The Cheating Wife's Worthless Husband Is the Apocalypse King

CHAPTER 1: BACK

Marco Ferretti's eyes opened. 

“AHHH”

His body jerked upward from the bed like a man pulled out of deep water, gasping, shaking, soaked through with sweat. His heart hammered so hard he could feel it in his teeth.

Just seconds ago, he had been dying.

He could still feel the rope cutting into his wrists. He could still see Valentina's cold face watching him bleed out on the floor while Lorenzo stood behind her with that sick grin. Her parents had been there too. All of them.

The whole Benedetti family had watched him die like he was nothing more than a stray dog they had finally gotten tired of feeding.

Marco pressed his palms against the mattress. It was real. The sheets were real. The ceiling fan above him was spinning slowly, and morning light was creeping through the curtains. He was alive. He was in his own bedroom, in the Benedetti family house, and he was breathing.

His mind cracked open like a dam, and memories poured through in a violent flood. The cosmic radiation. The toxic rain falling from a sky that had turned the color of ash. Animals twisting into monsters overnight. Plants growing teeth and thorns thick as knives. People changing too, some of them becoming something that was not quite human anymore.

Marco remembered all of it. Every single day of the apocalypse.

He had been a repairman before the world ended. A nobody with calloused hands and a toolbox. When the disaster hit, he had used every skill he had to reinforce the Benedetti house. He had sealed the windows, reinforced the walls, built water filtration systems out of scraps. He had kept them all alive while the rest of the neighborhood was torn apart.

And how had they repaid him?

His jaw tightened until his teeth ached. He remembered how Valentina had brought Lorenzo into the house and told him he was her cousin. "Just my cousin, Marco. Don't be so paranoid." And her parents had backed her up. Her mother had laughed at him for being suspicious. Her father had called him a jealous dog who should be grateful anyone married him at all.

For years, Marco had handed every cent he earned to Valentina. He had worked double shifts, skipped meals, worn the same torn boots until his toes bled through the soles.

He had done everything a husband was supposed to do and more. And she had been sleeping with Lorenzo the entire time, right under his roof, while her family helped her hide it.

They had used him up like a battery and thrown him away when there was nothing left to drain.

But now he was here. Alive. Back in his own bed, back before the apocalypse had even started. Marco stared at his hands, turning them over slowly.

No scars. No rope burns. The callouses were there, but the wounds from his final days were gone.

He had been reborn. The cosmic radiation that had destroyed the world had somehow given him this one impossible gift. A second chance.

His fists closed so tight his knuckles went white. This time, things would be different. This time, the Benedetti family would not use him.

This time, they would pay for every humiliation, every lie, every single moment they had treated him like garbage.

A sharp electronic tone rang inside his skull.

Marco flinched. A voice, flat and mechanical, echoed through his mind like a notification from somewhere deep inside his brain.

His phone was sitting on the nightstand, and its screen was glowing with a strange blue light he had never seen before. He picked it up and stared.

The radiation had changed his phone too. The screen now displayed something called the Doomsday Shelter System. A countdown timer was ticking in the center of the display.

Fifteen days until the apocalypse.

According to the system's description, he could earn points by taking in suitable survivors and assigning them tasks.

The more survivors he recruited, the stronger his shelter would become.

Marco's pulse quickened as he read through the details. This was not just a second chance at life.

This was a weapon.

He would survive the apocalypse. He would build something powerful. And he would make sure the Benedetti family choked on every ounce of regret they had coming.

Marco was still studying the system when his bedroom door flew open with a bang that rattled the frame.

Sergio Benedetti stomped in wearing his bathrobe, his thick face already red with irritation, his small eyes scanning the room like he was looking at a servant who had overslept.

"What the hell are you still doing in bed? I've been sitting at that table for thirty minutes waiting for breakfast. Are you dead or just stupid?"

Sergio's voice bounced off the walls, loud and ugly.

"Get your lazy behind downstairs and start cooking. My stomach is growling and you're up here lying around like some useless stray. Even a dog knows when it's time to earn its food."

Marco looked at his father in law with eyes that were nothing like the ones Sergio was used to seeing. There was no fear in them. No obedience. No desperate eagerness to please.

"I'm done cooking for you, Sergio." Marco's voice came out low and steady, like a blade being drawn from a sheath. "From today, I'm not this family's servant anymore. Find someone else to feed you, because I'm done serving trash."

Sergio's mouth fell open. For a full three seconds, the old man just stood there with his jaw hanging loose, like someone had slapped him across the face with a fish. Then the red in his cheeks turned to a deep, dangerous purple.

"What did you just say to me?" Sergio's voice dropped to a trembling growl, his fists balling at his sides. "You piece of garbage. You worthless dog. I took you into my house, I let you marry my daughter, and this is how you talk to me?"

He lunged forward with his fist raised, swinging at Marco's head the way he had done a hundred times before. But this time, Marco did not flinch. He caught Sergio's wrist, twisted it sideways, and shoved the old man backward so hard that Sergio crashed into the doorframe and crumpled to the floor like a bag of wet cement.

Sergio let out a yelp of pain that echoed through the entire house. He clutched his shoulder and stared up at Marco with wide, disbelieving eyes, his mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping on dry land.

"You hit me," Sergio wheezed, his voice cracking with shock and fury. "You actually put your hands on me. You filthy animal. You ungrateful dog!"

Footsteps pounded down the hallway. Valentina appeared in the doorway, her dark hair still messy from sleep, her eyes darting between her father on the floor and Marco standing over him. Her face twisted with confusion and then with something close to outrage.

"What is going on here? Marco, what did you do to my father?" Her voice was sharp enough to cut glass.

Sergio jabbed a shaking finger up at Marco from the floor, his face contorted with rage. "This trash actually dared to hit me! He put his filthy hands on me! Valentina, divorce him! Divorce this dog right now! Throw him out on the street where he belongs!"

Valentina's eyes locked onto Marco. She expected to see the usual panic, the groveling apology, the desperate look of a man terrified of losing the only family he had. But Marco's face was as calm and still as a frozen lake.

"Have you lost your mind?" Valentina stepped closer, her chin raised, her voice dripping with the kind of authority she had always used to keep him in line. "Get on your knees right now and apologize to my father. I mean it, Marco. Kneel down and beg for his forgiveness, or I swear I will divorce you today."

She crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes narrowing, fully expecting him to crumble the way he always did.

Marco looked at her for a long moment. He looked at the woman he had loved, the woman he had bled for, the woman who had let another man into their bed and smiled to his face every morning after. Something cold and final settled behind his eyes.

"Then let's get divorced right now." A thin, bitter smile curled across his lips. "No one is allowed to regret it later."