My Husband Fed Me to Zombies, Now I Rule the Apocalypse

The door to my bedroom exploded inward with a thundering crash.

I shot upright in bed, my heart slamming against my ribs, and watched Victor Moretti storm through the doorway like he owned every inch of my existence. His face was twisted into that familiar mask of disgust and fury, the one he always wore when he looked at me.

"You ungrateful little wretch!" His voice bounced off the walls, sharp enough to crack glass. "I called you seventeen times. Seventeen! You think you can ignore me in my own house?"

My body moved before my brain caught up. Pure instinct. The kind of instinct you develop when you have spent years fighting to stay alive while the people who were supposed to love you handed you over to monsters.

I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and hurled it straight at his face.

The corner of it caught him right above the eyebrow, splitting the skin open. Blood ran down into his eye and he stumbled backward, clutching his forehead, howling like a wounded animal.

"You crazy girl!" He pressed his palm against the cut, staring at the blood on his fingers with complete shock. "You just attacked your own father!"

I did not answer him. My eyes were locked on the phone that had landed screen up on the carpet. The calendar was open. November 20, Year 4443.

The room tilted around me.

November 20. Year 4443.

That meant the apocalypse was still four months and fifteen days away. April 4, Year 4444. The day the sun turned against us. The day extreme solar radiation cooked the atmosphere and cracked open something rotten inside the human race. Some people turned into zombies. Some people gained powers. Most people just died screaming.

And I was back. I was back before any of it happened.

My hands were shaking, but not from fear. Something hot and electric was flooding through my veins, something that tasted like fury and freedom and the bitter memory of my own death.

I remembered everything.

I remembered how I had fought through that nightmare of a world with nothing but my bare hands and my desperate, stupid love for this family. How I had killed zombies and scavenged supplies and dragged food back to parents who looked at me like I was dirt on the bottom of their shoes. How they had chosen Serena over me every single time, even though I was their real daughter and she was the fake one they had brought home to replace me.

I remembered how Serena stole my white jade gourd, the spatial dimension artifact that was keeping me alive. How she framed me for pushing her toward a horde of zombies. How she convinced her four rich boyfriends, the spoiled heirs of the Four Great Families of Creston Bay, to drag me into a warehouse and torture me until I could not even scream anymore.

And I remembered the worst part. My parents standing there, watching, and my father's voice cutting through the haze of pain.

Kill her. She is not worth the trouble.

"Are you listening to me?" Victor's voice snapped me back to the present. He was still clutching his bleeding forehead, his eyes bulging with outrage. "I swear to God, Isabella, if you do not open your mouth and apologize right now, I will make you regret it."

He raised his hand.

In my old life, I would have flinched. I would have dropped my gaze and swallowed my words and begged him to love me, just a little, just enough to make the emptiness stop.

But I had already died once. And the girl who came back from that death was not the same one who left.

"Put your hand down." My voice came out cold and flat, like a blade sliding across stone. "Unless you want me to break it."

Victor froze. His hand hung in the air between us, trembling slightly, and for the first time in my life I saw something flicker behind those cruel eyes of his. Something that looked almost like fear.

"What did you just say to me?" His voice dropped to a whisper, dangerous and low.

"You heard me." I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up, meeting his stare without blinking. "Now sit down and listen, because I am only going to explain this once."

He did not sit. But he did not raise his hand again either.

"Your precious Serena's four boyfriends kidnapped me." I let the words fall like stones into still water. "Lorenzo Conti. Matteo Russo. Enzo Caruso. Dante Ricci. They dragged me into a warehouse and they tortured me for hours. And the police caught them red handed."

Victor's jaw tightened. "That situation has been handled. Your sister explained everything and those boys have already apologized to the family."

"Apologized to the family." I repeated his words slowly, tasting the poison in each one. "They tortured me, your biological daughter, and they apologized to the family. Not to me. To the family."

"You are being dramatic." His lip curled with contempt. "Serena told us it was a misunderstanding. Those boys come from powerful families and we cannot afford to make enemies of them."

A laugh tore out of my throat, sharp and hollow. It startled him more than the phone had.

"Here is what is going to happen." I took a step closer to him and watched the way his body pulled backward, just slightly, like his bones already knew what his brain had not figured out yet. "I want two hundred million dollars from each of those four families. And I want another two hundred million from the Moretti family. That is one billion dollars total."

The color drained from his face so fast I thought he might faint.

"You have lost your mind." His voice was barely a croak. "One billion dollars? For what?"

"For my silence. For the signed release. For giving up every inheritance right I have to the Moretti name." I tilted my head, watching him the way a cat watches a cornered mouse. "And in exchange, those four precious heirs get to stay out of prison."

"Prison?" He sputtered the word like it tasted rotten. "Nobody is going to prison over a little misunderstanding between young people."

"Kidnapping carries ten years to life." I let each word land with the weight of a hammer. "That is not a misunderstanding, Victor. That is a federal crime. And when those four families find out their golden sons are locked up because your fake daughter set the whole thing up? They will not come after those boys. They will come after you. They will tear the Moretti name apart and scatter the pieces."

His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, like a fish dragged onto dry land.

"You would not." His voice cracked. "I am your father. This is your family. You cannot destroy your own family over money."

Something dark and final shifted inside my chest. I looked at the man who called himself my father and felt nothing. No love. No longing. No hunger for his approval. Just the cold, clean clarity of someone who had already been killed by the people standing in front of her.

"You stopped being my family the day you chose a stranger's daughter over your own blood." My voice did not waver. "One billion dollars. You have seventy two hours. And if you try to argue with me, if you try to threaten me, if you even look at me the wrong way, I will forget about the money entirely and burn the Moretti name to the ground with my own two hands."

I turned my back on him and walked toward the window.

"I have already died once, Victor. I have absolutely nothing left to lose."

Behind me, I heard him stumble toward the door, his breathing ragged, his footsteps unsteady. The door slammed shut so hard the pictures rattled on the walls.

I stood at the window and looked out at the perfectly manicured gardens of the Moretti estate, at the fountains and the hedges and the imported marble pathways that my parents had paid for with dirty money and borrowed power.

Four months. That was all the time I had before the world ended.

But this time, I was not going to spend those months begging for scraps of love from people who wanted me dead. This time, I was going to take everything I needed, build my own fortress, and watch every single person who had ever hurt me crawl on their knees when the sky finally fell.

I pressed my palm flat against the glass and felt the warmth of the sun on my skin.

This time, I was living for myself. And every last one of them was going to pay.