The Cheating Wife's Worthless Husband Is the Apocalypse King

Chapter 3: The Ticket

Marco walked away from the house with his hands in his pockets, but his mind was already working through every detail of his plan. He had no intention of letting that property go, not now, not ever.

The location was perfect. Quiet street, solid foundation, far enough from the city center to avoid the worst of the chaos when the disaster hit, yet close enough to gather supplies before the roads turned dangerous. It was the best possible spot to build his shelter.

Behind the closed door, the Benedetti family stood in stunned silence, staring at each other like none of them understood what had just happened.

"Did you see his face?" Rosa's voice trembled with disbelief, her hand pressed against her chest. "He looked nothing like himself. He's never spoken to any of us that way before."

Sergio rubbed his bruised shoulder, his expression dark and suspicious, his eyes narrowing as he thought it through.

"Something is wrong here." His voice was low and grim. "That dog doesn't have the spine to talk back to me, let alone hit me. He must have found something out. Maybe someone told him about Lorenzo."

Valentina's face went pale at the mention of it, but she quickly forced her features back into something calmer, something colder.

"It doesn't matter what he knows." She straightened her shoulders, her voice sharpening with purpose. "Mom, call Bianca right now. She's still working as a divorce lawyer, isn't she?"

Rosa blinked, confused for a moment, before her expression brightened with sudden understanding.

"Bianca? Your friend from university?" A slow smile crept across her face. "Smart thinking. She'll know exactly how to squeeze him dry."

Valentina nodded, already pulling out her phone, her thumb moving fast across the screen.

"We need to act before he does anything foolish." Her tone turned sharp and businesslike. "Marco has nothing left in his name. Every cent he ever earned went straight into my account. He can't even afford a decent lawyer to fight us."

Sergio let out a short laugh, the tension in his shoulders easing as the plan took shape in his head.

"That's right. He's broke. A dog with no teeth left to bite with." His grin widened, showing too much satisfaction. "Let him try to walk away clean. We'll take everything he has, and he'll be left with nothing but the clothes on his back."

The whole family exchanged smug looks, the earlier panic melting into quiet confidence. Even Lorenzo, still pressing a tissue to his split lip, managed a crooked smile through the pain.

None of them noticed how far Marco had already gotten from caring about any of it.

He walked down the cracked sidewalk with his head clear and his pulse steady, the morning sun warm against his face. Their plotting meant nothing to him anymore. Let them scheme. Let them call their lawyer friend and celebrate their little victory.

He had fifteen days, a system humming quietly in his pocket, and a memory burning sharp and clear in the back of his mind.

Marco's feet carried him toward the small lottery shop on the corner of Via Moretti, the same shop he had passed a thousand times without a second thought. Today, every detail of it felt different, almost sacred.

He remembered this exact morning from his previous life with painful clarity. He had walked past this very shop, glanced at the window display, and decided he was running late for a job and could not stop.

By the time he had returned that evening, the last ticket on the rack was already gone.

Some stranger, just a few minutes ahead of him, had grabbed it instead. Marco had stood there feeling nothing but a small flicker of disappointment, the kind that fades within an hour and gets forgotten by dinner.

He never could have imagined what that ticket would become.

Three weeks later, the news had exploded across every channel in the city. That single ticket, the one Marco had missed by mere minutes, had won one hundred million dollars.

His stomach had twisted with regret for days after hearing it, the kind of regret that eats quietly at a person in the middle of the night.

He remembered coming home and telling Valentina about it, hoping for a little sympathy, maybe a kind word to ease the sting.

Instead, her face had twisted with disgust, and her voice had turned shrill and mocking.

"You actually let a hundred million dollars slip through your fingers because you were too busy playing handyman for strangers?" She had thrown her hands up, her tone dripping with contempt. "You're not just unlucky, Marco. You're useless. A dog could find a bone faster than you could find money."

She had brought it up again and again over the following week, using it as ammunition every time they argued, twisting the knife a little deeper each time.

Marco had swallowed every insult back then, nodding along, apologizing for something that was never even his fault to begin with.

Now, standing in front of the same shop window with the morning light reflecting off the glass, that memory sat heavy and clear in his chest, sharper than it had ever been before.