Rewrite the Apocalypse dream (by Dee Cari) novel Chapter 10

Chapter 10 The primary heirloom set

60

Finished

She shoved the earrings, a thick stack of emergency cash, and several bearer bonds into her backpack. Relocking the safe, she carefully realigned the painting.

She had what she came for, but a sudden thought made her pause. The food supply.

Keeping her head down and slipping into her old role as the invisible, submissive daughter, she walked past the bustling event staff and slipped unnoticed into the grand kitchen pantry.

In her dream, this massive walk-in room had been overflowing with luxury ingredients. After the collapse, Gwen had used their remaining capital to buy truckloads of grain and non- perishables, intending to barricade themselves inside the mansion and wait for the military. But Alice had foolishly invited her wealthy friends to take shelter with them, and those elites had stolen half their rations within a month.

This time, you won’t even have a foundation to stand on, Joanna thought.

She looked at the floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with heavy sacks of flour, industrial bags of rice, and crates of premium canned goods. In her past life, she had spent the night of this gala locked in this very room, her hands bleeding as she peeled hundreds of potatoes for Alice’s friends.

“Let’s see who peels the potatoes in the new world,” she whispered.

With a casual sweep of her hand, a vacuum of spatial energy erupted. Instantly, every single sack, crate, and jar vanished from the shelves, sucked cleanly into the rustic shack of her level- four pocket dimension. The massive pantry was left entirely bare.

The sheer satisfaction of the theft made her blood sing.

Moving quickly, she pulled one of her micro-wireless cameras from her pocket and wedged it deep between the rafters of the empty pantry. If Gwen tried to restock before Thanksgiving, Joanna would just fly back and drain them dry again.

On her way out of the mansion, she strategically deployed the remaining three cameras: one hidden in the crown molding of the grand living room, one pointing down the bedroom hallway, and the final weatherproof lens tucked into the ivy above the estate’s wrought-iron security gates.

With her eyes on the future and her family’s secrets laid bare in her hands, Joanna stepped out into the crisp afternoon air, leaving the vipers to celebrate their final night of illusions.

Back in her hotel room, Joanna dropped onto the plush mattress and let out a long, deeply satisfied breath. Even if Gwen and Alice managed to scrounge up alternative resources, they had just been stripped of the vast majority of their financial lifeline. The bonds and grandfather

1/3

11:24 Sat, Oct 3

Chapter 10 The primary heirloom set

⇨6༠

Finished

shares they were counting on to fund their luxury-and Drew’s ambitions-were officially

gone.

She emptied her backpack onto the bed, separating the stolen goods. The bearer bonds and deeds from Gwen’s safe were set aside in a neat stack for her corporate attorney. She would let him handle the tedious legal logistics and liquidate every cent possible by the end of the evening.

Next, she turned her attention to the jewelry she had looted from the master suite. Organizing the miscellaneous gold chains and carved jade ornaments, she focused her mind and transferred them into her pocket dimension.

Suddenly, an audible, violent pop echoed in her ears.

Joanna blinked, stunned. She hadn’t even introduced the prize emerald ring or teardrop earrings to her space yet. Intrigued, she dove her consciousness into her mind. Inside, she found that the rustic wooden shack had structurally evolved, spontaneously sprouting an entirely new, fully enclosed storage wing. Excellent, she thought, a cold thrill running through her. More built-in organization.

Withdrawing from the space, she picked up her grandmother’s heavy emerald heirloom ring. She attempted to slip it mentally into the pocket dimension, but it met an invisible, solid wall of resistance. The space refused to take it.

She frowned, analyzing the sudden roadblock. Of course, she realized. It’s part of the primary heirloom set. It demands a blood bond.

Steeling her nerves, she bit the tip of her index finger and smeared a drop of crimson across the central emerald.

Instantly, a blinding, sickening wave of vertigo crashed over her. The room spun violently. Through a haze of sudden pain, she watched the ring dissolve into mist, absorbing directly through the pores of her skin before her vision went completely black.

When Joanna finally opened her eyes, her phone was vibrating aggressively on the nightstand. She sat up, groggy and disoriented, checking the digital clock. Three hours had passed. The evolutionary toll of bonding the ring had been exponentially more brutal than the initial bracelet activation.

She glanced at the glowing screen. The caller ID flashed with Alice’s name. No doubt her stepsister was calling to throw a tantrum about the missing party supplies and her missing

servant.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify