chapter 5

Serena POV

"Serena!"

The shrill, demanding voice cut sharply through the howling wind and the patter of escalating rain.

I stopped loading the final crate into the back of my SUV, my hands resting on the cold metal edge of the trunk. Slowly, deliberately, I turned around.

Striding across the wet asphalt toward me was Bianca. Her hair was whipping around her face, and her designer handbag was clutched tightly under her arm, but what caught my attention wasn't her appearance—it was the stark, frantic panic written all over her features.

My expression flattened instantly, every muscle in my face freezing into an impenetrable mask of ice.

"What do you want, Bianca?" I asked, my voice devoid of any warmth.

She stopped a few feet away, chest heaving, looking me up and down with sheer disbelief before her eyes darted to the towering stacks of survival supplies packed into my car.

"I've been trying to call you for days!" Bianca snapped, crossing her arms defensively. "And then I went to use my card this morning to buy some clothes and groceries, and it was declined! What the hell happened? Did your bank freeze your accounts?"

Before I could deliver the scathing answer she deserved, a shadow fell over the space beside her.

"Bianca."

A familiar, smooth baritone cut through the air.

My gaze shifted past Bianca. Stepping out from behind a parked vehicle, hands tucked casually into the pockets of his tailored jacket, was Damian.

My eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them.

There they were.

In my past life, I had been utterly blind, foolishly trusting their endless alibis, believing their late nights at the office or their "innocent shopping trips" together were nothing more than coincidence. I had excused their closeness because I trusted them with my soul.

Now, seeing them standing side-by-side in the middle of a supermarket parking lot, their body language screaming a toxic, tangled intimacy, the illusion was stripped away entirely. They weren't just betraying me behind my back anymore; they were standing right in front of me, wrapped in each other's corruption.

A dark, bitter amusement danced in the back of my mind.

"Why," I asked smoothly, tilting my head with an innocent, mocking curiosity, "are you two always together?"

They stiffened instantly.

Damian’s jaw twitched, a flash of guilt crossing his handsome face before it hardened into defensive arrogance. "What is that supposed to mean?"

I offered a chilling, humorless shrug. "Nothing. I was just asking a simple question. You're inseparable these days. It's almost touching."

Bianca flushed crimson, her eyes darting nervously between Damian and me before she quickly scrambled to change the subject, desperate to regain control of the conversation.

"That's not the point, Serena!" she hissed, stepping forward. "You still haven't answered me! Why did you cut off my access? Why are you freezing accounts left and right? Do you have any idea how embarrassing it was at the register?"

I looked at her the way a surgeon looks at a cancerous growth they are about to excise.

"Because," I said softly, every word landing with the weight of a hammer blow, "I don't want to be your friend anymore."

Bianca blinked, her mouth falling open. "What?"

"I said," I repeated, my voice clear and ringing over the rising wind, "I don't want to be your friend. Ever again."

"Are you insane?!" she shrieked, her voice pitching upward in sheer outrage. "After everything we've been through? You're throwing away years of friendship over a temper tantrum?!"

"Yes," I replied flatly.

She stared at me, trembling with indignation, waiting for me to laugh, to apologize, to fold the way I always did. When nothing happened, her face twisted in disgust. "Fine! Whatever! Keep your stupid money!"

> "Years of friendship don't guarantee loyalty. Sweet words don't prove love. And being close to someone doesn't mean they wish you well."

>

I ignored her completely, my eyes drifting away from the two traitors.

Instinctively, my gaze swept across the parking lot, searching for the tall, dark-haired stranger who had caught me moments earlier—the man who had held me against his chest and warned me that the world was about to change.

Thiago.

The name echoed faintly in my memory, though I didn't know how I knew it.

I looked toward the exit, but the sleek, matte-black armored vehicle was long gone. The space where he had stood was empty, washed clean by the gray rain.

A sharp, unexpected pang of disappointment tugged at my chest. He had vanished into the storm without a trace, leaving me alone with the ghosts of my past.

"Serena, are you even listening to me?!" Bianca shrieked, snapping her fingers in front of my face.

I blinked, pulling my thoughts back to the pathetic excuses for human beings standing right in front of me. I looked down past their shoulders and noticed what they were holding.

Both Bianca and Damian were clutching several heavy shopping bags filled with canned goods, bottled water, and emergency rations.

My eyes narrowed.

They were hoarding supplies.

Why? Did they know about the apocalypse too? Had someone else leaked the truth? Or were they just scrambling because of the sudden, violent turn in the weather?

A cold, analytical calm washed over me.

Even if they knew. Even if they had managed to scrape together a few bags of groceries and a couple of cases of water, it was a drop in the ocean compared to the mountain range of wealth, weapons, medical gear, and food I had already locked away inside my infinite spatial storage.

They were playing at survival. I had engineered a fortress.

"Go ahead," I whispered to myself, watching them turn and storm back toward their own car, muttering angrily to each other. "Buy all the canned beans you want."

When the sky finally ripped open and the dead spilled out onto these very streets, their little stash wouldn't save them. Their clever words wouldn't protect them.

And when the cold, starving reality of the end times set in, they wouldn't find a savior in me.

"Let them hoard," I murmured, climbing into the driver's seat of my SUV and slamming the door shut against the howling storm.

When the apocalypse arrived, they wouldn't just starve—they would remember every single thing they had stolen, every lie they had told, and every drop of blood they had caused.

And they would come crawling.

They would stand outside my iron doors, begging for a scrap of bread, crying out for mercy in the dark.

And just like they did to me in my past life...

I will let them beg.