Chapter 2

"Evelyn, how could you talk to Sophie like that?" Alex said. "She's your best friend."

I stared at him.

"Alex, let's break up," I said.

Alex was stunned, his eyes wide with disbelief.

Sophie stopped crying and looked at me, her eyes filled with surprise.

"What did you say?" Alex asked.

"I said, we're breaking up. Give me back the ring," I replied, pointing at the couple's ring on his finger.

I had spent hundreds of thousands on that ring.

Alex's expression shifted from shock to anger.

"Evelyn, don't make a scene," he snapped. "You're really breaking up with me because of a ring?"

"It's not about the ring," I replied calmly. "This is about me. I don't want to see either of you ever again."

I pulled out my phone and opened my photo album.

There was one photo.

It was Alex and Sophie, caught in a kiss.

The shot was taken right outside my apartment building the day before I ended up in the hospital.

In my previous life, I never knew they had been together all along, not even until I died.

But this time, when I woke up, the first thing I did was check the recently deleted photos on my phone.

This photo was something I had snapped by accident.

Back then, I thought it was a trick of the angle, so I deleted it right after I saw it.

Now, thinking about it, the irony was almost laughable.

I held up my phone screen right in their faces.

Alex's face turned white.

Sophie dropped to the floor.

"Did you see it?" I asked. "Now, can you two get the hell out?"

Alex's lips trembled, but he couldn't get a single word out.

I wasn't about to stand around waiting for him.

I strode over, grabbed his hand, and pulled the ring off his finger hard.

Then I tossed it right at Sophie's face.

"Take it. It's all yours," I said.

I went back to the bedside and started gathering my stuff—my bag, my coat...

Alex finally managed to find his voice.

"Evelyn, please, let me explain. It's not what you think," he said.

"I don't want to hear it," I cut him off. "From now on, don't ever contact me again."

I got discharged and left the hospital.

As I walked out the front doors, the sunlight was warm and bright.

But I knew days like this wouldn't last much longer.

I took a cab straight to the bank.

I liquidated everything I had—savings, stocks, funds...

The account manager tried to convince me, saying, "Ms. Grant, the market's really hot right now. Cashing out would be such a waste."

"Liquidate everything. Not a cent left," I said.

I signed off on all the paperwork.

In three days, all this would be nothing but scrap paper.

Next, I called up a real estate agent.

"I want to list all three of my apartments and two commercial properties for sale," I said. "Only one condition: cash buyers, and I want them sold fast. You can list them 20% below market value."

The agent's eyes lit up.

Money talked; people would jump at the chance if the price was right.

Less than a week later, all my assets were turned into cash, about thirty million dollars, all in.

Staring at the number in my bank app, I felt nothing but calm.

With that money, I rented a private villa out on the edge of the city, complete with its own basement.

I paid five years' rent all at once.

Next, I sat down and started writing out my plan.

Once the eternal night hit, the power grid was the first thing to crash.

Without light, there was no power.

But monsters were drawn to any hint of light.

So, any kind of light source was basically a death sentence.

I had to get my hands on materials that blocked out every last bit of light.

I contacted some construction suppliers and ordered a ton of soundproof panels, heavy-duty steel plates, and top-tier blackout curtains and light-blocking film.

I planned to lock down the entire villa, inside and out.

The basement was my main focus.

That was where I'd be living for the next few years.

After that, it was time to figure out the food situation.

I bought five tons each of flour and every kind of grain I could get my hands on.

I ordered survival biscuits, army rations, and self-heating rice in shipping containers.

Dehydrated veggies, freeze-dried fruit, and every kind of jerky imaginable filled up an entire room.

I bought salt, sugar, oil, and every seasoning one could think of—enough to open a mini-mart.

Water came first.

I ordered tens of thousands of cases of bottled water.

Out in the villa's yard, I had a massive water reservoir dug, all under the guise of building a pond.

Then I disguised it as part of the yard, covering it with steel plates.

After that, I set up a state-of-the-art rainwater collection and purification system.

Next came energy.

I bought ten industrial diesel generators.

Then, posing as a company buyer, I snapped up every last drop of diesel from a gas station that was about to shut down.

It was a full thirty tons.

All of it went straight into my spatial ring.

My spatial ring was massive—big enough to fit a football field—and now it was piled high with supplies.

Next came medical supplies.

Antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, painkillers, cold meds... I tracked down every kind of OTC and prescription drug I could think of, through every channel I could find.

I bought aauze, bandages, scalpels, sutures, enough to run a small clinic.

I even bought a secondhand dental chair, plus the whole setup.

In my previous life, I ended up dying in excruciating pain—all because of a toothache.

This time, there was no way I was letting myself go through that hell again.

Next came weapons.

Guns were out of the question.

But crossbows were no problem.

I ordered twenty high-powered compound crossbows, plus tens of thousands of crossbow bolts.

I also stocked up on machetes, axes, and military shovels.

I had the construction crew raise the villa's walls to a full sixteen feet high.

The top was covered with razor-sharp spikes and electric fencing.

Of course, once the apocalypse hit, the electric fence would be a physical barrier.

I kept myself busy every day.

Like a hamster about to hibernate, I was stockpiling supplies in my hideout like crazy.

One day, a massive refrigerated truck rolled up to the gate of my villa.

Inside was the final shipment of supplies I had ordered.

There were top-grade beef, lobsters, king crabs, and all sorts of luxury frozen delicacies.

I had the workers haul everything down to the industrial-sized freezer in the basement.

Just then, my phone rang.

It was an unknown number.

I picked up.

"Hello?" I said.

"Evelyn, it's me," Alex said. He sounded exhausted.

"What do you want?" I asked, my voice cool.

"Can we meet? I'm begging you," Alex implored.

"I'm busy," I said.

I was about to hang up.

"Don't hang up," Alex called out, his voice desperate. "Sophie... Sophie's pregnant."