Reincarnated To Divorce My Wife Before The Apocalypse

Chapter 1: Back To The Past

"Baby Silvia... where is my bread and mineral water?"

Felix's voice came out rough, his throat so dry it hurt to speak. His face was pale, his head spinning.

He had spent the last seventeen hours digging through the snow, pushing deeper into the white wasteland beyond the shelter, searching for anything edible.

Not a drop of water or bite of food, had passed his lips since he walked out that door.

Silvia stood a few steps away, wrapped in thick winter clothes, and did not answer him.

Felix frowned, confused, and then his gaze moved past her, and his heart sank.

Behind her stood Davidson Richard, her so-called male best friend and Felix's boss. In one hand, Davidson held a bottle of mineral water. In the other, a sachet of bread. Felix's bread. Felix's water.

Slow and deliberately, Davidson tore the bread open and took a bite.

"Thanks for warming the bread," he said, chewing, watching Felix's face the whole time.

"Silvia... that's my ration," Felix croaked. "I carried that back through the storm. I waited hours for that water."

"I know you're hungry, Felix," Silvia finally spoke, her tone flat. "But bear with me for a few more hours. I've already asked some people to go scavenge for food."

Felix froze momentarily hearing those words.

"Bear with you? How long have I been bearing with you already?! Seventeen hours, Silvia! Seventeen hours in that white hell, and you hand my ration to him?!"

He glared at the man behind her. "Give me my food, Davidson. Now."

"Come on, Felix, stop making a scene out of nothing." Davidson's voice was lazy, unbothered. He twisted the cap off the bottle and drank, long and slow, a few drops sliding down his chin.

"It's not like anyone has ever died from one day without food and water. And look at this weather. No sun for weeks, freezing cold. You should be perfectly fine. Cold slows everything down, even hunger."

"Davidson, you don't need to explain anything to him." Silvia's expression softened as she stepped closer and took his free hand in both of hers.

"I gave you permission to eat it. You deserve to eat first, always."

She finally glanced at Felix, and there was nothing in her eyes. Not guilt, not anger, just the flat annoyance of someone looking at a leaking pipe.

"As for Felix, he's useless in every way that matters. Giving him enough food to stay alive day by day is already a blessing. And now he's demanding more? The useful ones eat well. The useless ones eat scraps. That's how a shelter survives now."

Felix's vision blurred, rage roaring in his ears. "Who the fuck are you calling useless?! Without me risking my life out there in that frozen wasteland, where would any of you get food?! If not for me, that piece of trash you call a friend would have died in the first month!"

His chest heaved. "And you two have the guts to call me useless? Wasn't I the one who gave up the position of shelter leader? I handed it to you, Silvia, because I didn't want to watch you, my wife work yourself to death for..."

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Felix never finished the sentence. Three bursts of white-hot pain exploded in his belly, forcing him to subconsciously look down. There, three dark holes in his clothes, blood pouring out and steaming against the frozen floor.

Slowly, he lifted his head. Silvia stood there, a revolver gripped in her raised hand, still pointed at his stomach.

Felix's legs gave out. He slumped onto the ice-cold floor, his strength draining out of him with his blood. And through the haze, he heard Silvia's voice, calm and efficient, like she was disposing of a broken tool.

"Announce it to everyone in the shelter. Felix tried to betray us, and I caught him and killed him. From this moment on, I am the sole controller of this shelter." A pause. Then, casually, as an afterthought: "They can have his body for dinner, if they want."

The words cut through the fog in Felix's mind clearer than any bullet.

His body. For dinner.

Months of scraps. Just enough to keep him walking into the storm again and again, hauling food back to people who never thanked him. He had thought it was rationing, just hard times.

He had been livestock. Kept fed just enough to stay worth eating.

The rage that flooded him was so complete it almost felt warm.

*If there is a next life... I, Felix Cross, swear on every god that exists. I will find you. And I will make your lives a living hell.*

Darkness swallowed him whole.

---

Felix jolted upright with a gasp, as if something had yanked him out of a nightmare.

He was lying in a proper bed, warm air touching his skin. His hands flew to his stomach. Smooth, unbroken. No holes. No blood.

"Was it all a dream?"

He stumbled to the window and threw it open. Below, people moved through the streets in thin clothes, laughing, arguing over parking spots. Cars rolled past. And above it all, in a blue sky, hung the sun. Bright and unbothered.

Felix should have felt relief. Instead, the sunlight felt wrong on his skin, like a beautiful lie.

Because he remembered the sun vanishing without warning, black holes tearing open across the sky, dark purplish hail raining down on the earth, punching through rooftops, windshields, and people unlucky enough to be outside.

He remembered the temperature falling to minus five within the first few hours and never stopping.

He remembered the power dying, the internet dying, the government going silent. He remembered how by the end of first month, people looked at each other the way butchers look at meat.

No. It had not been a dream. Dreams did not leave this kind of cold in your bones.

His eyes swept the room and locked onto the calendar. His heart slammed as he read the date.

Six months. He was six months before the apocalypse. This left him shock and elated at the same time.

Felix forced his mind to work. The abandoned villa across the street had belonged to his late parents, right opposite Silvia's family home, reason he trusted her.

The two of them had grown up as neighbors and even married, never did he expect for her to be so cold to him.

Anyway, six months was enough to turn that house into a fortress, enough to modify a truck that could plow through a blizzard. But fortresses and trucks did not come cheap.

He needed money. A lot of money. The question was where to get it.

As if on cue, his phone rang. Felix looked at the screen. The name Boss Davidson stared back at him. His expression turned to ice. He let it ring twice, then answered.

"What took you so long?! Why aren't you at work already?! Get here in the next thirty minutes or you're fired!"

Click. The line went dead before Felix could say a word.

Felix's grip tightened until the casing creaked. The rage in his chest slowly cooled into something else. An idea slid into place, clicking like a key in a lock.

The boss had a wife. She was head of the finance department in the same company, while Davidson occupied the Director position.

The two of them hid their marriage beautifully, terrified of the company's anti-nepotism policy.

In his past life, three months from now, that secret came to light.

The investigation followed, and the two of them were dragged off in handcuffs for embezzling over 10.5 million dollars across 8 years of service.

Felix lowered the phone, and a slow, dangerous grin spread across his face.

"Well, well, well," he murmured to the empty room. "It looks like a little blackmail here and there wouldn't hurt a single soul."