Apocalypse Queen: My Space, My Rules Chapter 122: Inside Threat

"If it weren't for that jinx, you never would have broken off the engagement with Mariella. And if you hadn't broken it off, things wouldn't have fallen apart the way they did. If Mariella were still your fiancée, she'd still be out there handling things for you. You wouldn't be in this position..."

"Grandma." Harvey cut her off, his skin crawling. "Please stop. Mariella and I are finished. That's not changing."

He'd looked down on Mariella once. Then he'd been furious at her defiance and wanted to make her pay for it. Now he was just afraid of her. Her name alone was enough to make him tense up.

"Viola," Roxanna said, drawing her thin frame in on itself, genuinely confused. "You always used to like me. Why are you suddenly taking Mariella's side?"

Viola's eyes traveled to the bruising along Roxanna's neck, then to the marks visible at her collar. Her expression curdled with disgust.

She turned on Harvey. "Why is this filthy creature still under our roof? Get her out before she spreads something. A ruined woman has no place beside the Graham heir. Not another cent goes toward her treatment."

Mariella tried the number several times before the call finally scraped through. The connection kept cutting in and out, the signal barely holding at 2G.

Denton sounded uncomfortable from the first word. "I was just about to reach out to you, Ms. Townsend. This one didn't go smoothly."

"You couldn't get the firearms?"

"We got a few guns and some ammunition, but..." He paused. "You've probably heard what it's like out there. My crew and I are on the move constantly. We can't operate without something to protect ourselves with. Honestly, what we managed to get barely covers our own needs."

He coughed. "The supplies I have left aren't enough to trade for anything serious anyway. So here's what I'm thinking. What if I connect you directly with the arms dealer and you handle the transaction yourself? I'll take a small cut for the introduction."

Mariella considered it. It seemed like the only workable option. "When and where? Set it up for me. And what's your read on them? Can they be trusted?"

"I've done a few deals with this group before. No issues with reliability, and the product is legitimate. My transactions have all been small scale though. I've never moved anything in bulk." He didn't dress it up. "I'm a middleman at best. Running serious arms was never something I had the capital for."

He'd spent most of his career as a cross-border gemstone trader, which meant he'd always kept a crew close and had built up a decent cushion over the years.

But the disaster had wiped out the gemstone market overnight. His cash and his inventory both lost value so fast it made his head spin. To survive, he'd pivoted to brokering goods, and the learning curve had been brutal. He'd been cheated more than once, lost men in at least one ambush, and mostly broken even.

The one deal that had actually paid off was the one he'd done with Mariella. His crew had been in good spirits for days afterward, and so had their families. That had given him the confidence to put most of what he had left into a batch of firearms, planning to bring them to her as his next trade.

Then the situation outside deteriorated faster than anyone expected. The convict gang had exploded in size within a matter of weeks, burning and killing and assaulting their way through every neighborhood they passed through.

Watching that kind of operation grow at that speed put the entire city of Liraelith on edge.

The truly destitute had little to worry about. When you had nothing, there was nothing worth taking, and the gang couldn't be bothered wasting energy on people who'd already been picked clean. But anyone with even a modest cushion became a target, and for them, being noticed meant ruin.

Denton wasn't wealthy by any measure, but he wasn't poor either, and he had a crew and their families depending on him for protection.

The firearms he'd just acquired suddenly felt a lot more essential to keep than to trade. This wasn't a business calculation anymore. It was survival. All the money in the world meant nothing if you weren't alive to spend it.

Still, he was a man who took his word seriously. After turning it over for a while, he landed on a compromise.

He'd connect Mariella directly with the arms dealer and take a cut of the transaction. Everyone gets something, nobody loses a gun they need.

"Go ahead and arrange it," Mariella said. She trusted Denton well enough. "Just let me know when it's set."

She ended the call and was about to check her storage space when a message came in.

It was from Matthew. "Check the Celestine Ridge group chat. Now."

Mariella pulled up the Celestine Ridge group chat and found it already in an uproar.

The group had a new owner. It had been transferred from Kieran to the head of No. 1, Kieran's grandfather and the wealthiest man in Liraelith, Wallace Hancock.

His message was direct. "The first threat to breach Celestine Ridge is not the convict gang we've all been warned about. It's the people we dismissed. The guards and bodyguards recently let go by residents of this community have organized themselves into a crew and seized No. 101 by force. This is robbery, plain and simple."