2026-07-10 19:09:14Marco reached the lottery shop just as the same heavyset man from his memory was crossing the street toward the door. His pace quickened without him even deciding to move faster.
He pushed through the entrance first, his shoulder brushing past the fat man, and grabbed the last ticket off the counter before anyone else could touch it.
The fat man froze in the doorway, his round face twisting with annoyance, his breath still heavy from the walk.
"Hey, that was mine." His voice came out whiny and indignant, his thick eyebrows pulling together in a scowl. "I was already on my way over here. You can't just cut in front of someone like that."
Marco glanced at him with a flicker of something close to pity, though his face stayed perfectly calm.
"Bad luck, friend." His tone was light, almost careless. "Guess you'll have to settle for whatever's left on the shelf."
The fat man huffed and muttered something under his breath, but he turned away without pushing the issue further, his shoulders slumping as he wandered toward the magazine rack instead.
Marco felt no guilt watching him walk off. In two weeks, every bill and coin in this city would mean nothing once the toxic rain started falling and the streets turned into a battlefield. Better that this fortune ended up somewhere useful than rotting uselessly in a stranger's wallet.
He folded the ticket carefully and slid it into his jacket pocket, already counting down the hours until tomorrow's draw.
The next morning, Marco stood in front of a small television screen mounted above a coffee shop counter, his heart steady despite knowing exactly what was coming. The numbers scrolled across the bottom of the screen one by one, matching the ticket in his pocket perfectly.
One hundred million dollars.
He did not celebrate. He did not even smile. He simply finished his coffee, walked to the lottery office, and signed the paperwork with the same calm expression he had worn since waking up that morning.
By that afternoon, Marco was sitting across from the most respected divorce attorney in the city, a sharp eyed man named Dante Acerbi, whose office walls were lined with framed victories from cases far messier than this one.
Dante flipped through the documents Marco had handed him, his eyebrows lifting higher with every page he turned.
"You have screenshots, bank records, even photos of them together at a motel two towns over." He set the folder down and leaned back in his leather chair, studying Marco with newfound interest.
"If you want to wring even more property out of them, it's an absolute walk in the park—you won't even need me to step in."
"However... if I may be blunt, Mr. Ferretti," Dante sat up straight, a cynical smirk gracing his face. "While you have my sympathy, you handed all your money over to your wife. Do you even have enough left to hire me?"
"And don't bother saying you can just transfer twenty percent of whatever we wring out of your wife. How much could that possibly be? Ten grand? Twenty grand? I charge more than that just for a routine consultation..."
Faced with Dante’s curious gaze, Marco calmly pulled out his phone and flashed the screen in front of him.
His bank account showed a balance of $100 million.
"One hundred million dollars?!" Dante gasped in shock. Though a renowned divorce attorney, his own net worth was merely a few million dollars. "Mr. Ferretti, would you mind disclosing the source of these funds? Hiding marital assets is a rather severe offense..."
Marco shrugged non-chalantly. "Relax. I won the lottery. I bought and claimed it after signing the divorce agreement, so it doesn't affect the division of property."
Dante’s expression underwent a colorful series of transformations before he marveled in astonishment, "Mr. Ferretti, I must admire your incredible luck... Under our state’s laws, income acquired after signing a divorce agreement indeed does not count as marital property. Had you been in the neighboring state, you would've had to fork over a massive cut to that leech of an ex-wife."
Marco nodded calmly. He was no fool; he knew the local state laws inside out, which was the only reason he had been so eager to cash in such a massive prize.
Seeing how composed Marco was, a smirk of anticipation spread across Dante's face. "In that case," he said with supreme confidence, "what are your demands?"
Marco's lips curved into a faint, humorless smile, his hands folded calmly on his lap.
"I want her to walk away with nothing." His voice was quiet but firm, every word deliberate. "And I want her to pay me back for every year I spent feeding that family while they laughed behind my back."
Dante nodded slowly, tapping a pen against the edge of his desk, his expression turning thoughtful.
"From what I'm seeing here, her father knew about the affair. Her mother knew. Even her cousin was living under your roof the entire time." His voice sharpened with disgust as he listed each detail. "This entire family treated you like a paycheck with legs."
Marco's jaw tightened slightly at the memory, but his expression remained controlled.
"They treated me worse than that." His tone dropped lower, edged with something cold. "I was their dog. Fed them, sheltered them, never once barked back. They thought I'd stay grateful no matter how many times they kicked me."
Dante's eyes glinted with the kind of sharp satisfaction lawyers get when they smell an easy win.
"Well, dogs occasionally grow teeth, Mr. Ferretti." A thin smile spread across his face. "And from where I'm sitting, you're about to bite back hard enough to take their whole hand off."
Marco allowed himself a small nod, the closest thing to amusement crossing his face since he had woken up that morning soaked in cold sweat.
"How long will this take?" His voice stayed practical, businesslike, free of any emotion that might slow things down.
"With evidence this strong, and your new financial position backing you up, we can move fast." Dante closed the folder with a satisfied snap. "She and her parasitic little family won't know what hit them until the papers are already signed."
He leaned forward across the desk, his fingers steepled together, his eyes locking onto Marco's with absolute confidence.
"They spent years treating you like something to scrape off their shoes." His voice dropped into something low and certain, carrying the weight of a man who had never lost a case like this. "I promise you, Mr. Ferretti, by the time I'm finished, this family of parasites is going to pay every single price they deserve."
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CHAPTER 217
Wendy opened her eyes and straightened. Her voice came out sharper than anyone expected from someone that tired."Casualties. That is what I keep thinking about." She pushed a strand of hair from her forehead. "Every fight we have had so far, people got hurt in ones and twos. This will be different. If Colton hits us with real force, I could have twenty wounded at once. Maybe more.""What do you need?" Marco asked."A proper triage setup. Three stations, not one. Stretchers, tourniquets, blood clotting packs, and at least six people trained to carry the wounded without dropping them." She looked around the table. "And I need them trained this week, not the day the shooting starts.""Diane, give her whoever she asks for." Marco looked at Diane, who was already writing. "Pull them off scavenging if you have to.""Done." Diane did not hesitate. "I will redo the whole labor schedule tonight."The meeting stretched for three hours. Marco asked questions, Okafor argued, Delgado found holes
CHAPTER 216
Perry arrived at the safe house before sunrise with frost in his beard and a folded report clutched against his chest. He did not sit down. He did not take off his coat. He laid the paper on the kitchen table and stepped back as if it might bite him."Read it." Perry's voice was thin and tight. "Please."Marco picked up the report and read it twice. Tank watched him from the floor, ears forward, sensing the change in the air before anyone spoke."Colton finished his purge." Marco set the paper down slowly. "He found someone to blame for the leaks.""Not Okafor." Perry pushed his taped bifocals up his nose, and his hands were shaking. "A sergeant named Harlan Voss. Caught stealing medical supplies a week ago for a completely unrelated reason. Colton decided he was the traitor, put him in front of the whole mall, and shot him. Case closed.""Closed." Marco repeated the word and tasted how bitter it was. "He found a convenient corpse and declared victory over his own paranoia.""And the
CHAPTER 215
"Yesterday morning, two people in this community were caught stealing from the communal food storage." Marco's voice carried across the garage without effort. "Four cases of canned protein and two bags of rice. Hidden under their floorboards."A ripple of anger moved through the crowd. Someone near the back muttered a word that Marco chose to ignore."I want you to understand why they did it." Marco raised his hand to quiet the murmurs. "Dennis and Patricia Hartley survived six weeks on snow water and scavenged scraps. They watched people die around them. When they arrived here and saw that we have food, their fear told them it wouldn't last. So they took extra and hid it."He looked directly at Dennis, who flinched."That's not greed. That's terror." Marco's voice was firm but not cruel. "And I'd bet every person in this room has felt some version of it."Heads nodded slowly. A woman in the second row wiped her eyes."But here's the rule." Marco's tone sharpened. "Everyone contribute
CHAPTER 214
Marco had spent weeks building a fortress, an intelligence network, and a trained security force. Nothing had prepared him for the problem that landed on his kitchen table at seven in the morning, delivered by a furious Diane Kowalski with her clipboard held against her chest like a shield."Third complaint this week." Diane set the clipboard down and rubbed her temples. "The Hendersons in Building 2 say the Garcias are stealing their water ration. The Garcias say the Hendersons are lying because their kid spilled half the jug. And two of the construction workers are fighting over who gets the bottom bunk in the barracks.""Over a bunk." Marco stared at her. Tank lifted his head from the floor and looked between them as if waiting for someone to explain what was happening."Ninety people who didn't choose each other, living in cramped quarters, surviving on rations." Diane's voice was dry and tired. "Everything becomes a fight eventually. I've handled most of it, but some of these dis
CHAPTER 213
Marco walked back to the garage and stood in front of Delgado. The former sergeant sat on an overturned crate with a thermal blanket around his shoulders, his hands wrapped around a cup of hot water that one of the patrol volunteers had given him without asking permission. His people sat behind him in a loose cluster, some of them already asleep on the cold concrete floor, their bodies giving up the fight against exhaustion the moment they felt even a fraction of safety."Here's the deal." Marco folded his arms. "Same offer I give everyone. You contribute labor, you eat. Scavenging, construction, security patrols, medical work, whatever your skills are. Two meals a day. Warm shelter. Clean water. In exchange, you follow the rules, you take orders from the people I've put in charge, and you don't cause problems.""What kind of problems?" Delgado looked up, and his eyes were sharp despite the exhaustion behind them."The kind that end with bodies in my courtyard." Marco didn't flinch. "
CHAPTER 212
The cameras picked them up at seven in the morning.Eleven figures moving through the grey sleet toward the neighborhood's damaged gate, huddled together like a herd of animals crossing open ground and expecting to be shot at any moment."Contact at the south gate." Okafor's voice came through the walkie talkie from his patrol position on the Building 2 rooftop. "Eleven individuals. Mixed group. Civilian clothing. No visible weapons. They look half dead."Marco walked to the monitor and studied the feed. The group moved slowly, some of them limping, one being supported between two others.Their clothes were torn, their skin was grey with cold, and at least three of them had the blackened fingertips and swollen joints that came from severe frostbite left untreated for weeks."Could be real survivors." Natalie stood behind him, watching the screen. "Could be Colton's people wearing rags.""Could be both." Marco zoomed in on the man at the front of the group.Tall, square shouldered desp
