Chapter 4My Imaginary Wife Sent Me Millions

It didn't.

My worries were entirely unfounded.

When the bill came—totaling over fifteen thousand dollars after bottles of high-end wine—I slid my card over without a flinch. The transaction went through instantly.

My coworkers stared at me in absolute shock.

"Zach, what does your wife actually do for a living?"

"Seriously, man, you've been holding out on us. We had no idea you were loaded."

"Alright, alright, let's let the birthday boy make a wish!"

Brandon had ordered a chocolate cake, and someone placed a paper crown on my head.

As the candles flickered, I closed my eyes.

Given the sheer absurdity of the past few weeks, a wild, ridiculous thought popped into my head.

What if I had somehow developed a superpower? What if whatever I wished for simply materialized?

Let's test the limits, I thought.

I breathed in and made a silent wish:

I want to be rich. Unbelievably, ridiculously rich.

I opened my eyes and blew out the candles.

Later that night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. My phone vibrated with a text alert.

I sat up, my heart hammering, and opened the message.

It was another bank notification. The number was so long I had to count the digits twice.

One hundred million dollars.

My breathing turned shallow. I got out of bed and started pacing the room, convinced I was losing my mind.

Did I really have a wish-granting superpower?

But that defied every law of physics and science.

And as the initial rush of adrenaline faded, panic took its place.

A sudden influx of a hundred million dollars would undoubtedly trigger red flags with the IRS, the FBI, or homeland security.

And if it wasn't the government, what if some dangerous criminal syndicate was using my account to launder money?

As much as I loved the idea of being wealthy, this money felt like a gilded ticking time bomb.

I decided right then: tomorrow morning, I was going to the police.

If they could trace the source of the funds, great. If not, at least I’d have a paper trail showing I tried to report it.

Yes. That was the smart thing to do.

I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves and crawled back into bed. I grabbed my phone to set my alarm, but my finger slipped, opening my photo gallery.

I froze.

There, at the very top of my camera roll, were several photos I had never seen before.

They were pictures of me... standing next to a woman.

She was smiling warmly, her arm wrapped around my waist.

And her face was identical to the woman from my dream.

Terrified, I scrambled out of bed and flipped on the lights.

My apartment felt suddenly cold, haunted.

I had absolutely no memory of these photos. I had never met this woman in my life.

Could they be AI-generated? But I had just bought this phone. How could anyone have put them there?

I didn't sleep a wink that night. I kept every light in the apartment burning until dawn, and the second the sun broke over the horizon, I hailed a cab straight to the police station.

"Morning. Can I help you with something?"

The desk sergeant looked at me with immediate concern. I must have looked like a ghost, pale and disheveled. He poured me a cup of water.

I swallowed hard, my throat dry as sandpaper.

"Officer... someone is putting photos of a strange woman on my phone. And... I keep receiving massive sums of money from an untraceable source."

The officer frowned. "How massive?"

"A million dollars yesterday. And last night... one hundred million."

"One hundred million?!"

He practically choked on his coffee, his voice echoing in the quiet lobby.

"Officer Nightingale, what's all the shouting about?" another detective called out from across the room.

But I didn't hear him.

Officer Nightingale.

Nightingale.

That surname...

I slowly raised my head and stared at her face, her badge.

Suddenly, a violent spark flared in my brain.

I remembered.

I knew exactly what was happening.

Along with the realization came a blinding, agonizing headache. My vision blurred, the room began to spin, and before I could say another word, the world went completely black.