Chapter 3: THE FORTUNE HE NEVER KNEW ABOUT

POV: PHINA

The leather seat of the executive town car felt smooth against my back as Arthur’s words hung in the air through the Bluetooth speaker.  

"What do you mean, Arthur?" I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Harrison spent five years telling me my father's failed real estate investments wiped out the entire Hastings estate."  

"Harrison Bennet is a manipulator who capitalized on your grief, Miss Hastings," Arthur replied, his pen clicking sharply on the other end of the line. "Your father's personal assets were indeed liquidated, but your grandfather, Old Mr. Hastings, was a visionary. He foresaw the vultures that would circle you after his death. Two weeks before he passed, he transferred his primary fortune into an offshore, irrevocable dynasty trust registered in the Cayman Islands."  

I leaned forward, my knuckles turning white as I gripped my phone. "An irrevocable trust?"  

"Precisely," Arthur explained. "By law, assets within this trust do not constitute marital property, nor can they be seized by a spouse during a divorce. Your grandfather placed a strict contingency clause on the account: it could only be unlocked by you, in person, upon reaching your twenty-fifth birthday or upon filing for legal separation from any marital partner."  

Tears of anger and relief pricked the corners of my eyes. In my previous life, I had been so desperately starving for Harrison’s love, so eager to prove I wasn't a burden, that I never questioned his words. I had lived like a beggar in a gilded cage while sitting on a dragon's hoard.  

"How much is in the trust, Arthur?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.  

"Liquidity, corporate shares, and international bullion," Arthur read from his screen. "Total valuation sits at approximately four hundred and eighty-two million, five hundred thousand dollars

I am sending the biometric activation link to your secure terminal now. Once you place your thumbprint, full authorization transfers to your private account instantly."  

My phone chimed with an encrypted notification. I pressed my right thumb firmly against the glass screen. A green checkmark flashed, followed by a sudden cascade of figures.  

[Hastings Trust Active. Available Liquidity: $482,500,000.00]  

A sharp, breathless laugh escaped my lips. Nearly half a billion dollars.  

Within ten minutes, Harrison's corporate team noticed the seismic shift. My phone vibrated furiously on the leather seat. Harrison's caller ID flashed on the screen. I answered and placed it on speaker, not bothering to say a word.  

"Phina! What the hell did you just do?!" Harrison roared, his calm, arrogant composure completely gone. "My chief financial officer just informed me that our joint credit lines were unilaterally closed! And why is Arthur Pendleton filing an emergency injunction against Bennet Enterprises?!"  

"I told you, Harrison," I said, my voice as calm as a motionless lake. "We are getting a divorce. I am cutting every financial connection between us."  

"You can't freeze those accounts! I have an acquisition deal closing this afternoon!" Harrison shouted, background noise indicating he was frantically pacing his office. "Where did you get the authority to pull Arthur Pendleton back? You don't have the money for his retainer!"  

"I don't need your permission, and I certainly don't need your money," I replied coldly. "Have your lawyers speak to Arthur. Don't call me again."  

I hung up and instantly blocked his number.  

Sitting back in the car, I closed my eyes and forced my mind to jump back to the frozen nightmare of my previous life. In eighty-nine days, paper money, luxury stocks, designer clothes, and corporate shares would become nothing more than useless trash.  

I opened a blank memo on my phone and rapidly began listing the core necessities that disappeared first during the apocalypse:

 Food: Dried grains, canned meats, vacuum-sealed rations, seeds, long-shelf-life luxury foods.  

 Clean Water: Industrial filtration systems, bulk mineral water, rainwater harvesters.  

 Medicine: Antibiotics, surgical tools, pain relievers, insulin, trauma kits.  

 Power & Fuel: Solar generators, diesel reserves, high-capacity batteries.  

 Security & Defense: Compound fortification, body armor, specialized wilderness survival gear.  

I immediately instructed Arthur to begin liquidating my paper stocks and real estate holdings into cold cash and physical gold. Everything that couldn't survive a sub-zero freeze needed to be converted into hard resources right now.  

As I stared down at my memo, a strange, tingling sensation flared in the palm of my hand.  

I blinked, looking down at my right palm. A faint, shimmering silver lotus motif glowed beneath my skin for a split second before vanishing. Instinctively, I reached out and touched the glass bottle of imported mineral water sitting in the car's cup holder.  

Fwip.

The bottle vanished from sight.  

I gasped, pulling my hand back. In my mind’s eye, I could suddenly feel a vast, weightless void, a pitch-black, motionless spatial pocket that stretched out like an empty warehouse. Sitting right in the center of that boundless dark void was the glass water bottle, perfectly suspended in time.  

My special spatial ability had awakened ninety days early! In my previous life, this ability had only manifested during the final month, far too small and weak to save my child. But now, I had nearly three months to expand it, fill it, and turn it into an indestructible sanctuary.  

I can survive this, I thought, a surge of fierce, unshakeable determination washing over me. I can build a fortress.  

The driver turned on the car's radio, breaking my concentration.  

"...And in regional news, meteorologists at the National Climate Center are baffled by a sudden, unprecedented high-pressure atmospheric trough forming over the northern Pacific coast..." the news anchor reported. "...While temperatures remain warm today, this abnormal pressure gradient is expected to shift coastal wind patterns much earlier than seasonal norms suggest..."  

My blood ran cold.  

I remembered that specific high-pressure report vividly from my previous life, it was the exact atmospheric shift that marked the first phase of the global super-storm. But it wasn't supposed to happen for another thirty days!