Chapter 8: Sweeping Five-Star Kitchens and the Porter's Glare

Spinning the wheel of her black SUV with one hand, Astrid Pierce cut hard across the slow lane at the east ring road intersection.

In her rearview mirror, the faded silver sedan tailing her got caught at a red light behind a pair of heavy semi-trailers. Astrid stepped on the gas, weaving through the backstreets of an upscale residential neighborhood and cleanly shaking off the hired thugs on her tail.

Dealing with Viktor's syndicate watchdogs could wait. Right now, her priority was the most critical logistical asset for survival: ready-to-eat food.

In her previous life, she had seen firsthand how trivial mistakes proved fatal. Plenty of survivors hadn't died from a lack of raw rations, but from the sheer stupidity of lighting a stove.

The scent of sautéed onions or grilled meat drifting across the floodwaters was an open invitation to armed scavengers. Billowing smoke and flickering flames in the dark made you an easy mark for snipers. Cooking in an apocalypse was a reckless waste of clean water, fuel, and vigilance.

Stockpiling raw rice and cooking oil wasn't enough. Astrid needed meals she could eat the second she pulled them out—piping hot, nutrient-dense, and without ever striking a match.

At eight in the morning, Astrid stepped into the banquet management office of the Grand Horizon Hotel, the most prestigious five-star establishment in downtown Oakhaven.

She hadn't come empty-handed. Raymond had already prepped a formal contract bearing the official seal of the Arthur Pierce Charitable Foundation.

"We require the full operational capacity of your hotel’s main kitchen for seven full days," Astrid said to the Executive Culinary Manager, Chef Marco, setting the thick binder onto the marble desk. "A complete buyout. Every chef, line cook, and grill station running around the clock on a three-shift rotation."

Chef Marco frowned, sliding off his reading glasses. "Miss Pierce, our kitchen is designed to serve thousands of gala dinner guests, not mass-scale industrial catering. Shutting down all our hotel restaurants for a single private order—"

Astrid slid over the financial proposal.

"Double your highest catering tier," Astrid cut in smoothly. "All premium cuts of wagyu beef, lamb chops, fresh poultry, and select spices paid upfront in cash. Along with a twenty percent overtime bonus for every member of the kitchen staff."

Chef Marco’s eyes went wide at the deposit figure glowing on the screen. The amount alone was enough to blow past the entire food and beverage division’s quarterly revenue targets.

"W-what menu did you have in mind, Miss?" The chef's tone pivoted instantly to deferential warmth.

Astrid handed him the menu, every item calculated down to the calorie:

Ten thousand portions of grilled sirloin and ribeye steaks smothered in thick black pepper sauce. Five thousand portions of spiced beef rib soup rich in hearty, warming marrow broth. Ten thousand double-serving platters of spiced mutton kebuli rice. Eight thousand whole roasted chickens basted in savory honey glaze. Plus thousands of servings of minced meat pasta, double-cheeseburgers, and nutrient-packed chicken porridge.

Every single meal had to be sealed in heavy-duty thermal aluminum foil containers with airtight lids.

"Pickups are set for five in the evening and ten at night, piping hot right off the grills and burners," Astrid stated firmly. "If any food spoils or loses its heat before handoff, the contract is void."

"You have our guarantee on freshness, Miss Pierce!" Chef Marco rose, bowing deeply. "Thirty of our finest chefs will be on the line in one hour."

Astrid signed the paperwork and walked out.

She replicated the exact same strategy across four other five-star hotels and two of the largest industrial catering firms on the city's outskirts. Drawing tens of millions of dollars from the trust fund, Astrid bought out seven commercial kitchen complexes to churn out tens of thousands of calorie-dense meals around the clock.

To the outside world, this was just a spectacle of billionaire philanthropy—a wealthy heiress funding a multi-provincial orphan relief initiative. Not a single soul suspected this lavish banquet was being staged to weather an apocalyptic hell.

That evening, the transport operation began.

Astrid rented a heavy-duty refrigerated box truck equipped with a hydraulic liftgate, driving it herself straight to the Grand Horizon's rear loading docks.

The kitchen doors swung wide. Dozens of catering staff wheeled out stainless steel carts stacked high with thousands of heavy aluminum meal trays. Hot steam drifted from the vents, filling the air with the mouthwatering aroma of charred beef and fragrant black pepper.

"First batch—two thousand wagyu steaks and a thousand boiling rib soups—all loaded into the cargo bay, Miss Pierce," the kitchen supervisor reported, handing over the bill of lading.

Astrid signed off on it. "Clear the dock. I'll inspect the cargo layout before locking down the bay."

The staff nodded obediently and filed back inside.

With the outer doors shut tight, Astrid climbed into the enclosed truck bed.

Before her, thousands of foil containers sat packed tight on steel racks, radiating enough heat to warm the entire cargo hold.

Astrid pulled off her gloves and touched the front rack.

Whoosh!

Thousands of piping-hot meal trays vanished in a heartbeat.

Inside her time-stasis void, the automated sorting function engaged instantly. The thousands of steaks and hearty rib soups slotted neatly into the prepared-food sector.

The steam curling from the foil containers froze dead in the weightless air, locked in stasis at ninety degrees Celsius. Whether Astrid pulled them out a year or a decade from now in a frozen wasteland, that steak would still steam with the same sizzling aroma as the moment it left the pan.

A cold smile touched Astrid's lips. She hopped down, sealed the cargo doors, and drove off toward the next hotel.

The routine ran like a marathon for seven straight days. Mornings supervising production; afternoons through late nights hauling tens of thousands of hot meals directly into her secret dimension.

By the seventh day, her dimension held over sixty thousand gourmet hot meals, dozens of tons of flash-frozen raw cuts, and hundreds of heavy drums of sealed bottled water.

Late afternoon in the grand lobby of the Grand Horizon Hotel.

Astrid strode gracefully toward the executive cashier counter to settle the final invoice of the catering contracts. Dressed in a tailored black trench coat and polished leather boots, her dark hair tied back neatly, she radiated an aura of quiet, commanding authority.

The hotel's finance team greeted her with broad smiles and deep bows.

"The final balance for the Grand Horizon kitchen comes out to four hundred and eighty thousand dollars, Miss Pierce," the finance manager said with utmost deference.

Astrid reached into her purse, drew out a sleek platinum-accented black titanium card, and tapped it against the terminal.

Beep.

The register spat out the transaction receipt without a hitch. To Astrid, half a million dollars was just dead paper successfully traded for stockpiles of pure protein.

Right by the service corridor glass doors, a loud crash echoed through the lobby.

CRASH!

A heavy wooden crate packed with ice blocks slipped from someone's grasp, smashing onto the polished marble and scattering crushed ice everywhere.

"You idiot! Watch where you're going! Clean that up right now!" the hotel maintenance supervisor barked harshly.

The man who had dropped the crate scrambled onto his knees on the freezing, wet marble. He wore a grime-caked undershirt stained with grease and torn slacks worn through at the knees. His palms were raw and bleeding, blackened by soot and sliced by sharp shards of ice.

It was Julian Sterling.

After having every account frozen and his investment firm ruined, Julian had been kicked straight into the slums. Penniless and hounded by rent collectors for his moldy hovel, he had been forced to sign on as a day laborer in the hotel's cleaning and freight crew for pocket change.

Julian winced from the stinging pain in his hands as he frantically scooped up chunks of ice.

But his movements froze solid when his eyes caught a pair of polished black leather boots standing only a few yards away.

Julian slowly looked up.

His breath caught in his throat.

Standing gracefully before the gleaming marble desk was Astrid. The sleek platinum-black card was slipping smoothly back into her designer leather wallet. On the counter, a receipt for nearly half a million dollars lay in plain, devastating view.

The woman he had once looked down on—the barren, helpless wife he believed was nothing without his family name—now stood bathed in untouchable opulence.

While he knelt on the freezing marble, drenched in filthy meltwater like a worthless beggar.

Julian squeezed the jagged ice in his grip until his knuckles turned stark white and blood dripped onto the floor. His eyes burned with venomous malice and naked, unhinged greed!