$100 Million Before Doomsday: My Doomsday Shelter System

Chapter 6: Fifty Million

Joshua had no idea he was being watched.

By the time he finished unloading the first delivery truck at the house and started organizing the supplies in the basement, his mind was already three steps ahead. The Titan Defense crew would arrive tomorrow morning. The system countdown showed twelve days. He had submitted every piece of financial evidence to Victor, including six years of bank transfers, receipts, and Elena's spending records. The divorce case was airtight. All he had to do was wait for Elena to either accept the terms or walk into a courtroom and lose everything.

He didn't spare a single thought for what Elena might be doing right now.

That was his only mistake.

Across the city, in a coffee shop six blocks from the wholesale market, Elena and Jessica were sitting at a corner booth with two untouched lattes between them and a phone lying face up on the table.

Elena's leg was bouncing under the table and her eyes kept darting to Jessica's phone. "So what do we do? He's spending money like it's water. He has to be hiding a fortune somewhere, but how do we find out exactly how much?"

Jessica leaned back and crossed her legs. The humiliation from the café meeting with Professor Haines was still sitting in her chest like a hot coal, but the possibility of revenge was already cooling it down. She tapped her fingernail against her coffee cup and a slow, sly smile spread across her face.

"I have a guy." Jessica's voice dropped low. "His name is Brian. Works at First National Bank. Senior accounts manager. He's been chasing me for about two years now and I've been letting him think he has a chance because you never know when a man with access to bank records might come in handy."

Elena's eyes lit up. "Can he find out how much Joshua has?"

"Honey, Brian would rob his own vault if I asked him nicely enough." Jessica picked up her phone and dialed. She waited two rings, then her entire face changed. The tight, anxious expression melted away and was replaced by something warm and playful, like flipping a switch.

"Brian! Hi, baby. It's Jess." Her voice went soft and breathy, the kind of voice that made men forget they had jobs and responsibilities. "I know, I know, it's been too long. I've been thinking about you, actually. Listen, I need a tiny little favor. It's nothing really, just a quick account lookup. The name is Joshua. Joshua Reed. Can you do that for me?"

She paused, listening, and twirled a strand of hair around her finger.

"You're the best, Brian. Seriously. I owe you dinner. Maybe more than dinner." She giggled and bit her lower lip even though Brian couldn't see it. The performance was so natural it was almost impressive. "Text me when you have it, okay? You're amazing. Bye, baby."

She hung up and the warm, flirty expression dropped off her face like a mask being tossed on a table. She looked at Elena with her real face, the sharp and hungry one, and raised an eyebrow.

"Give it five minutes."

"That's it?" Elena looked almost disappointed by how easy it was.

"That's it. Men are simple, Elena. Especially the ones who think they're smart." Jessica picked up her latte and took a sip. "Brian will pull the records, send me the number, and go back to his desk believing he's one romantic dinner away from getting me in bed. He'll never get that dinner, of course, but he doesn't need to know that."

Elena laughed. It was the first real laugh she had let out since Joshua knocked her father to the floor two days ago. "You're terrible."

"I'm effective. There's a difference."

Three minutes passed. Then four. Jessica's phone buzzed on the table and both women lunged for it at the same time. Jessica got there first. She picked it up, opened the message, and her eyes went so wide that Elena could see the white all the way around her irises.

"Oh my God." Jessica's voice came out as a whisper first, and then it exploded into a scream that made three people at nearby tables jump. "Oh my God! Elena! Elena, look at this!"

She shoved the phone across the table. Elena grabbed it and stared at the screen.

The number staring back at her had eight zeros after it.

"One hundred million dollars." Jessica was gripping the edge of the table with both hands. "That dog has one hundred million dollars sitting in his bank account! One hundred million! He told you for six years that every penny went to the family, and this whole time he was hiding a hundred million dollars!"

Elena's hands were shaking. The phone nearly slipped out of her fingers and she had to set it down on the table before she dropped it. Her mind was racing so fast she could barely hold onto a single thought.

One hundred million dollars.

Even if she only got half in the divorce, that was fifty million. Fifty million dollars. More money than her entire family had earned in their combined lifetimes. More money than she had ever imagined having.

"Jessica." Elena's voice was trembling. "If we win this case, I get fifty million dollars."

"At minimum." Jessica's eyes were blazing. "With evidence of hidden assets during a marriage, a judge could award you even more. He hid this money from you while you were married. That's fraud, Elena. That's grounds for a much bigger settlement than fifty percent."

Elena grabbed her purse and stood up so fast her chair nearly fell over. "I need to tell my parents. I need to tell them right now."

"Go." Jessica waved her toward the door with a grin that stretched from ear to ear. "I'll start preparing the filing. We're going to bury that man."

Elena drove across the city to her parents' apartment in record time. The building was old and gray, the kind of place where the elevator broke every other week and the hallways smelled like boiled cabbage and cigarette smoke. The apartment itself was barely forty square meters, a cramped two bedroom box with thin walls and a kitchen so small that two people couldn't stand in it at the same time.

This was the reason Elena had brought her parents to live in Joshua's house in the first place. This suffocating little box was all they had, and the moment Joshua proposed, Elena saw the opportunity to get her whole family out of it and into a real home without spending a dime.

She burst through the front door without knocking.

Gerald was sitting in the living room on a sagging couch with an ice pack on his shoulder, still nursing the bruise Joshua had given him. Elena's mother, Patricia, was in the kitchen making tea. Lorry was sprawled in the armchair by the window, scrolling through his phone with one leg draped over the armrest.

"Why are you smiling like that?" Gerald looked at Elena suspiciously. "Did something happen with the divorce?"

"Something happened." Elena was breathless. She threw her purse on the couch and stood in the middle of the room with her arms spread wide. "I followed Joshua today. After the meeting at the café, I followed him across the entire city."

Patricia came out of the kitchen with a mug in her hand. "You followed him? Why?"

"Because I knew he was hiding something. And I was right." Elena's voice was climbing higher with every word. "He went to some big fancy security company first. Some place called Titan Defense. Then he went to the wholesale market on the south side and bought over a million dollars worth of supplies. Food, water, seeds, medical equipment, everything. He filled up four delivery trucks. Four!"

Gerald sat up straight, wincing at the pain in his shoulder. "A million dollars? Where did that dog get a million dollars?"

"That's not even the best part." Elena pulled out her phone and held it up. "Jessica has a contact at the bank. She got into Joshua's account records. Do you want to know how much he has?"

The room went quiet. Even Lorry put down his phone and looked up.

"One hundred million dollars."

The silence lasted exactly two seconds before the room erupted.

Gerald's ice pack fell to the floor. Patricia's mug slipped from her fingers and shattered on the tile, sending tea splashing across her shoes. Lorry swung his legs off the armrest and sat up so fast the armchair creaked.

"One hundred million?" Gerald's voice cracked. "That worthless dog had one hundred million dollars this entire time? While I was living in his house eating the scraps he cooked? While he was walking around in those pathetic clothes pretending to be broke?"

"That lying piece of trash." Patricia's face twisted with fury. "I knew it. I always knew there was something off about him. Nobody works that hard for that little money. He was stealing from us the whole time."

"He wasn't stealing from you, Mom." Elena shook her head, but she was smiling. "He was hiding it. Tucking it away somewhere we couldn't see while he played the loyal, obedient husband. But it doesn't matter now because Jessica says that hidden assets during a marriage are grounds for a massive settlement. Even if I only get half, that's fifty million dollars."

"Fifty million." Gerald whispered the number like a prayer. Then louder. "Fifty million dollars!"

Lorry stood up and walked over to Elena. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her with a grin that made his handsome face look almost predatory. "I always wondered why you stayed with that dog for so long. Six years is a long time to be married to someone like him."

Elena looked up at Lorry and her smile turned softer, more genuine than anything she had ever shown Joshua. She put her hand on his chest and leaned into him.

"You know why I stayed." Her voice was quiet now, just for him. "I stayed because I hadn't been able to squeeze enough money out of him yet. Every time I thought about leaving, I told myself to wait a little longer. Get a little more. Make sure we had enough to start our real life together."

She reached up and touched his face.

"But now we don't have to wait anymore. Once this divorce goes through and I get that money, we can finally get married. You and me, Lorry. The way it was always supposed to be."

Lorry pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head. Gerald and Patricia watched from the couch with greedy, satisfied smiles on their faces, already calculating what their share of fifty million dollars would look like.

None of them gave a single thought to the man who had cooked their meals, fixed their walls, paid their bills, and given them everything he had for six straight years.

None of them suspected that the money Joshua was spending had nothing to do with a hidden fortune or a secret supermarket.

And none of them had any idea what was coming in twelve days