My Ex-Wife wanted Money, The Apocalypse wanted Everything

Chapter 2

The sound was soft and clean, two sheets of paper separated at the fold.

Ignoring the way Victoria’s jaw dropped beside him, Ethan turned directly to the account manager and spoke with absolute clarity.

“Miss, remove every authorization my wife currently has on my accounts.” He placed both hands flat on the desk and looked the woman straight in the eye. “From now on, no transfer, withdrawal, or account change is to be approved unless I appear here personally with valid identification.”

The account manager hesitated for only a second, glancing between Ethan and the stunned woman beside him, before nodding. “Right away, Mr. Carter.”

Victoria stared at him as though she had just watched a stranger crawl out of her husband’s skin. Her lips parted but nothing came out. For three full seconds, she simply could not believe what she had just heard.

Then she moved.

“No. Don’t listen to him!” She hurried toward the desk, her heels clicking sharp against the marble floor. Her voice was high and strained, her perfectly manicured fingers gripping the edge of the counter. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He just had some kind of episode in that chair. You saw it yourself!”

The manager folded her hands together, her expression polite but unmoved. “Ma’am, the accounts are legally registered in his name alone. You have no authority to stop him.”

She looked back at Ethan. “Sir, would you like this processed immediately?”

“Immediately.” Ethan answered without hesitation, without even blinking.

Victoria went still.

For years, she had spent Ethan’s money as though it belonged to the Bennett family. Every bill from her mother’s apartment, every shopping trip with her girlfriends, every emergency loan to Ryan that was never paid back.

Ethan had paid for all of it. He had funded their plans, cleaned up every mess they made, and never once said a word of complaint.

So why had he suddenly changed? What had happened in those few minutes she was waiting outside?

She neither understood nor cared to understand. All she knew was that her access was being taken away, and that was unacceptable. The shock on her face curdled rapidly into something harder, something colder.

“What is wrong with you?” She turned on him, keeping her voice low enough that the manager wouldn’t hear clearly, but sharp enough to cut. “What are you trying to prove with this little stunt? How am I supposed to pay for Noah’s expenses? Or my mother’s medical bills? Have you even thought about that for one second?”

Her tone was not screaming. It was worse than that. It was the controlled, icy disappointment of a woman who had long ago decided her husband existed solely to serve her family’s needs, and was now watching him malfunction.

Ethan looked at her. Once, that tone would have made him buckle. Once, the mention of Noah’s name would have sent guilt flooding through his chest, and he would have apologized and signed whatever she put in front of him.

But that was the old Ethan. The one who hadn’t yet felt a blade carving through his own flesh while his wife watched with hungry eyes.

Now, when he looked at her, he saw nothing but a parasite whose entire existence relied on draining him dry.

“I don’t know, Victoria.” His voice came out flat, empty of everything she was used to hearing from him. No guilt. No eagerness to fix things. Nothing. “Maybe you can ask Derek to solve this problem. I’m done.”

Victoria flinched. The name landed like a slap across her face. For one brief instant, naked panic flashed through her eyes, raw and exposed and ugly. Then she buried it beneath the same familiar outrage she always wore whenever that name came up.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” She stepped closer, her jaw tight, her nostrils flaring with forced indignation. “There is nothing going on between Derek and me! Can you stop acting like a toxic, insecure chauvinist for five minutes?”

Ethan almost laughed. In his previous life, that exact line had worked perfectly. He would feel ashamed of his suspicions, mumble an apology, and let the subject die. Every single time.

Not anymore.

Before he could answer, the manager rose from her chair and opened the office door to carry out his instructions. The moment the door swung open, Ryan Bennett pushed past her and stormed inside, irritation written all over his face like he had been waiting out there counting every wasted minute.

“What are you two arguing about in here?” Ryan folded his arms across his chest, looking between his sister and his brother in law with an entitled scowl that he had perfected over years of never being told no. “What’s all this drama? And more importantly, where’s my million?”

He said it like a child demanding his allowance. No gratitude. No humility. Just a hand stretched out and a foot tapping impatiently.

Ethan gave him a cold, appraising glance. The kind of look you give a cockroach sitting on your dinner plate.

“If you want money, earn it like every honest man does.” His voice carried no emotion at all.

Ryan’s smug expression cracked. “What the hell? Are you backing out on me, Ethan?” His face twisted with sudden, ugly anger, veins rising at his temples. “We had a deal!”

“There was never a deal.” Ethan replied, and there was not a single trace of the deference he used to show this family. Not one drop. “There was only a family that convinced itself it had the right to spend my money whenever it pleased.”

“You son of a bitch!” Ryan snapped. He took a heavy, aggressive step forward, raising his hand as if to grab Ethan by the collar.

“Careful.” Ethan said quietly.

Just one word. But something in his tone, something so cold and final, like the sound of a lock clicking shut on a door that would never open again, made Ryan freeze mid step. His raised hand hung in the air, trembling, and then slowly dropped back to his side.

He didn’t understand why he had stopped. But some animal instinct buried deep in his gut told him that the man standing in front of him was no longer the pushover he had spent years stepping on.

Ethan calmly buttoned his coat, turned, and walked out of the office without another word.

Behind him, Victoria and Ryan finally recovered from their shock. Their furious voices chased him down the marble hallway.

First his name, then threats, then something about Ryan’s business failing without the funding, then Victoria’s voice cracking as she shouted that he was going to regret this.

But none of it mattered anymore.

Ninety two days. That was all Ethan could think about as he pushed through the glass doors and stepped into the warm afternoon sun. He needed supplies. He needed a fortified shelter. He needed capital. And he needed all of it before the world ended.

At the moment, he owned little more than a modest bank balance, a seven year old sedan, and the perfect knowledge of the catastrophe that was coming.

But there was one more thing.

A faint trace of coolness rested against his chest, pressed between his shirt and his skin. The pendant. Ethan reached beneath his collar and closed his fingers around it. He had worn it for so long that he sometimes forgot it was there. But now, feeling its smooth surface against his fingertips, a thought struck him that made his heart beat faster.

He had never imagined that it would return with him as well.

The pendant had been created near the end of civilization, when governments were pouring their last resources into technology that might keep humanity alive. It was the only one of its kind, and in his previous life, it had come to him by accident during a scavenging run through a collapsed military facility.

Ethan found a deserted alley behind the bank, checked both directions to make sure no one was watching, then bit the tip of his finger and allowed a single drop of blood to fall onto the pendant’s surface.

A blinding white light erupted before his eyes.

When he opened them again, he stood inside an empty apartment.

The dimensional space.

There was no running water, no electricity, and not a single piece of furniture. The apartment contained two bedrooms and a living room, covering roughly one hundred and twenty square meters. The ceilings were nearly three meters high, and beyond the balcony lay a small garden with bare soil.

Ethan stared around him, his breathing quickening. “I can’t even imagine how many supplies I could store in here.”

The possibilities were staggering. Anything placed inside would remain exactly as it was. Food would never rot. Water would never evaporate.

Hot meals would stay hot, and frozen goods would remain frozen. The technology had been one of humanity’s greatest achievements.

But in his previous life, it had come far too late. By the time it was invented, there had been almost nothing left to preserve.

This time, Ethan would make full use of it.

He walked into the living room and looked up. A glowing timer hung suspended in midair, pulsing with faint blue light. 26:20. The numbers continued to tick down, second by second. He could remain inside the dimensional space for only thirty minutes at a time. Once he left, he would have to wait twenty four hours before entering again.

Ethan smiled. For now, that was hardly a problem.

A moment later, he left the dimensional apartment and returned to the outside world.

His pulse quickened, not with fear or simple amazement, but with the cold, focused exhilaration of a commander who had just received reinforcements one minute before the war.

Ethan stepped onto the crowded street. The city moved around him as usual. Cars rolled through the intersection. A couple argued over where to eat. A delivery driver hurried past with a stack of warm meals balanced on his shoulder.

Above them, the sky was clear, blue, and flooded with sunlight, as though it might remain that way forever.

Ethan knew it would not.

He had ninety two days to prepare for the moment when that sky came crashing down. And when it did, he intended to be the one holding the key to survival.