Harlon's right eye twitched.

He forced a laugh, but it sounded hollow. "What kind of game are you playing, Cora?"

Myra struggled to her feet, pointing a shaking finger at Cora. "You ungrateful little bitch! How dare you threaten your family!"

Cora didn't even look at Myra. She reached down, unzipped her backpack, and pulled out her laptop. She opened it, plugged in the USB drive, and turned the screen so it faced Harlon.

A massive Excel spreadsheet filled the screen. In her past life, after Harlon had been violently killed during a supply run, a surviving FBI agent had drunkenly spilled the details of the federal investigation into the Bullock estate. Cora had memorized every single line of that report. It detailed exactly how the trust fund had been bled dry over the last five years. It showed the money moving through three different shell companies registered in the Cayman Islands, before being washed and deposited back into Harlon's private accounts.

Harlon leaned forward. His eyes scanned the numbers. The color drained from his face, leaving his skin a sickly gray. A bead of sweat broke out on his forehead.

"Let's see," Cora said, reading the screen upside down. "Apex Holdings. Blue Ocean LLC. And my personal favorite, the two million dollars you wired to buy that yacht in Miami last summer."

Harlon's breathing grew heavy. He lunged across the desk, his hands grabbing for the laptop.

Cora was faster. She slammed the screen shut, trapping his fingers for a second before pulling the laptop to her chest.

"That's just a copy," Cora said, her voice like ice. "The original files are on a dead-man's switch. If I don't walk out of this house tonight, or if you try to cancel my phone, those files get emailed directly to the IRS audit division tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM."

The letters IRS hit the room like a bomb.

Myra gasped, clutching her chest, and collapsed back into her chair. She didn't say another word.

Harlon gripped the edge of the desk. He stared at Cora as if he was looking at a monster he had never seen before.

"What do you want?" Harlon hissed through his teeth.

Cora leaned back in her chair. She held up one finger.

"One million dollars. Cash flow. Transferred to my personal Bank of America account by noon tomorrow."

Harlon slammed his fist on the desk. "The trust is tied up in real estate and stocks! I can't liquidate a million in cash in twelve hours!"

"Don't lie to me," Cora snapped. "You have at least three million sitting in your private UBS account in Switzerland. Use it."

Harlon slumped back into his leather chair. The fight completely left his body. He looked old.

He rubbed his face with both hands. "Cora... your parents wouldn't want this. We are family."

The mention of her parents made Cora's blood run cold. She stood up so fast her chair scraped loudly against the wood floor. She slammed both hands flat on his desk, leaning over him.

"Do not ever say their names again," Cora whispered, her voice vibrating with pure hatred. "This money is the price you pay to not die in a federal prison. Pay it."

Harlon swallowed hard. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead.

The silence stretched for thirty agonizing seconds.

"Fine," Harlon choked out. "Tomorrow."

Cora reached into her bag and pulled out a single sheet of paper. She slid it across the desk.

"Sign this," Cora demanded. "It's a legal declaration of a voluntary cash gift. If the bank flags the transfer for money laundering, this clears it."

Harlon's hands shook as he picked up his expensive fountain pen. He scribbled his signature at the bottom of the page.

Cora snatched the paper, folded it, and shoved it into her pocket. She packed up her laptop and slung the backpack over her shoulder.

She walked to the door and unlocked it. Before she opened it, she turned back.

She looked at the pathetic old woman in the chair and the broken man behind the desk.

"Have a wonderful winter in this house," Cora said softly.

She walked out and shut the door.

She walked down the hallway, her heart beating a steady, powerful rhythm. The first million was secured.

At 11:00 AM the next day, Cora sat in the corner booth of a small, grimy diner in Manhattan.

A cup of black coffee sat untouched in front of her, completely cold. She wore a black baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. Her thumb constantly swiped down on her phone screen, refreshing the banking app.

At 11:45 AM, the phone vibrated violently in her hand.

A push notification popped up: Incoming Wire Transfer.

She opened the app. The balance had jumped from $3,050.00 to $1,003,050.00.

Cora let out a long, shaky breath. The tension that had been knotting her shoulders for the last twenty-four hours finally released.

She threw a five-dollar bill on the table and walked out.

She hailed a cab and gave the driver an address in Queens. Twenty minutes later, she walked through the glass doors of an Enterprise truck rental center.

She ignored the rows of sedans and compact SUVs. She walked straight up to the counter.

"I need a Ford F-150 Raptor. The one with the enclosed bed cap," Cora told the salesman.

The guy looked at her skinny frame and the oversized hoodie. He smirked. "Are you sure, sweetheart? That's a lot of truck. We have a nice RAV4 right over here."

Cora didn't blink. She pulled out her credit card and slapped it on the counter.

"I want it for a month. Full insurance coverage. Run the card."

The salesman's smirk vanished when he saw the name on the card and the lack of hesitation. Ten minutes later, he handed her the keys.

Cora walked out to the lot. The black F-150 looked like a massive, armored beast.

She opened the heavy door, climbed into the driver's seat, and gripped the leather steering wheel. The physical weight of the machine gave her a massive surge of security. She started the engine. The V6 twin-turbo roared to life, vibrating through her boots.

She pulled out of the lot and merged onto the highway, heading toward a massive Costco on the edge of Brooklyn.

While sitting at a red light, she connected her phone to the truck's Bluetooth. She dialed a ghost-address leasing company.

Using a fake name, she rented five large P.O. Boxes and two abandoned self-storage units spread across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and upstate New York. She needed the deliveries scattered so the algorithms wouldn't flag a massive hoarding event.

The light turned green. She slammed the gas pedal, leaving the sedans behind her in the dust.

She parked in the massive Costco lot. Before she got out, she opened her iPad. She logged into her Amazon Prime account and started reviewing the hundreds of items sitting in her cart.

Suddenly, the truck's infotainment screen lit up.

Incoming Call: Declan.

Cora stared at the name. Her eyes turned to ice. She hit the accept button and simultaneously tapped the record button on her phone.

"Hey, baby," Declan's voice filled the cabin, thick with fake affection. "Where are you? I stopped by the dorm with those lilies you like, but you weren't there."

Cora forced a heavy sigh. "I'm at my family lawyer's office in the city. It's a nightmare. I won't be back until late."

"Don't push yourself too hard," Declan said smoothly. Then, he paused. It was a calculated pause. "Did you get things sorted out with your uncle? About the trust?"

There it is.

Cora bit the inside of her cheek to stop from laughing. "No. He locked me out completely. I didn't get a single cent. I'm broke, Declan."

The silence on the other end of the line was deafening.

When Declan finally spoke, his voice was completely flat. The warmth was gone. "Oh. Well. That sucks. Look, I gotta go to practice. Talk later."

He hung up.

Cora listened to the dead dial tone. She tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.

She opened the truck door, pulled a black surgical mask over her face, and grabbed two oversized shopping carts.

It was time to spend some money.

It was past midnight when Cora finally returned to her dorm room.

She dropped her heavy backpack onto the floor. It was packed tight with high-calorie protein bars, water purification tablets, and heavy-duty flashlights she had bought at Costco.

She locked the door and pulled the thick blackout curtains shut, making sure not a single sliver of light could escape the room.

She stood over the backpack. She reached out her hand. The air shimmered, and the heavy bag vanished, instantly transported to the corner of her quantum space.

Cora sat down at her desk and opened her laptop. She didn't go to Amazon yet.

She clicked on a hidden folder labeled 'System Diagnostics'. Weeks ago, when she still foolishly trusted him, Declan had asked her to fix his laptop. She had secretly installed a high-grade keylogger and remote mirroring software out of petty jealousy. Now, it was her greatest asset. She opened the remote dashboard and accessed his live text logs.

He had texted Hailee.

Declan: The idiot didn't get a dime. The old man cut her off. I'm wasting my time.

Hailee: I told you she was useless without the trust. Whatever, don't dump her yet. Her birthday is next week. You need to make her buy that Tiffany necklace for me first.

Cora stared at the screen. She didn't feel angry. She felt a cold, clinical detachment, like a surgeon examining a tumor.

She took screenshots of the entire conversation and dragged them onto a secure USB drive. The social execution was going to be flawless, but it could wait. Survival came first.

She closed the folder and opened the Tor browser.

The dark web loaded slowly. She routed her connection through three different proxies before accessing an underground agricultural forum.

Normal seeds sold at Home Depot wouldn't survive the irradiated, mutated soil of the apocalypse. She needed first-generation, non-GMO, mutation-resistant seeds bred by military labs.

She found a highly-rated anonymous vendor going by the name Demeter.

Cora opened an encrypted chat box. She typed out a massive list: wheat, potatoes, medicinal herbs, fast-growing vegetables. She wanted the entire vault.

The vendor replied immediately, demanding payment in Monero, an untraceable cryptocurrency.

Cora used an offshore exchange to convert fifty thousand dollars into Monero and sent it to the escrow account. She gave the vendor the address of the P.O. Box she had rented in Pennsylvania and paid extra for overnight shipping.

She closed Tor and opened a standard browser, logging into Amazon.

Her fingers flew across the keyboard. She bought medical supplies in bulk: gallons of rubbing alcohol, iodine, hundreds of rolls of gauze, tourniquets, and surgical staples.

She split the orders into thirty different packages, routing them to the ghost warehouses.

Next was hygiene. She bought out three different sellers' entire stock of tampons, pads, and heavy-duty deodorant. In the apocalypse, the scent of blood attracted things far worse than zombies.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of a key sliding into the lock of her dorm room door.

Hailee was trying to get in.

Cora's hand slammed down on the keyboard shortcut, minimizing the browser. A boring PDF about macroeconomics popped up on the screen.

The door handle rattled, but the deadbolt held.

"Cora?" Hailee's voice came through the wood, laced with suspicion. "Why is the door locked?"

Cora took a deep breath. She aggressively rubbed her hands through her hair, making it look wild and messy. She slouched her shoulders and walked to the door, unlocking it.

Hailee stood in the hallway wearing a silk slip dress, her eyes darting past Cora, trying to see into the room.

"What are you doing?" Hailee asked, trying to sound casual.

"I took my meds and fell asleep," Cora lied, her voice raspy and annoyed. "I didn't want anyone walking in."

Hailee scanned the room. Seeing nothing but the textbook on the screen, the suspicion in her eyes faded into disappointment.

"Oh. Okay. Night," Hailee muttered, turning away.

Cora shut the door and locked it again. She leaned her back against the wood. In the dark, her eyes were wide and sharp.