All Chapters of Seven Days Before The Apocalypse : Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

Chapter 2 – The New Suit The security team finished wiring the house in under four hours. Cameras in the living room, the kitchen, both bedrooms, even the garage. Microphones hidden inside light fixtures and behind outlet covers. Every angle covered. Total cost, ninety thousand dollars. By the time the lead technician handed me the master login for the surveillance app, my phone had already buzzed with a deposit notification. Nine hundred thousand dollars, sitting in my account like it had always been there. I stood in the driveway watching the van pull away and felt a calm settle over me that I hadn't felt in years. Maybe ever. This house, this life, all of it was about to change, and they had no idea. "Olivia?" I turned around. A man in a security guard uniform was walking toward me from across the street. Broad shoulders, kind face, a little heavier than I remembered. Marcus Reyes. We went to the same college. He lived two buildings over and we used to study together in the li

Chapter 4 – The BarOn the beach, Nathan was already trying to calm Margaret down."She's just throwing a tantrum," he kept saying, pacing back and forth on the sand with his phone pressed against his ear, trying my number over and over and getting nothing. "She does this. She gets emotional and says things she doesn't mean. By the time we land she'll be crying and apologizing. Trust me."Margaret wasn't convinced. Her lips were pressed into a thin white line and her eyes were narrow and hard. "That girl has never spoken to me like that. Not once. Something is wrong."Lucas sat on a beach towel a few feet away, scrolling through his tablet, completely unbothered. "Can we still go to the water park tomorrow? I don't want to leave early because of her.""We're not leaving early," Nathan told him, his voice tight. "She'll come around."Derek was twenty yards down the beach, shirtless, trying to impress two college girls with a story about his car that he didn't actually own. He hadn't ev

Chapter 6 – The Night With RyanRyan was quiet for a long time after the second pair of bottles arrived. Not the kind of quiet that comes from having nothing to say. The kind that comes from a man rearranging everything he thought he knew about a woman and realizing none of it was true.I watched him put the pieces together. His eyes kept drifting to my wrists, where the diamond bracelets caught the low candlelight every time I moved. Then to the gown, the way it fit me like it had been sewn onto my body. Then to the four bottles on the table, each one worth more than most people's rent for a year. I could almost hear the gears turning inside his skull."Nathan told me you clipped coupons." His voice came out softer now, the smooth confidence from earlier replaced with something closer to disbelief. His jaw was slightly open and his eyes kept blinking like he was trying to wake up from something."I did. For eleven years.""And now you're sitting here spending more in one night than m