Richard Ashford set down his phone and went back to the contract in front of him.
He assumed his daughter was short on money again.
That was usually what these careful little calls were about.
Our lives.
Our future.
Our power and influence.
He almost smiled.
The Ashfords were one of the four great families of the capital.
Their wealth went back generations, and their reach went into every boardroom and government office that mattered.
Who would dare move against them?
Even if one of the other three great families wanted to try, they would find it far from easy.
Still, Sylvie had sounded genuinely frightened.
And she wasn’t usually one for theatrics.
He was curious, in a mild, distant way, what she thought was so important.
Ashford Tower rose forty stories over the financial district, all dark glass and steel.
Sylvie had driven past it a thousand times.
She had never once been invited inside.
One of her father’s secretaries was waiting when the elevator doors opened on the top floor.
She was a slim, polished woman who looked Sylvie over once, took in everything, and smiled without warmth.
“Miss Ashford.
This way, please.”
She led Sylvie down a long, quiet corridor lined with abstract art and stopped in front of a pair of tall walnut doors.
Then she turned and walked away without another word.
Sylvie stood there for a moment, heart pounding.
She had never been inside her father’s office.
Not in this life, and not in the last one either, not until the world had already ended and there was no company left to protect.
As an illegitimate daughter, she wasn’t permitted to set foot in the building without his express permission.
His legitimate children came and went as they pleased.
She had to be summoned.
She raised her hand and knocked.
“Come in.”
The office was enormous.
Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the whole city, and a desk the size of a small car sat in the middle of a pale gray carpet.
Richard Ashford sat behind it, silver at the temples, sharp-featured and immaculate in a charcoal suit, signing something without looking up.
“Dad.”
Sylvie walked to the front of the desk and stopped.
She didn’t look around.
She didn’t let her eyes wander to the windows or the art or the photos on the shelves, photos of his wife and his real children.
She simply stood there with her hands folded, quiet and small, the way she had learned to stand in front of him years ago.
“Sit.”
Richard capped his pen, gathered the documents in front of him, and set them to one side.
Then he leaned back and finally looked at her.
“Go on.
What’s the matter?”
Sylvie sat on the edge of the chair across from him.
“Dad, what I’m about to tell you is going to sound unbelievable.
But please, please believe me.
Every word of it is true.”
Her palms were damp.
She had rehearsed this the whole drive over, and now that she was here, every sentence she’d prepared sounded insane in her head.
How was she supposed to make a man like Richard Ashford believe in the end of the world?
“Stop circling.” His voice was flat.
“Say it or don’t.
If you’re not going to tell me, go home.
I have work to do.”
“Dad…”
She took a breath.
If she didn’t say it now, she might never get another chance.
He might never agree to see her again.
“The apocalypse is coming,” she said.
“I was reborn.
I lived through four years of it, and then I died, and I woke up this morning more than three months before it starts.”
She made herself hold his gaze.
For a long moment, Richard said nothing at all.
“Have you been reading too many of those internet novels?”
His tone wasn’t angry.
It was almost disappointed.
He studied her as though she were a puzzle that had stopped being interesting.
She was acting strangely today.
Normally she was quiet, obedient, and well-behaved.
It was precisely because she never caused him trouble that, among all his children born outside his marriage, she received one of the more generous allowances.
“Dad, I know you don’t believe me.
I wouldn’t believe me either.” She leaned forward.
“But there’s something you can check yourself.
Once you look into it, you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”
She had thought about this all the way from campus.
She couldn’t find Neve.
Neve had withdrawn from school the same day Sylvie was reborn.
If Neve had come back too, then Margaret Sinclair would already be moving.
She would sell the company and buy supplies, anything she could stockpile before the rain.
“Don’t make me drag every sentence out of you,” Richard said.
“I don’t have the time or the patience for it.
You know me.
You know I don’t like being spoken to this way.”
His expression hadn’t changed.
That was somehow worse than if he’d raised his voice.
“I’m sorry.
I honestly don’t know how to explain it.
If I don’t give you proof, you won’t believe me, so here it is.” She took a breath.
“Look into Sinclair Holdings.
Find out if they’re suddenly trying to sell the company, and if they’re buying huge amounts of supplies.
Food, water, medicine, all of it.”
Richard’s eyebrows rose a fraction.
“Neve Sinclair was reborn too,” Sylvie said.
“The same time as me.
I’m sure of it.”
She hesitated.
Then she said the thing she had hoped to keep for herself.
“And there’s something else.
Neve wears a jade pendant around her neck.
It’s not ordinary jade.
It has a space inside it, a whole storage space.
It can hold an enormous amount of supplies.
If our family can get that pendant and fill it before the apocalypse, then when the world ends, the Ashfords won’t just survive.
We’ll be the most powerful family left.”
She hated giving it up.
But she had no choice.
She could never take the pendant alone.
Neve wasn’t like her.
Whatever Neve said, her grandmother believed without question.
And Margaret Sinclair was not a woman to be handled lightly.
Sylvie had watched her deal with people her whole childhood.
She had seen that polite smile go cold, and she had seen what happened to the people on the other side of it.
Richard was silent for a while.
He was not a man who believed in fairy tales.
But he was a man who believed in information, and in checking it.
The Sinclairs were not a small family.
They couldn’t match the Ashfords, but they were old money with a long history in the capital, well connected and well respected.
Margaret Sinclair had run that company through two recessions without a misstep.
If she was suddenly dumping it for cash, there had to be a reason.
The Sinclairs had only one real weakness.
There were so few of them left.
He laced his fingers together on the desk.
“How does it happen?
This apocalypse of yours.”
“I don’t know why it happens.
In my last life, I never heard anyone explain it.” Sylvie’s voice steadied.
“But it starts with rain.
Gray-black rain falls from the sky, and there’s a virus in it.
Most people who get caught in it turn into zombies.
Some awaken supernatural abilities instead.
And even people who stay indoors can still turn, or still awaken.
Some stay ordinary.”
She watched his face.
He was still listening.
He was asking questions.
For the first time since she’d walked through those doors, Sylvie let herself breathe.
He was starting to take her seriously.