Chapter 3 Money Under Her Name

Fifty-nine days before the apocalypse

Dalia Kerr answered the video call with her glasses in her hand and no interest in Adrian's explanation.

“Did you authorize a change?”

“No.”

“Then that is the answer we start with.”

On the hotel desk, Nessa had arranged her identity documents, the signed share-sale agreement, and the email requesting new settlement instructions. The arrangement looked like a workday. It helped her think like herself.

She had cofounded the delivery business before Adrian began advising its expansion. He could sell a room on almost any idea. Nessa had made the promised deliveries actually arrive cold. When a larger operator offered to buy her shares, she had accepted because she wanted a different life, not because she couldn't run the work anymore.

She had thought that different life would include a wedding.

Now it would include clean water.

“The payment is due to me personally,” she said. “Not to the venture he wants me to fund.”

Dalia checked the signed instructions. “Correct. The amendment request doesn't change the agreement by itself. We are notifying the settlement team that you dispute it. They'll verify directly with you.”

“Can he delay the payment?”

“He can make noise. Whether that creates a delay depends on what he's submitted. Send everything you have.”

Nessa did.

Then she opened a second document: her own practical budget. Two hundred and forty thousand available. A small amount already tied up in wedding deposits. The share payout pending. Her city apartment, owned in her name, worth something now and very little once its lower floors filled with water.

She would sell it.

The decision hurt unexpectedly. Her mother had helped her choose the kitchen tiles. There was a tiny scratch beside the oven from the day they'd carried a table upstairs without enough help. It had been her first place that felt permanent.

She could remember its flooded lobby too.

Keeping a memory was not worth becoming trapped inside it.

She opened the photographs on her phone and found the kitchen as it had looked on moving day. Her mother, laughing with a screwdriver in one hand. Sunlight on the unpacked plates. Nessa saved copies outside the account she had once shared with Adrian.

Then she uploaded the photographs taken for her recent property valuation. The chair beside the window. The freshly painted hall. She let herself cry for exactly as long as it took the pictures to upload. Selling the apartment was a choice she could make while buyers still saw a beautiful home instead of a risk.

“I also need a property agent,” she said.

Dalia looked up. “Already?”

“I want options. I don't have to accept an offer today.”

That earned a nod instead of a lecture.

By midday, Nessa had three appointments: the apartment, a hillside rental with room for supplies, and a vehicle seller. She canceled the wedding fittings herself. The florist refunded part of her deposit and kept the cost of flowers already ordered. Nessa accepted the documented charge.

When she contacted the venue, its coordinator sounded confused.

“We were told the event might proceed with updated details.”

“Which details?”

“The bride's name.”

Nessa sat very still.

Even after being caught, Adrian had treated her departure as something that could be handled by changing a field on a booking form.

“Nothing funded under my agreement proceeds without my approval,” she said. “Please send the cancellation terms directly to me.”

After the call, she stood at the window until she could breathe without pressing her teeth together.

She wanted revenge. Not a long argument in which Adrian explained that she'd misunderstood her own money. She wanted him standing in front of every promise he'd made, with no access to her account to make those promises look true.

Her phone vibrated.

The wholesaler she used to work with had confirmed an afternoon collection slot. Water, food, hygiene supplies, all ordinary things she could still buy without anyone noticing.

Nessa put on her jacket.

At reception, an overnight parcel waited under her name. Adrian had sent back a folder of wedding samples and a note.

Sleep on it. Don't make decisions you'll regret.

She left the samples with the hotel recycling and kept the cardboard box.

It would hold supplies.