CHAPTER 4 - Stockpiling 

Felicity pulled out of the lawyer's parking lot and merged smoothly into traffic. 

Before heading toward the highway to Mr. Harrison's warehouse, she pulled up to a red light.

A sleek black SUV rolled up alongside her custom van.

The passenger-side window slid down with a quiet hum, revealing a striking, sharply dressed man leaning casually against the leather interior.

It was Tristan, her childhood friend, a brilliant former military tactician, and someone who had always been a quiet shadow in her life, as well as a close friend of her uncle.

Tristan rested his arm on the window frame, his dark, piercing eyes sweeping over her face. 

His gaze held an intense, hidden heat, a silent fire that made her pulse flutter for a split second.

"Nice ride, Felicity. I had no idea you were going to pick the van. Recognized it from miles away," Tristan said, his deep voice carrying easily over the idling engines. "I saw you leaving the legal office just now."

Felicity kept her hands firmly on the steering wheel, looking straight ahead at the changing traffic light. 

"What do you want, Tristan?"

Tristan let out a low, amused breath, his eyes lingering on her lips before trailing down her neck. 

"Just wondering if you're really going to sit back and do nothing about your sister and that useless boyfriend of yours. I saw them leaving together earlier. Honestly, don't they look a lot more like a couple than you and Mack ever did?"

Felicity didn't flinch.

She turned her head slightly, giving him a cool, unbothered stare. 

"Mind your own business, Tristan."

Instead of getting annoyed, Tristan’s lips curved into a slow, dangerous smirk. 

His dark eyes flickered with intense desire and deep amusement. 

He liked this new, sharp edge to her; it intrigued him far more than her old, overly trusting self ever had.

"Just making sure you aren't letting people walk all over you," Tristan murmured softly, his gaze locked onto hers. "See you around, Felicity."

The light turned green. 

Felicity hit the gas without another word, her van roaring down the street and leaving Tristan's SUV behind in her rearview mirror as she sped straight toward Mr. Harrison's warehouse.

She didn’t have time to waste on Tristan.

Felicity pulled into the industrial yard, stopping outside a massive, corrugated metal warehouse. 

The scent of diesel fuel and wooden pallets filled the air as forklifts zipped back and forth.

She stepped out of the vehicle and walked into the main office, where a burly man in his late fifties was reviewing a clipboard.

"Miss Felicity!" Mr. Harrison greeted her with a warm, weathered smile. "That was quick. You said you needed a large order?"

"I need everything you can spare, Mr. Harrison," Felicity said, stepping up to the counter and pulling out a tablet. "I'm making a bulk purchase for our hotel and restaurant chains. Bulk rice, flour, canned meats, preserved vegetables, cooking oil, bottled water, commercial-grade water filters, medical kits, and batteries. I want all of it brought out to the van and loaded right now."

Mr. Harrison raised an eyebrow in surprise. 

"That's a huge haul, even for your company. Are you guys expanding?"

Felicity offered a smooth, practiced smile. 

"We're gearing up for a major corporate event next week, plus prepping for seasonal restocks. You know how it is."

She wasn't lying about her job. 

As the chief procurement manager for a luxury hotel and restaurant group, making multi-million-dollar supply purchases was second nature to her. 

It was the exact reason she had direct access to top-tier wholesale suppliers like Mr. Harrison.

"Well, business is business," Mr. Harrison chuckled, tapping his tablet to log the order. "As usual, we'll invoice your company, and your accounting department will settle the bill in a week, right?"

"Of course. Standard seven-day payment window," Felicity replied effortlessly, signing her name on the digital pad.

Mr. Harrison nodded, satisfied, and barked orders at his workers to start loading the pallets into the back of her van.

Standing in the shade of the loading dock, Felicity watched the men work, her gaze icy and distant.

A week...

She hid a dark, satisfied smile. In one week, the apocalypse would arrive. 

The sky would turn blood-red, the dead would rise, and societal order would shatter into dust.

There would be no accounting department to review invoices, no banks to collect debts, and no company left to bill. 

The millions of dollars worth of supplies she was ordering today were completely free.

Phoebe had taken the house, thinking she was ahead, but Felicity was using her position to drain the old world's resources dry before the countdown ran out.

With one week remaining, her feast before the end of the world had officially begun.

Felicity stepped into the rear compartment of the van, pulling the heavy side door partially shut to keep her movements hidden from the busy loading dock.

Outside, the warehouse crew began hauling pallet after pallet of heavy wooden crates and shrink-wrapped boxes to the vehicle's entrance.

"Here’s the first batch, Miss Felicity!" a young worker called out, setting down three heavy wooden crates of canned meat and instant noodles right at the threshold.

"Thank you. I’ll stack them inside myself," Felicity replied smoothly, stepping in front of the door.

The moment the worker turned back to grab another load, Felicity touched the top crate. 

With a soft, invisible pulse of energy, the three heavy wooden boxes vanished into thin air, instantly transferred into the vast five-hundred-square-meter domain inside her van.

Seconds later, two workers returned carrying sacks of grain and heavy cases of bottled water.

"Just leave them right here," Felicity instructed with a calm nod.

As soon as their backs were turned, poof, the water and grain vanished into her sanctuary domain.

The cycle repeated again and again. 

Five pallets. 

Ten pallets. 

Twenty pallets.

About an hour into the loading process, the workers started scratching their heads in confusion. 

A burly man carrying two heavy cases of oil paused at the rear doors, peering past Felicity into the interior of the van.

"Hey... Miss Felicity?" he asked, wiping sweat from his forehead and squinting. "How big is the inside of this thing? We’ve loaded enough stuff in here to fill an entire shipping container, but it looks like there's still plenty of space!"

Felicity didn't bat an eye. 

She offered a calm, mysterious smile and rested her hand against the doorframe.

"My uncle had this custom-built with a specialized floor-to-ceiling storage rack system," she said lightly, her tone cool and unbothered. "It holds a lot more than it looks like from the outside. You can keep bringing the rest."

The worker blinked, looking thoroughly bewildered, but simply shook his head and turned to fetch more. 

"Man, engineered vehicles these days are wild..." he muttered to himself.

Felicity didn't waste a second explaining further. 

She just kept taking the incoming supplies, systematically sweeping her fingers across every single crate and absorbing them straight into the domain.