From Doormat to Doomsday Billionaire!

Chapter 33: Bait

First came the planes.

At ten thousand meters, aircraft flew above the hail and the fog. But they couldn’t stay up forever, and they couldn’t see the ground. Some tried to descend through the murk and slammed into mountainsides before they ever saw them. 

Others circled until their tanks ran dry, then either attempted blind landings or simply dropped out of the sky like stones.

When the wrecks fell on remote wilderness or open ocean, the damage stayed small.

When they fell on cities, the disaster doubled.

People couldn’t leave their homes, but they could still post. Videos of burning fuselages, flattened apartment blocks, and wreckage scattered across highways flooded the internet and spread around the world in minutes.

Terror followed.

Is this really the end?

Rhys scrolled through the footage with a flat expression. He had seen worse.

His phone buzzed. An invitation from the property management office: the neighborhood’s disaster-response group chat. Every owner and tenant had been added. After a moment’s thought, he joined.

The messages flooded his screen so fast he had to scroll upward to keep up. Most residents were asking whether anyone knew how long this would last, or when government supplies would arrive.

Then one man typed something extraordinary.

Leonard Lee: My cousin works for the city government. The disaster will last a long time. The authorities have activated an emergency shelter plan. Select people will be taken to underground cities built in advance, where they’ll stay until it’s safe to rebuild.

I have three places reserved. I’m single, so I’m willing to sell two of them. Message me privately if interested.

Rhys read it and sighed.

“I remember you.”

In his last life, he had watched the same thing unfold. There were no underground cities. Leonard Lee was a tenant, not an owner, and a scammer, plain and simple. His lies had fooled more than a dozen people. Some lost money. Some lost food. Some lost much more.

He had kept the con alive until the eleventh day, when he was exposed and beaten to death in a stairwell.

By day eleven, the electricity had been gone for a week. Everyone was cut off. Everyone was desperate. In those conditions, people were capable of almost anything.

Rhys didn’t warn the group.

Others were already telling people to watch for scams. But in a moment like this, people clung to any scrap of hope, and the ones determined to believe would believe anyway.

Given what he could do, simply refraining from harming people was already kindness.

Time to poke my ex-wife a little.

***

He thought about the Stowes.

They had always been stingy. Seldom stocked up. Britt used to haunt the supermarket at night, hunting for wilted vegetables marked down to pennies. Apart from rice, the family kept almost nothing in reserve.

At noon, Rhys laid his table with dishes. He piled instant noodles and bread beside them, as if they were decorations. He took photos, including one of Duke happily gnawing a steak, and posted them on his social media feed,

Visible to Lexi alone.

The caption read: “Good thing I’m a homebody. Stocked up on a few things in advance, haha.”

He had checked that she hadn’t blocked him. She’d want to watch his every move. She would definitely see it.

Let her drool.

After lunch, he took Duke to the garage again.

It was crowded, but the mood had curdled. Yesterday had been a shared adventure. Today it was a wake.

 Faces were pinched with worry, especially those whose families had gone to work and not come home. They were afraid their loved ones might be hungry, or freezing.

The temperature outside had dropped to minus five. Every household was running air conditioning for warmth. The ones without it were wrapped in blankets, shivering.

In two days, the power will fail, and it will drop to minus fifteen.

After the walk, Rhys went back home.

The group chat had gone quieter. People had started making practical arrangements. A few residents were selling supplies. Prices were already at least ten times normal, and a handful of neighbors had begun accusing the sellers of profiteering from other people’s suffering.

Rhys laughed softly and shook his head.

Ten or twenty times the old price? You’d call the buyers fools. In another couple of days, the sellers would regret ever taking the cash.

What good was money?

None. Right now, buying supplies with cash was practically getting them for free.

Across the building, Lexi stared at her phone.

The mountain of food made her mouth water.

Then she saw a mongrel gnawing a steak, and she wanted to strangle Rhys through the screen.

What a waste!

Think about what she’d eaten over the last two days. Plain rice. Pickled vegetables. And Rhys’s dog was eating better than her?

“That food should be mine. All of it.”

She paced around.

“No. I need a new strategy.”

 Before, she’d only wanted his money. Now, she wanted his money and his food.

She would have to win him back.

“Lexi! Lexi! Get out here, you worthless girl!”

Michael suddenly pounded on her door.

Her face darkened. They had fought all night. Weren’t they finished yet?

But she had a plan now.

She smoothed her hair, straightened her stiff face, and opened the door with the confidence of a winner.