2026-07-10 19:10:01"I never thought you'd actually divorce that useless piece of trash. I told you ages ago he wasn't worthy of you!" Bianca rushed over to Valentina's house the second she hung up the phone.
"Pfft. At least he brought in $3,000 a month and kept only a hundred for himself, handing the rest straight to me. Who knew the bastard would suddenly demand a divorce?" Valentina curled her lips in disgust, acting as if she hadn't just lost a husband, but rather a human cash cow.
Bianca shrugged nonchalantly. "Well, since you're divorcing anyway, you better squeeze every last drop of value out of him. A girl's youth is priceless—you have to make him pay!"
Valentina let out a cold laugh. "Pay? He gets $100 a month in pocket money; pay with what? The only thing left of any value is this house, but the bastard actually expects us to move out!"
Bianca huffed in anger. "Where does he get off?! Don't worry, I'll definitely make that kid bleed cash! I'm a professional divorce lawyer, after all!"
In truth, Bianca had constantly skipped classes back in law school. Even now, after working for five years, she was still just a junior paralegal.
However, Valentina had already mentioned that an idiot like Marco couldn't even afford a lawyer. When the time came, Bianca could just spout a few made-up legal clauses to scare him. Given that coward's spineless nature, wouldn't he obediently hand over the house?
When all was said and done, she could charge her best friend a few thousand dollars in legal fees—more than enough to live it up for a month!
At that thought, Bianca immediately urged Valentina, "Call that useless ex-husband of yours right now and tell him to come over so we can settle the property division!"
Marco had just stepped out of Dante's law firm when he received the call. He let out a cold sneer—it seemed his ex-wife truly couldn't wait. He casually agreed, sending the address over to Dante right after.
Dante's reply was direct: I'm gathering the documents now. Leaving in 10 minutes. Do not agree to any of their terms before I arrive.
Marco: OK.
Taking a deep breath, Marco's eyes darkened. Everything Valentina owed him from his past life—he was going to make her repay it tenfold!
Shortly after, Marco arrived home.
The moment he stepped through the door, he saw Bianca and Valentina chatting and laughing on the sofa.
Seeing Marco walk in all by himself, Bianca flashed a confident smile.
Just as I thought—the guy can't even afford a lawyer!
Without missing a beat, she tossed a thick stack of documents onto the coffee table and demanded arrogantly, "Sign it!"
Marco rolled his eyes. Where did this idiot come from, telling me to sign right off the bat?
He picked up the agreement and quickly skimmed through it.
"Don't bother reading every detail. The terms are simple," Bianca said impatiently. "Full ownership of this house goes to Valentina, and you'll pay her $10,000 a month in alimony. That's all."
"These are our conditions. Sign it already! Otherwise, if we go to court, we'll strip you down to your last pair of underwear! Valentina is being incredibly generous by offering such lenient terms given your actual situation!" Bianca spoke with a sharp, aggressive tone, as if the ridiculous conditions on paper were a grand act of charity to Marco.
Scanning the absurd clauses line by line, Marco burst out laughing.
"And this is your idea of sincerity?" he asked mockingly, looking at the agreement Bianca had shoved into his face.
Clearly infuriated by his attitude, Bianca slammed her hand on the table and yelled, "What's that supposed to mean?! Valentina spent years married to you, wasting the best years of her youth! Don't you owe her compensation?!"
Marco rolled his eyes. "Youth? She's the only one who had a youth, and I didn't? After we got married, she didn't work, didn't do housework, and even moved her entire family into the house my parents left me! On top of that, I had to earn money every single month to feed her whole freeloading family!"
"What contribution has she ever made to this home?!"
"This contract? I. Am. Not. Signing. It!" Marco hurled the agreement to the floor, sending paper flying everywhere.
"You... you're completely unreasonable! Valentina is pregnant with your child! You absolute scumbag, I'm going to expose you to the whole world!" Bianca shrieked.
"Oh? Pregnant?" Marco let out a satirical laugh. "Why don't you ask your dear best friend who the father really is?"
Bianca's face froze. She turned to look at Valentina, whose expression turned thoroughly embarrassed. Still, Valentina forced herself to bark back, "What proof do you have that the child isn't yours?!"
Marco sneered. "I haven't slept with you in six months, so how many months pregnant are you? Do you take me for an idiot? We can do a paternity test even during pregnancy. Do you dare to take one?"
"You... you..." Valentina stammered, at a complete loss for words. Bianca could tell that her best friend might actually be in the wrong on this one.
Still, a useless loser like Marco doesn't know a thing about the law. He's easy to fool!
"Marco, you really are a scumbag! Even if the child isn't yours, can't you still pay child support?! Valentina is still your wife, after all!" Bianca declared righteously.
Marco's eyes widened in sheer disbelief. He had always known his ex-wife was a terrible person, but he never expected her best friend to be even worse—how could anyone say something so shamelessly absurd?
"Listen to yourself. Is that even human logic?! It's not my child, yet I have to pay child support?!" Marco found the whole thing utterly ridiculous.
"That's right! What about it?! That's what the law states!" Bianca doubled down, bluffing hard.
"Oh? I'd certainly love to hear which law in our country states that."
Before Marco could even respond, a man pushed the door open and walked in with effortless elegance.
Dante Acerbi had finally arrived right on time.
Marco complained, "Didn't you say ten minutes? You're 20 minutes late."
Dante smiled smoothly. "In a moment, you'll see that those ten minutes were well worth the wait."
"Who the hell are you, and where do you get off barging into my house without permission?!" Valentina shrieked, completely failing to notice that Bianca beside her had turned deathly pale.
"Me? I am the attorney retained by Mr. Ferretti, here specifically to assist him with the division of property," Dante replied graciously.
"Oh? You hired someone to play dress-up as a lawyer? How amusing!" Valentina scoffed coldly. "Don't think I don't know—you don't have a single dime to hire a lawyer!"
"Don't hold back, Bianca! Show them that a fake can never stand up to a real lawyer!"
Yet, Bianca didn't utter a single word.
"Bianca? What's wrong with you?" Receiving no response, Valentina turned around in confusion, only to find Bianca's face looking horribly off.
"Say something! Aren't you a hotshot lawyer? Are you really getting intimidated by a fake?!" Valentina urged anxiously.
Bianca could only squeeze out a forced, trembling smile as she slowly stood up.
"Professor Acerbi... I... I never expected to run into you here."
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CHAPTER 142
Twenty pairs of hungry eyes slowly turned toward Ashford. The shift was almost physical, like the temperature in the room had dropped another ten degrees.Every man in that corridor was starving. Every man in that corridor had watched Ashford eat portions slightly larger than theirs, sleep in a warmer spot, and talk endlessly about shared sacrifice while making none of his own."What's the matter, Mr. Brotherhood and Sacrifice?" Marco's voice dripped with amusement. "You told these men you'd give anything for the group. Here's your chance. One small personal contribution and every single one of your loyal soldiers eats tonight. Unless all that talk about shared sacrifice was just a speech you gave to keep the dogs in line while you kept the biggest bone for yourself."Ashford felt the weight of every stare in that corridor pressing down on his shoulders like concrete blocks.If he refused, his carefully constructed image of the selfless leader would shatter in front of the only people
CHAPTER 141
The silence that followed the discovery of the steel wall was the kind that breaks men from the inside out.Twenty three people stood in a cloud of concrete dust, staring at a seamless barrier of polished metal that reflected their own filthy, exhausted faces back at them like a mirror showing them exactly what they had become. Their sledgehammers hung at their sides like dead weight. Their shoulders sagged. Their breathing was heavy and ragged, and the freezing air turned each exhale into a ghost that disappeared before it reached the ceiling.Powell let his hammer drop to the ground with a dull clang. "We can't get through this. Not without a plasma torch or hydraulic cutters. And unless somebody's been hiding a welding shop in their apartment, we're done.""There has to be a weak spot." Briggs ran his palm across the steel surface, pressing hard, searching for a seam, a bolt, a weld, anything. His fingers found nothing. The metal was smooth, cold, and absolutely perfect. "This is
CHAPTER 140
He moved the light slowly across the floor. Drag marks. Long, smeared streaks in the frost leading from the empty spaces toward the stairwell of Building 4. Someone had come down here, grabbed the corpses by the ankles, and hauled them upstairs like bags of groceries.Tank whined softly and pressed his body against Marco's leg."Yeah." Marco stared at the drag marks for a long time, his face completely still. "I see it, boy."The cold prevented decomposition. There were no animals down here large enough to drag a full grown man up a flight of stairs. Which meant the starving residents of Building 4 had finally crossed the last line that separated desperate humans from something else entirely.Marco thought about his previous life. About the way Valentina's family had killed him. About the things that happened afterward that he had never fully understood until this exact moment, standing in a frozen garage with an empty space where a dead man used to be."Let's go home, Tank." His voic
CHAPTER 139
Sarah stood in the entry corridor with her hands clasped together and her eyes fixed on the floor, looking like a dog that had been caught stealing food off the table and was now trying to decide whether to run or roll over."I need to tell you something." Her voice came out small and thin. "About why I'm really here."Marco leaned against the wall and watched her with the patient, slightly bored expression of a man who already knew what was coming but wanted to hear her say it anyway."My husband sent me." Sarah's shoulders curled inward. "He joined Valentina's alliance yesterday, but he doesn't actually believe it's going to work. He's watched three groups try to break in here and every single one of them ended up as frozen decoration in your garage. He figured if Valentina wins, he's on her side. If you win, I warned you first. Either way, we eat.""So your husband is playing both sides of the fence like a stray dog that begs at two different back doors because he's too lazy to hun
CHAPTER 138
"Don't bother." Valentina set the knife down on the counter and wiped her hands on her jeans with the calm, mechanical motions of a woman who had just finished a household chore. "That gash is going to bleed out before she makes it down two flights of stairs. And even if it doesn't, where's she going to go? Every person in this building has been eating corpses for three days. A bleeding old woman running through the hallway is just fast food with legs."Kevin stared at her with a mixture of awe and absolute terror. Valentina caught his expression and something cold and calculating flickered behind her eyes.She looked at Kevin properly for the first time. Thin arms. Narrow shoulders. Hands that trembled even when he was not afraid.He had freed her, yes. He had swung the ashtray, yes. But in a real fight against a real threat, Kevin was about as useful as a paper umbrella in a hurricane."Kevin." She walked toward him and placed both hands on his chest, looking up into his face with a
CHAPTER 137
Valentina did not hesitate. Not for a breath. Not for a heartbeat. Not for the fraction of a second it would have taken a normal person to reconsider what they were about to do.She drove the sharp heel down into Brando's temple with the full weight of her body behind it.Her brother convulsed beneath her, his legs kicking against the carpet, his fingers clawing at the floor in wild, mindless spasms.His mouth opened but nothing came out except a thin, wet gurgling sound that lasted three seconds before it stopped entirely.His body went limp. His hands uncurled. His eyes stayed open, staring at the ceiling with the blank, frozen confusion of a man who had died still waiting for his mother to save him.Rosa screamed from the doorway, a sound so raw and broken it barely sounded human."MY BABY! VALENTINA, WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BABY!"Valentina stood up from her brother's body, turned toward her unconscious father on the kitchen floor, and struck Sergio twice across the skull with the s
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