything it touched, one hundred million dollars would be nothing but paper. Useless. Meaningless. Just like everything else money could buy in a world that was about to end.

But right now, in the fifteen days before the apocalypse, money was still the most powerful tool on earth. And Joshua intended to use every cent of it.

He felt no guilt at all.

The next morning, Joshua walked into the lottery commission office and walked out with a check that had more zeros on it than he had ever seen in his life. One hundred million dollars. The woman at the desk had smiled at him like he was the luckiest man alive, and maybe right now, in this moment, he was.

He didn't celebrate. He didn't call anyone. He didn't go out to eat or buy a car or book a vacation. He sat in a coffee shop two blocks from the commission office, pulled out his phone, and searched for the best divorce lawyer in the city.

The name that came up first was Victor Haines. Forty seven years old, senior partner at one of the biggest law firms downtown, and a reputation for winning cases that other lawyers wouldn't even touch. His fees were enormous. The kind of fees that would have made the old Joshua choke on his own spit.

Joshua called the number without hesitating.

The receptionist put him through in less than a minute, and then a deep, calm voice filled the line.

"This is Victor Haines. How can I help you?"

"My name is Joshua. I need a divorce lawyer. The best one. I was told that's you."

There was a short pause. "It depends on the case. Why don't you tell me what we're dealing with?"

"Six years of marriage. My wife cheated on me with a man she told me was her cousin. She's pregnant with his child. Her entire family treated me like a servant the whole time, and every dollar I earned went straight into her bank account. I want the divorce. I want her to get nothing. And I want her to compensate me for every year I wasted on that family."

The silence on the other end lasted a few seconds longer this time.

"Come to my office this afternoon." Victor's voice had shifted. There was something sharper in it now, something interested. "Bring everything you have. Financial records, bank statements, anything that shows where your money went. If what you're telling me is even half true, this is going to be a very straightforward case."

"It's all true. Every word."

"Then I'll see you at three."

Joshua arrived at Victor's office at exactly three o'clock. The building was all glass and steel, the kind of place that made you feel small when you walked through the front doors. But Joshua didn't feel small. He walked in with a folder thick enough to use as a doorstop and sat down across from Victor Haines like a man who had already decided how this was going to end.

Victor was exactly what Joshua expected. Sharp suit, clean desk, steady hands. His eyes were the color of steel wool and they moved across every document Joshua placed in front of him with the focus of a surgeon looking at an x ray.

Joshua laid it all out. Six years of bank transfers, all going one direction. Pay stubs that showed every cent he earned being deposited into Elena's account. Receipts for the house repairs, the supplies, the food, the utilities, all paid for by him while Elena's family contributed nothing. Records showing the house was in his name, inherited from his parents before the marriage.

Victor turned pages slowly, reading each one without speaking. After twenty minutes, he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands together on the desk.

"Your wife's family essentially lived off you for six years while contributing nothing financially or otherwise to the household." It wasn't a question.

"That's correct."

"And the infidelity. You said she's carrying a child that isn't yours. Can you prove that?"

"I can. And I will."

Victor nodded slowly. A thin smile appeared on his face. Not a friendly smile. A professional one. The kind of smile a man makes when he knows he's about to win before the fight even starts.

"Mr. Joshua, I've handled hundreds of divorce cases. Cheating spouses, hidden assets, families that treat marriage like a business transaction. But this?" He tapped the stack of documents with one finger. "This is one of the clearest cases of exploitation I've ever seen. Your wife and her family treated you like a cash machine for six years. They bled you dry and never even bothered to hide it."

"So you'll take the case?"

"I'll do more than take it." Victor leaned forward and his steel colored eyes locked onto Joshua's. "I'm going to make this family of parasites pay the price they deserve. By the time I'm done with them, your wife won't just walk away with nothing. She'll owe you. And her family will wish they had treated you like a human being instead of a dog they could kick whenever they felt like it."

Joshua looked at the man sitting across from him. For the first time in a very long time, he felt like someone was actually on his side.

"When do we start?"

Victor was already reaching for his pen. "We just did."