Chapter 4

The villa Dominic brought me to was tucked into the hills above Creston Bay, hidden behind iron gates and a wall of old oak trees that blocked it from every road. It was beautiful in a quiet, serious way. No gold fixtures or crystal chandeliers. Just clean stone, dark wood, and the kind of silence that only comes when a place is built to keep the world out.

He walked me through the front door, past a team of bodyguards who nodded at him without speaking, and into a study lined with bookshelves and leather furniture. Marco Bellini followed us in, set his briefcase on the desk, and stood by the window like a sentinel.

Then Dominic turned to face me, and the warmth that had been softening his expression during the drive disappeared. In its place was something sharper. Focused. The look of a man who was done being patient and needed answers.

"That nickname." He leaned against the edge of the desk and crossed his arms over his chest, his dark eyes pinning me in place. "Nobody alive outside my immediate family knows it. My mother stopped using it when I was four years old. It was never written down, never recorded, never spoken to another soul. So I need you to tell me exactly how it ended up in a text message from a stranger's phone number."

I sat down in the leather chair across from him and folded my hands in my lap. My heart was hammering, but I kept my face still. This was the moment that would either give me the most powerful ally in the country or leave me completely alone.

"You gave it to me." I held his gaze without flinching. "Not you right now. A future version of you, in a timeline that has not happened yet."

The silence that followed was so complete I could hear the clock ticking on the wall behind him. Marco Bellini stopped breathing for a moment. Dominic's expression did not change, but something shifted behind his eyes, like a door opening onto a room he had not known existed.

"I have been reborn." I let the words settle between us before I continued. "In my previous life, the world ended on April 4, Year 4444. Extreme solar radiation weakened the atmosphere and triggered a mutation wave. Some people turned into zombies. Some gained supernatural abilities. Most just died in the chaos. You found me near the end, half dead in an abandoned building with zombie bites covering my body. You saved my life. You kept me alive for three months. And before you died, you pressed your hand against mine and whispered that name. Dom. You told me that if I ever got a second chance, I should use it to find the younger version of you, because he would believe me when nobody else would."

Dominic stared at me for a long time. Not with disbelief. Not with mockery. With the careful, calculating attention of someone who was measuring every word against everything he knew about the world.

"That is the most insane thing anyone has ever told me." His voice was low and even, almost gentle, like he was handling something fragile. "And if it were anyone else saying it, I would have had them escorted out already."

"But?" I raised one eyebrow.

"But nobody knows that name." A muscle flexed in his jaw. "Which means either you are telling the truth, or you have access to information that should not exist. And I cannot afford to ignore either possibility."

Relief flooded through me so hard my hands started shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs to keep them still.

"I can prove it." I leaned forward slightly. "Your childhood friend, Christian Ashford. He set up a race today, right? A track on a mountain somewhere outside the city?"

Dominic's eyes narrowed. "How do you know about that?"

"Because in my previous life, that race killed you." I watched the understanding bloom across his face, cold and furious. "The track was rigged. The brakes on your car were cut. Christian Ashford has been planning your death for months, and if you had gotten into that car today, you would not have walked away from it."

Dominic turned to Marco without a word. Marco already had his phone out.

"I will have the car inspected within the hour." Marco's voice was crisp and professional, but his hands were gripping the phone so tightly his knuckles had gone white. "If the brakes were tampered with, we will know before midnight."

Dominic nodded once, then turned back to me. The fury in his eyes had settled into something colder and more dangerous, the kind of anger that did not burn hot but froze everything it touched.

"What do you need from me?" His voice was quiet, stripped of everything except purpose.

"The one billion dollar compensation from the Five Great Families for kidnapping me." I laid it out piece by piece, watching him absorb each detail. "I need you and Marco to manage the legal proceedings. I need a villa on Eagle Ridge Mountain, converted into a fortified safe house with weapons, medical supplies, preserved food, generators, and enough firepower to hold off an army. I need all of it funded with the extortion money and I need it done before April."

"Two hundred million from each family was your original demand." Dominic's lips curved into something that was not quite a smile. It was sharper than that, more predatory, like a wolf showing its teeth. "That is too low."

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

"They kidnapped you. They tortured you. They had the full intention of destroying you and they only stopped because the police walked in at the right moment." He pushed off the desk and took a step toward me, close enough that I could smell his cologne, warm and dark and faintly intoxicating. "One billion from each family. Not two hundred million. One billion."

My mouth fell open. "That is five billion dollars total."

"And they will pay it." His voice was soft and absolute, the kind of voice that did not make threats because it did not need to. "Every last cent. Because the alternative is watching their sons rot in a federal prison while I dismantle their companies from the outside."

I stared at him. This man, this version of Dominic who had never seen the apocalypse, who had never watched the world burn, was already exactly the person his future self had promised he would be. Ruthless. Protective. Absolutely unwilling to let anyone who had hurt me walk away without bleeding.

Something warm and dangerous stirred in my chest, and I crushed it immediately. I could not afford feelings. Not now. Not with four months left before the end of the world.

"There is one more thing." I pulled the notebook I had been writing in all afternoon out of my jacket and held it out to him. "Everything I remember about the apocalypse. The timeline, the mutation patterns, which cities fell first, where the safe zones were, what supplies ran out fastest. Everything except the personal details."