Apocalypse Rebirth: Making Billions With My Fortune-Telling Skill

A heavy, suffocating silence hung over the grand hall as April’s order echoed off the marble pillars.

No one moved. Steven Morgan clutched his tuxedo jacket, Madam Morgan’s lips trembled in silent, impotent rage, and Sir Le Moreno stared at the polished floor in total, petrified shock.

None of them wanted to be the first high-society figure to degrade themselves so utterly before the city’s elite.

Thwack!

The sharp, wet crack of skin against skin exploded through the quiet hall, making half the audience flinch.

It was Cai.

Curled in a pathetic heap on the cold marble, Cai was violently slapping his own cheek, his eyes wide and unseeing, brimming with mindless, hysterical terror.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

”I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Please don’t let the metal men hit me!” Cai sobbed, his voice rising in a frantic rhythm as he delivered blow after blow to his own face. His cheek immediately flushed a angry, raw red, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. The sheer horror of Nat’s towering operatives looming over him had completely shattered whatever remained of his mind. ”I’m doing it! See?! I’m slapping myself! Don’t lock me in the dark! I’m sorry!”

Thwack! Thwack!

A low, melodic chuckle escaped April’s lips. She tilted her head, her dark eyes sparkling with cold, sharp amusement as she watched the young heir of the Le Moreno family beat himself raw on the floor.

”My, my,” April murmured softly, her sweet voice carrying effortlessly over the rhythmic, sickening sounds of Cai’s self-inflicted punishment. ”How enthusiastic. Look at that, Madam Le Moreno... your precious, golden boy is setting quite the example for the rest of you. You should follow it.”

Selma gasped, horizontal on the marble with her ruined dress, her eyes bulging in pure, unadulterated horror as she watched her son degrade himself. ”Cai! Stop it! Cai, control yourself!”

”I can’t! Mother, I can’t!” Cai shrieked, landing another brutal slap across his own jaw. ”If I stop, they’ll kill me! Slap yourself too, Mother! Slap yourself!”

”You—”

”You heard him,” Nat rumbled from behind them, cracking his massive knuckles with a heavy, ominous sound that vibrated straight through the floorboards. He took a half-step forward, his eyes narrowing onto Steven, Sir Le Moreno, and Madam Morgan. ”Unless, of course, you’d rather my men assist.”

Steven Morgan’s knees shook violently against the elevated stage. He looked at the five iron-faced giants behind him, then down at Cai’s bleeding lip, and finally at April’s serene, merciless smile.

With a shaking, sweat-slicked hand, Steven raised his palm... and brought it down hard against his own face.

Thwack!

Steven’s palm struck his cheek, the slap ringing out wet and heavy. His head jerked, his face immediately blooming with a blotchy, red mark.

Tears of sheer degradation welled in his eyes. He didn’t even know what he did wrong and why he was being subjected to this by a woman he didn’t even know, but under Nat’s suffocating glare, he didn’t dare stop.

Sir Le Moreno, seeing his corporate ally yield, let out a pathetic whimpering sound. With trembling fingers, the proud patriarch raised his hand and struck himself, too, his dignified facade completely shattering into pieces.

Beside them, Matilda was already sobbing, slapping her own pale cheeks in a desperate bid to avoid the towering operative looming over her. If the patriaches could yield, who was she to act stubborn?

Madam Morgan and Selma followed suit, and they did not dare make the slap light, wanting to get this done and overwith, secretly seething, Once this is over, you are finished. I will make sure of it. The venom in their enraged eyes promised.

April stepped forward, her sapphire gown rustling smoothly against the marble as she watched the humiliating display. Her lips curved into a cold, terrifying smile.

”Good,” April purred, her voice dripping with smooth, intoxicating malice. ”Now... do it twice. Two heavy slaps on both cheeks.”

They definitely did not expect that, but they had already begun, so maybe this would be the last, they thought.

Thwack! Thwack!

The collective, rhythmic sound of skin striking skin echoed through the grand ballroom. The trapped socialites backed away in absolute horror, watching the city’s most untouchable elites beat themselves on their knees like common criminals.

”Three times,” April commanded smoothly, stepping closer. ”And the number will only keep going up. We won’t stop until I say you’ve paid your interest.”

That was the breaking point.

The endless, escalating degradation snapped the last thread of sanity holding the abusers together.

Their high-society pride, bloated arrogance, and festering rage exploded all at once. They weren’t just losing their money or their reputation—they were being stripped of their very humanity in front of everyone.

”You filthy, worthless BITCH!” Madam Morgan screeched, her bloodshot eyes completely bursting with homicidal fury.

Abandoning all pretense, Madam Morgan scrambled up, her long, diamond-encrusted manicured nails flexed like lethal talons. She lunged straight at April’s throat, her face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated madness.

At the exact same second, Selma scrambled up from the marble floor, her ripped silk dress trailing behind her as she charged forward with her own sharp nails aimed straight for April’s eyes.

”Die! Just die!” Selma screamed hysterically.

”April, watch out!”

April didn’t know who to look at and defined against in that moment, but in that split second of confusion, Emily moved. Refusing to let anyone lay a finger on her twin, Emily threw herself directly in front of April, using her own body as a shield.

Selma’s manicured nails swiped wildly across the air, catching the side of Emily’s soft cheek. Four sharp, red scratches bloomed across her delicate skin, beads of crimson blood immediately welling up.

April’s eyes widened, her dark pupils contracting into tiny, pitch-black points of absolute fury. ”Emily!”

Before Selma could even draw back her hand or take a breath to mock them—

BANG!

A deafening gunshot exploded through the high-ceilinged hall, echoing like a cannon blast against the marble pillars.

The entire ballroom erupted into absolute, hysterical chaos. Socialites shrieked at the top of their lungs, diving onto the floor, knocking over champagne towers, and frantically trampling over one another as they charged toward the locked doors in a wave of blind, animalistic panic.

Selma let out an ear-splitting, blood-curdling scream.

Nat stood just two paces away, a heavy tactical sidearm raised in his grip, thin wisps of grey smoke curling lazily from the barrel.

Selma collapsed hard onto the marble, clutching her right kneecap where a neat, gory hole had been punched straight through bone and tissue. Crimson blood pooled rapidly over her ruined silk dress as she writhed in the middle of the hall, her frantic screeching cutting through the screams of the panicking crowd.

Nat didn’t even blink. His golden eyes were pitch-black with unhinged, murderous rage. He took a slow, heavy step forward, looming over Selma’s bleeding form, and pointed the smoking barrel directly between her tear-filled, horrified eyes.

”You touched her sister,” Nat hissed, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying growl that froze the air in the room. ”Who gave you permission to make her bleed?”

Seeing Selma shot on the floor only sent Madam Morgan into a deeper, more hysterical frenzy.

”You monsters! I’ll kill you all!” she shrieked, refusing to back down as she lunged toward April with her hands raised.

But she didn’t even make it another inch closer.

Samuel materialized at her side like a shadow. With terrifying force, he delivered a brutal kick straight to the back of Madam Morgan’s knee, forcing her down onto her joints with a dull, heavy thud.