Chapter 2: Fifty Million Reasons

Enzo Vitale's breathing came through the phone like a bull about to charge.

"A divorce? Have you completely lost your mind? Do you have any idea what you've done? My mother is standing in the kitchen, Nadia says you attacked her, and you're talking about a divorce?"

Giada leaned against the bus stop pole and crossed one ankle over the other. A pigeon was pecking at a candy wrapper near her foot. The morning sun felt warm on her skin. Everything felt warm now that she wasn't waiting to die in a freezing basement.

"Yes. A divorce. Today. I'll meet you at the civil affairs office in one hour."

"You're insane. You're absolutely insane. I'm not divorcing you. Get back to the house, apologize, and we can pretend this never happened."

"Enzo." She let his name hang in the air. "How much does Dario know about Matteo's mother?"

Silence. Complete, hollow, dead silence.

"Because I have to say," Giada continued, her voice light and casual like she was discussing the weather, "if your brother ever found out that you've been sleeping with his wife, I don't think breakfast would be the biggest problem in your family."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

His voice had changed. The rage was gone. What replaced it was thin, reedy, and scared.

"I know enough." She kept her eyes on the traffic moving past the shelter. "One hour. Civil affairs office on Elm Street. Bring your ID. Or don't come, and I'll make one phone call to your brother."

She hung up before he could answer.

Only then did Giada sit down on the bench and consider what came next. She had fifty dollars in cash, a little credit left on her card, and three months before the money in everyone's bank accounts became less useful than bottled water.

Fortunately, she remembered more than the disasters.

The stock market numbers came back to her first. Every surge, every crash, every golden opportunity she had watched pass while her wages disappeared into the Vitale household. Then she looked at the date on her phone again, and remembered the lottery.

June 15th. Today's draw. A fifty-million-dollar jackpot.

In her previous life, she had checked her losing ticket against those results so many times that she could still see the winning numbers on the screen.

Seven. Fourteen. Twenty-two. Thirty-one. Forty-five. And the bonus ball, nine.

She typed them into a note, checking each one before she saved it. Fifty million dollars would buy a house, clean water, food, medicine, and enough security to keep the rest of the world on the other side of her door. But first, she needed to make sure Enzo had no claim to any of it.

As she put the phone away, a strange warmth bloomed behind her ribs. It pulsed once, twice, and then she felt something open inside her mind like a door she had never known existed.

Beyond it was a space, vast and empty and waiting.

Giada went still. She could feel it without seeing it, as clearly as she could feel the purse resting against her hip. She took a tissue from her bag, held it between her fingers, and focused on the strange sensation.

The tissue vanished.

When she thought about bringing it back, it reappeared in her hand, folded exactly as it had been before.

She looked around the bus stop, but nobody was paying attention to her. After one more attempt produced the same result, she put the tissue away and closed her purse. Whatever this was, she would examine it properly somewhere private. Enzo was expecting her in less than an hour, and she wasn't going to give him time to find an excuse.

He was already waiting when she arrived at the office. He looked terrible. Dark circles under his eyes, his shirt buttoned wrong, his jaw tight enough to crack teeth. He grabbed her arm the moment she walked through the door and pulled her to the side.

"We need to talk about this."

"We really don't." She pulled her arm free without flinching. "The talking part is over. Now we sign papers."

"What about Matteo?"

"What about him?"

"You can't just abandon a three year old child, Giada."

She looked at him. Looked straight into those lying eyes that had watched her die in another life and felt nothing.

"Matteo is your responsibility. He always was. I'm giving up all marital assets, and you will take full responsibility for his care. You keep the apartment, the car, the savings, every last cent. I don't want any of it."

Enzo stared at her like she had started speaking in a foreign language. In his mind, she could see the wheels turning. A woman who gives up everything? Who walks away with nothing? There had to be a trick.

But there was no trick. There was only strategy. Today's lottery draw would give her enough money to start again, and she needed the divorce finalized before she bought those tickets. A clean purchase, a clear timestamp, and no room for Enzo to argue that the prize belonged to their marriage. Whatever she left behind was a small price to pay for being free of this family.

"Fine," Enzo muttered through his teeth. He couldn't believe his luck and he couldn't hide it either. "If that's what you want."

"It's exactly what I want."

The paperwork took twenty seven minutes. She read the terms, checked the division of assets and their separate responsibilities, and signed every page that needed her name. Then she handed back the pen and walked out of the office a free woman for the first time in four years.

The fresh air hit her face, and some of the tension finally left her shoulders. She put the completed papers into her purse, photographed them for her records, and checked the time.

Her phone buzzed as she stepped onto the sidewalk. A text from Teresa's number: Don't think you can walk away and leave us with the boy. You owe this family.

Giada saved the message, blocked the number, and kept walking.

The corner store on Fifth Avenue sold lottery tickets behind the counter. The clerk was a bored teenager with headphones around his neck who barely looked up when she walked in. Above him, a television showed the lottery broadcast, with a countdown running across the bottom of the screen.

Sales closed in one minute.

"Ten plays, please. The same numbers on all of them."

The clerk reached for the terminal. "Which numbers?"

"Seven, fourteen, twenty-two, thirty-one, forty-five. And the bonus ball, nine."

"Ten?" He raised an eyebrow. "That's fifty bucks."

"I can count." She slid the bills across the counter and watched him print the tickets one by one, checking the numbers as he handed them over.

The terminal beeped just as the last ticket came out. On the television, the countdown disappeared, and the host smiled into the camera.

"And now, for the fifty-million-dollar jackpot."

Giada stayed at the counter with the tickets in her hand. The drum started spinning, the first ball dropped, and the number seven appeared on the screen.

Fourteen followed. Then twenty-two, thirty-one, and forty-five.

Her fingers tightened around the paper.

"And the bonus ball is nine."

For a moment, Giada couldn't hear anything. Not the television, not the refrigerator humming behind her, not the clerk saying something about the numbers she had just bought. She looked down at the tickets, checked them once more, and felt her knees threaten to give beneath her.

Every number matched. Fifty million dollars, exactly as she remembered.

"Ma'am?" The clerk was leaning forward now, trying to get another look at the paper in her hands.

Giada folded the tickets and put them away.

"Thank you. Have a nice day."

She walked outside without running, stopped beside the wall, and took a slow breath. This morning, she had woken up in the house where her murderers lived. Now she had enough money to leave them behind and build something that would survive the end of the world.

Her hands were still trembling when she checked the zipper on her purse.

Before going to a hotel, she called a private DNA laboratory and asked about a maternity test using hair samples. After explaining what she had collected, she was given an appointment that afternoon so the laboratory could assess the samples and process the test if they were suitable.

The receptionist took the two separately wrapped samples, checked the labels Giada provided, and explained the expedited service. Giada paid by card, gave her personal email address, and asked that all correspondence remain confidential.

"This test concerns the relationship between these two people," the receptionist reminded her. "It won't establish anyone else's parentage."

"I understand," Giada replied.

That was enough. In her previous life, she had heard the truth from Enzo and Nadia themselves. This time, she wanted something she could put on a table if they tried to force their child back into her care.

After leaving the laboratory, she went to the Hillcrest Inn, a mid range hotel with clean rooms and no questions.

"One night, please," she told the front desk clerk. "Put it on my card."

The room was small but quiet. She locked the door, put the tickets and divorce papers somewhere safe, kicked off her shoes, and turned her attention to the space.

A few simple tests confirmed what she had discovered at the bus stop. She could store objects and bring them back with a thought, even collect a mug from the desk without touching it. A cup of hot water returned just as hot after several minutes inside, while a fly buzzing against the window refused to enter at all.

Giada wrote down the results. Remote collection, storage, and what appeared to be preservation. Living things seemed to be excluded. There would be time to test the limits later, but even those basic functions would make stocking up far easier than anything she had imagined.

She set the notebook aside and lay back on the bed. For the first time since waking up that morning, the tension began to drain from her shoulders.

She had ten winning tickets locked away, three months until the apocalypse, and a place to store everything she would need.

She picked up the room service menu and ordered the most expensive steak on the list, a bottle of red wine, and a slice of chocolate cake.

Tomorrow, the real work would begin. The money. The shelter. The supplies that would let her stay behind a locked door while the world outside fell apart.

But tonight, she was going to eat a proper meal and get some sleep.