CHAPTER 299: APOCALYPSE ROMANCE 9

Sasha folded her arms. "And your cooperation? You’re not giving that away until you’re finished scoring my ring."

Alvaro cocked his head, amused. "You think I’m only here for the shiny thing? Call me shallow if you like. But yes — curiosity. Also, I can offer protection. Men, guns, storage, a bed that isn’t squeaky." He added the last like an afterthought; the small absurdity broke the tension for a beat.

"You get the feeling you only want the ring because you want to poke it," Sasha said, blunt. "For your information: I’m the only one who can enter that space. I can’t drag you in with me."

"Do you vanish when you go in?" he asked, businesslike.

She nodded. Saying the words made a cold prickle run down her spine. "Don’t even think about killing me because the ring won’t be transferred to you. It doesn’t work that way. If I die, the ring dies with me."

The grin that split his face was more relieved than amused. "Good to know. Killing you would be poor long-term investment." He let out a short, genuine laugh. "Relax. I’m not a monster — I’m a businessman. I like living assets."

She felt absurdly grateful for that classification. A man who preferred profit to pathology felt, right now, like a blessing.

He stepped closer, then eased back with a practiced, almost courtly, motion as though they’d agreed on invisible terms. "You stay here. Under my roof, under my guns. I watch your back; you tell me more about this apocalypse. We both get something useful"

"Deal," she said, and the word landed between them like a handshake. Not trust — not yet — but a fragile armistice.

Sasha knew the truth: Alvaro wasn’t agreeing out of noble impulses—he was agreeing because she was interesting.

The kind of person who pulled at his boredom and promised a new kind of danger.

When that curiosity cooled, kindness would cool with it; alliances made of amusement tended to be short-lived.

She felt a chill run down her spine—part instinct, part calculation.

Still, the apocalypse was a coming thunderstorm, and soon his attention would be fixed on the horizon as much as on her.

That bought her time: a narrow, dangerous window to fortify plans, tie loose ends, and learn the shape of his loyalties before the world she remembered started to tear itself apart.

Alvaro’s hand brushed the crate as he turned away, and the contact left a heat she didn’t want to analyze.

He glanced over his shoulder, that half-smile she’d come to expect, equal parts promise and warning. "Welcome to the safest basement in the city, Miss Sasha. Try not to set my carpets on fire."

She smirked, and crossed her hands. "No promises."

Sasha let herself believe, for the first time in days, that she’d dodged another bullet.

Under Alvaro’s roof, with his muscle and his basement, the loan sharks couldn’t reach her—at least not without stepping over a dozen bodyguards or hundreds.

That was the math she liked: fewer variables, higher chance of survival.

Time became a commodity.

In the last frantic days before whatever was coming, she hoarded—mercilessly. Ammunition, canned food, antibiotics, painkillers, bandages, batteries, fuel cells, water pouches, a stack of cheap radios, a crate of multivitamins, and two very questionably sourced espresso machines (because some comforts were non-negotiable).

She shoved everything into the ring, watched it wink away, and sighed like a woman filing taxes on the end of the world.

Alvaro fell into the rhythm beside her, more willing than she’d expected. He’d moved crates, signed off on transactions, called in favors, and, when men who asked too many questions showed up, made them leave with a smile that felt suspiciously like warning.

He carried boxes with the same bored expertise he showed the world: effortless, efficient, vaguely dangerous. Watching him work, Sasha felt a private, ridiculous kind of relief—his competence was a soft armor.

"You could put a house in there," he said one night, leaning against a crate as she closed the ring. The grin was teasing, skeptical. "Or a mall. Hell, why stop at a living room? Why not an entire beachfront resort?"

Sasha glanced up, bored and amused at once. "And what’s the point of living inside a ring alone? You’d be lonely, and very bored. Besides, where’s the drama in a beachfront if you can’t invite a few loan sharks for cocktails?"

Alvaro chuckled. "Fair point. A lonely paradise sounds like an expensive mistake." He watched her with a new kind of interest, the one that cataloged risk and reward in a single look. "If this apocalypse doesn’t materialize, I’d like to . . . borrow that ability of yours."

She gave him a sideways look, a half-smile that said she wasn’t naive. "You want me to smuggle weapons across borders, don’t you? Not just borders but other countries too."

He laughed loud enough that one of the men in the doorway shot them both a look. "You’re like a walking Swiss bank—except better, because your goods aren’t traceable and undetectable."

"Why thank you," Sasha said, voice dry. "If the end of days doesn’t happen, I’ll take a job. I’ll work for you. But no kidnapping and killing. If you ever do that . . ."

"You’ll disappear?" he finished for her, amused.

"Something like that." She clipped and tossed him a look that warned and invited at the same time.

He held up his hands in mock surrender. "Relax. I’m a businessman, not a pyromaniac. I like assets that appreciate."

There were quieter moments between tasks—when they stacked tins side by side or wrapped goods with military accuracy. Hands would brush reaching for the same crate.

A shoulder would press for balance in a narrow corridor. Those touches were small and electric and utterly inconvenient.

Sasha told herself they were logistics. Alvaro called them "teamwork."

Sometimes he watched her when she made things disappear and reappear—a child watching a trick that promised a real miracle.

His fascination wasn’t purely professional; it had a personal tilt, the way people watch a dangerous comet and imagine what it would do to them.

One evening, as rain stitched the city into a darker map and the clock seemed to speed up, Sasha stacked the last of the water pouches into the ring. She paused, ring warm against her skin, and looked up at him. "We’re almost ready."

Alvaro’s face softened in a way she hadn’t seen before: less predator, more partner in a terrible bet. "Almost," he echoed. "You have pack almost half of the world’s resources in there. You’re very much ready."

He didn’t say "we." The word was too heavy, too eager. But she didn’t correct him either.

Their alliance folded neatly between them—practical, precarious, and threaded with something that might become loyalty if the world let it.

For now, that was enough.