From Doormat to Doomsday Billionaire!

This is where it ends.

The cruel certainty shattered Rhys’s heart harder than the rusty metal crate crushing his chest.

His breath left him in thin shaking ribbons, each one smaller than the last.

“Vance? Crowley?” Rhys called out to his comrades, but silence answered instead.

From his peripheral vision, he could see the horror— Vance, crushed by an armored truck, blood spilling on the snow, and Crowley’s bones twisted in places that didn’t look ordinary.

Rhys grunted in pain. He had survived ten years of the apocalypse. He had carried two thousand people on his shoulders in the search for survival. 

And now he was going to die under a wrecked crawler in the snow.

The wind came across the northern ice like a blade drawn slowly, finding every tear in his gear. Rhys’s legs were crushed beneath the steel. He couldn’t feel them anymore.

Ten years ago, the sun crumbled and the sky broke open. Cities were entombed. Oceans turned to stone. And the things that crawled out of the dark— beasts that had learned to love the cold— only grew bigger and stronger with each passing winter.

Rhys had built New Goshen with his own hands. Dozens of families slept behind its walls because he had bled for every brick, ration, and every night of safety they had.

Because of the desire for a better existence for his people, especially his wife Lexi. and son Chris, Rhys had believed the reports of a geothermal valley rumored to support life. The possibility was staggering: New Goshen could grow its own crops!

Rhys had set out with his team to explore this.

But the geothermal valley had been a lie. 

The only thing that waited for them was a ten-feet snow monster who tore his team to shreds!

Beside him, the snow beast lay dead, its black blood freezing into the ice like spilled tar. Rhys had killed it alone, after it tore his team apart, but not without suffering the deathly consequences of that fight.

Suddenly, he heard an engine.

A second crawler rolled out of the whiteout and stopped ten feet away. The passenger door opened.

Lexi Stowe stepped down into the snow.

Rhys glared at his wife of fourteen years, surprised by her presence. She hadn’t left New Goshen’s walls willingly in a decade.

“She must have risked herself to come help me.” Rhys thought to himself. 

“Lexi…” His voice cracked. “You came.”

She didn’t answer. She just cast him a glare, looking at him like he was a stain on a carpet.

Then the driver’s door slammed. Curry Barker strolled around the hood and slid an arm around her waist!

Rhys’s blood went cold. That was the same man Lexi always told him not to worry about.

“Damn. You really are a hard man to kill.”

Curry sighed in frustration.

“Don’t bother with him. Look at those legs. He’ll bleed out or freeze. Either way, I’m not standing here all day.” 

Lexi said casually, checking her nails.

Rhys stared at her. The words sounded foreign to him. Fourteen years of pain and sacrifice and she was betraying him?

“What… is this?” Rhys managed to voice out. 

“This?” She chuckled. “This is the part where you finally understand how stupid you’ve always been.”

Curry laughed and kissed her lips, slowly, right in front of him.

Rhys’s fingers clawed into the ice.

“There was never a valley, Rhys,” Lexi said. “Did you really think warm ground was waiting up here? After ten bloody years?”

“The scavenger who came back babbling about a snow beast?” Curry added. “That was my guy. I told him exactly what to say.”

Rhys’s blood ran cold. 

The report. The coordinates. The mission Lexi swore only Rhys could lead.

Every piece had slid into place, and every piece was a knife waiting to rip him apart.

“You planned this.” Rhys muttered. He had lost too much blood now. Damn!

“I have been on this for months, waiting, searching for the perfect opportunity to break you like twigs. Fourteen years was generous. Honestly, I’m so bloody bored of playing loyal wife to a man who smells like beast guts. You disgust me so much, Rhys!”

She raised her left hand in fury.

 A plain gold ring caught the light. Rhys’s breath stopped.

His heirloom. The dimensional ring. The one she had once called too cheap to wear when he offered it as a gift. 

The ring had vanished many weeks ago, just as New Goshen’s supplies ran dry.

“My ring. You took it.”

She glared at the ring, smiling mischievously.

“You hid the best thing you owned from your own wife. Safe to say you betrayed me first, Rhys.”

she said, eyes gleaming with hunger. 

“But now it’s ours. All of it.”

Rhys gritted his teeth. The muscle tensed in his jaw.

“Oh, and one more thing, Chris isn’t yours. He’s my son.” Curry added casually.

Everything in Rhys went silent.

That was the boy he had taught to ride a bike. The boy he had carried on his shoulders through blizzards. 

The boy who called him Daddy!

“You’re— lying.” Rhys’s throat was dry.

Curry laughed hysterically.

“Lying? Ha! You really are delusional. Don’t bother too much, Rhys. I will take care of my son when you are gone.”

Lexi tugged Curry’s sleeve. “Let’s go darling. Chris is waiting, and New Goshen needs to meet its new leader.”

She pulled him in for another kiss and bile rose to Rhys’s throat.

Curry smiled as she broke the kiss. 

“God, I love it when you do that.” He bit his lower lip. “One second, love.”

Curry climbed back into his truck.

The engine roared.

Suddenly, The truck lunged forward and slammed into the wreckage pinning Rhys. 

“Ah—!” Rhys groaned.

The whole mass of steel shrieked across the ice, dragging him with it toward the black mouth of a ravine.

“Stop fucking fighting, Rhys! Just die already!” Lexi screamed at him as the engines roared louder.

One more push from Curry, Rhys’s fingers slipped. 

Then he was falling.

He hit the bottom of the pit with a crack that echoed through his whole skeleton.

Far above, two silhouettes stood at the edge, laughing at him, kissing and smooching shamelessly.

Rhys shut his eyes as the pain swept across him like a wave. 

Fourteen years, he gave her everything. 

Her parents ate because of him. Her worthless brother lived like a king because of him.

And she let Rhys die like an animal.

With his final breath, Rhys snarled into the dark:

“If there is any justice in this world, let me come back. I will take everything from every one of you. And I will make you beg!”

Then the last heat left his body and the darkness swallowed him whole.

***

“Rhys! Are you fucking deaf?”

A hand shoved his shoulder. 

Smack!

A palm cracked across his cheek.

“I said sign it! What are you waiting for, you useless idiot?”

Rhys went still.

The woman glaring at him was Lexi, his wife. But she was younger now. Her skin unmarked, and her eyes sharp with the same contempt he now knew had always been there.

“What are you doing standing there gawking?” she hissed. “Sign the damn paper. My brother needs that money today.”

Rhys didn’t move. 

His eyes found the calendar on the wall behind her.

AUGUST 2026.

His heart slammed in his chest. He was warm. His legs were whole. 

This was ten years ago, exactly ninety-two days before the Great Freeze.

“I have been reborn!” Rhys exclaimed.

Slowly, Rhys lifted his gaze back to the woman who had laughed while he died. He took in the monster he once loved so dearly.

For the first time in two lifetimes, he smiled.

And It was not a kind smile.