Neve cried harder and harder, and Margaret grew more frightened by the second.
Her granddaughter had been perfectly fine yesterday.
Had something happened to her during the night?
“Who hurt you, sweetheart?
Tell Nana.
Who was it?”
“Miss Neve, please don’t cry.” Walter had followed Margaret upstairs and now stood hovering near the doorway, his usually calm face creased with worry.
“Tell madam what happened.
She’ll make it right, whatever it is.”
He didn’t understand it either.
The young miss had gone to bed happy last night.
Neve was the last heir of the Sinclair family, and every resource the family had was poured into her.
No one in the household would let her suffer even the smallest hardship, so what could possibly have hurt her this badly?
Slowly, Neve pulled herself together.
She wiped her face and turned to look at Walter.
Guilt tightened her throat.
In her past life, Walter, his younger brother, and their entire family had died protecting her, one after another.
She had never repaid them.
She had never even thanked them properly.
She didn’t know how to face him yet.
It would be better to explain everything to Nana first.
“Walter,” she said softly, “could you step outside and close the door?
I need to talk to Nana alone.”
“Of course, miss.”
He bowed slightly and left, and the door clicked shut behind him.
Neve took her grandmother’s hand and drew her down to sit beside her on the bed.
“Nana, if I tell you something, will you believe me?”
Margaret didn’t hesitate for a second.
“Of course I will.
You’re the only family I have.
If I can’t believe you, who in this world could I believe?”
Neve wanted to throw her arms around her and cry all over again, but she forced the feeling down.
The problem was that she had no idea where to start.
Margaret watched her granddaughter’s silence and misread it.
“Silly girl, don’t you trust Nana?
If you really don’t want to tell me, I won’t force you.
As long as whatever this is won’t hurt you, I’ll go along with whatever you want.” Her voice firmed.
“But if it could hurt you, you are not allowed to hide it from me.
Do you understand?”
Neve shook her head quickly.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Nana.
I just don’t know how to explain it.”
Margaret noticed that her granddaughter was still in her pajamas, her hair tangled from sleep.
She slipped off her coat, nudged Neve to lie down, and stretched out beside her on top of the covers, pulling the blanket up to Neve’s chin the way she had when Neve was small.
“Then don’t explain it yet.
Take your time.
Nana has all the time in the world.” She smiled.
“I haven’t napped with you in ages.
Let’s rest a little first, and then we’ll talk.”
It was still morning, and both of them had far too much on their minds to sleep.
They lay there quietly for a long while, and Margaret’s fingers moved slowly through Neve’s hair.
At last, Neve whispered, “Nana, do you believe in the apocalypse?”
“Whether I believe in it doesn’t matter,” Margaret said gently.
“What matters is that I believe you.”
Neve took a deep breath.
“In less than four months, the world is going to end.
I want to sell the company and use the money to stockpile supplies.
Is that all right?”
“Then sell it.”
Margaret answered as if Neve had asked to borrow a sweater.
“Even if no apocalypse ever comes, if you want to sell it, we’ll sell it.
What’s a company compared to my granddaughter?”
She meant every word.
To Margaret Sinclair, no amount of money had ever been worth more than a person.
The Sinclair family was down to the two of them now, and even if they lived extravagantly for the rest of their lives, they could never spend everything generations of Sinclairs had built.
Fate had never been kind to Margaret.
Her parents had married her off to the Sinclair heir for the best price they could get, even knowing he was gravely ill.
Not long after the wedding, he died.
A few days after the funeral, Margaret discovered she was two months pregnant.
Her in-laws were overjoyed, and they held on long enough to see their grandson turn four before they passed away as well.
After that, Margaret raised her son alone and ran the company alone.
She watched him grow up, get married, and give her a granddaughter.
She had just been preparing to hand Sinclair Holdings over to him when a plane went down over the ocean.
Her son and daughter-in-law never came home.
After the crash, Margaret became almost frantic about Neve’s safety.
Through quiet channels, she took in a number of orphans, raised and educated them, and trained them to become Neve’s personal guards.
She was terrified of losing the last person she had.
She had never cared about making money.
What she cared about was keeping the Sinclair family alive.
But she had protected Neve so completely and spoiled her so thoroughly that in her past life, Neve had never learned how ugly people could be.
“Nana,” Neve went on, “after the apocalypse starts, it won’t rain again for three years.
Everything dries out.
Then, after those three years, the floods come.
The sea rises.
Whole cities go underwater.”
She had decided to tell her grandmother everything.
She knew she wasn’t clever enough to plan all of this on her own.
Nana would think it through far more carefully than she could.
While she spoke, another thought nagged at her.
What had happened to Sylvie?
Had she been reborn too?
If she had, the Sinclairs were in real danger.
The Ashfords were one of the four most powerful families in the capital.
Sylvie was the Ashford patriarch’s illegitimate daughter, but her father still favored her.
“Nana,” Neve said quietly, “in my past life, Sylvie is the one who killed me.”
Her hand went to the jade pendant at her throat.
“Where did this pendant come from?”
Margaret had just opened her mouth to demand what Sylvie had done, but the question stopped her.
She had fastened that pendant around Neve’s neck when Neve was barely old enough to walk.
“It’s been passed down through the Sinclair family for generations,” she said slowly.
“Your great-grandmother died very suddenly, before she could tell anyone where it came from.
Maybe even she didn’t know.
I never heard your great-grandparents say a word about it.
Why?
What’s wrong with it?”
“It has a space inside it, Nana.
A whole world.
Three years after the apocalypse started, I activated it by accident.” Neve’s fingers tightened around the stone.
“And I was stupid enough to tell Sylvie, and a few of our own people too.
I think that’s when Sylvie decided to kill me.”
She swallowed.
“Silas warned me.
He and some of the others told me not to tell anyone, and they asked me who I’d already told.
By then it was too late.
I’d already told Sylvie.
Silas knew it would bring trouble, but I didn’t listen to him.”
Silas Reed had been in special forces before he retired.
He had applied to the Sinclair household only because they paid well and he was desperate.
His younger sister had colon cancer, and he had borrowed from everyone he knew, refusing to give up on the only family he had left.
When Margaret learned what he was going through, she gave him a million dollars.
She asked for only one thing in return.
He had to protect Neve, and he could never betray her.
By then, Silas had been working in the household for several months, and he had come to know Neve as a kind, sweet girl.
He gave his word.
His sister didn’t survive long, even with the treatment.
But Margaret had watched how he carried himself through all of it, decisive and steady and calm under pressure.
When the grief had settled, she made him captain of Neve’s guard.