Knowing My New Life

Victoria had stolen the life of a monster.

That was the only conclusion she had from the information gotten on the internet.

She sat on the floor of Vivian’s private study with her tablet glowing in her hands, scrolling through years of articles, gossip blogs, and old social media posts. Every single one painted the same picture.

Vivian Blackwood, arrogant. Vivian Blackwood, impossible to work with. Vivian Blackwood, obsessed with money and status, cruel to staff, ruthless in negotiations, very controlling, a woman half of Blackridge seemed to actively despise.

Victoria opened another article. The headline made her pause.

BLACKWOOD QUEEN HUMILIATES EMPLOYEE AT CHARITY GALA.

She frowned and tapped the screen, a video loaded.

Vivian stood beneath the crystal chandeliers of some charity event, dressed in a black evening gown, a cold expression as a young assistant stood trembling in front of her.

“You had one job,” Vivian said in the video.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Blackwood. I thought…”

“I don’t pay you to think.” Vivian cuts her off.

The young woman lowered her head. Vivian stepped closer, not minding she was in public.

“If you make another mistake like this, I’d make sure you won’t work anywhere in Blackridge again.”

The video ended. Victoria stared at the frozen image of Vivian’s face.

“Was she really this cruel?”

She opened another article. The stories kept coming. Different people, same conclusion.

Business partners called her a nightmare. Former employees described the torture of working with her. One old interview quoted a socialite saying Vivian treated people like furniture she could replace whenever she got bored. 

Another post claimed she had once threatened to ruin a man’s company simply because he refused to sell her a piece of land.

Victoria sat back from the screen, her stomach twisting. “What kind of woman was I reborn as?” She asked herself. 

Victoria wondered if she had been punished by fate rather than given a second chance. She looked down at her own hands.

“This is the woman whose body I’m living in?”

She dug deeper and found the reasons Adrian looked at her with such disdain.

Vivian had publicly embarrassed him at events. She had interfered in his business deals, used money as leverage and repeatedly threatened to leave him when she did not get her way.

A gossip thread once accused her of manipulating Adrian's family for years.

No wonder he had built walls. No wonder he preferred knowing exactly what to expect from the old Vivian. Vivian gave him every reason to keep his distance. 

Whatever Vivian did to him over the years, it clearly washed away whatever affection he might have. 

“Maybe that’s why Adrian is cold towards everyone. And yet he cried over me. Sobbed like his whole world had ended.” She talked to herself in a low tone.

In all her findings, the memory of his grief in the snow refused to fade. The man who had held her while she died did not match the husband who could barely stand to look at her now. 

Victoria forced herself to keep searching.

She opened Vivian’s financial records next, expecting more proof of greed and waste. Things like the extravagant lifestyle people talked about— designer wardrobes, reckless spending, the trail of a spoiled woman burning  her husband's fortune.

To her greatest surprise, she found none of it.

Instead, she found farmland purchases stretching back years. Warehouses registered under obscure holding companies. Generators, ordered in bulk. Medical supplies. Water filtration systems. Fuel reserves large enough to power a small district. Security equipment installed at properties Victoria had never even heard mentioned.

Her pulse quickened as the pattern became impossible to ignore.

These were not the purchases of a spoiled socialite. These were the exact things that became more valuable than gold after the world collapsed.

The same items she herself had spent years quietly gathering in her first life, only to watch her family lock her out of the shelter she built. The difference is Vivian's purchase was bigger than hers.

Vivian Blackwood was obviously preparing for the end of the world.

She dug further, uncovering a scattering of reports tucked away in encrypted folders — unusual weather anomalies, water contamination readings from areas that should have been clean, strange clusters of animal deaths dismissed in the news as isolated incidents, temperature records that made no sense for the season.

Together, all of it painted something Victoria recognized with a chill crawling up her spine.

Vivian believed something catastrophic was coming. She knew there was a disaster ahead of them.

Buried at the bottom of the same folder, Victoria found a single reference that made her breath catch.

PROJECT EVE.

Victoria opened it.

Most of the contents were locked or redacted. Only a few scattered references remained. Dates. Locations. And one name that made her blood run cold.

Richard Hale. Her father 

“Dad? Why is dad’s name here ?” She rose up in shock.

Victoria's hands curled into fists against the desk. She thought of him standing behind the shelter glass, lying to her face about food she personally stored, abandoning her to freeze outside the walls she'd built for him.

“What did you have to do with any of this?” She paced around. 

She kept digging late into the night, chasing the thin thread of Project EVE through Vivian's records until it led her to a section of the wall panel she'd never noticed before. A hidden safe, tucked behind a false panel in the study.

The sage had a small biometric lock that accepted Vivian’s fingerprint without protest. The safe door swung open with a soft hiss.

Inside lay stacks of emergency cash, property deeds, medical records, a strange black ring inside a velvet pouch, and a handwritten notebook filled with dates and initials she didn’t understand.

 At the very bottom sat one sealed envelope. Victoria's fingers trembled as she lifted it into the light. Her name was written across the front.

VICTORIA HALE.

Victoria’s hands began to shake as she broke the seal”

She unfolded the letter, and the first line swallowed every ounce of air left in her lungs.

If you are reading this, Victoria Hale is already dead.

The room tilted. Victoria gripped the edge of the desk, her pulse roaring in her ears, the letter trembling in her other hand.

Vivian Blackwood didn’t simply prepare for the apocalypse. She knew Victoria’s name, knew Victoria would die and somehow occupy her body.

And she had left a message waiting for the moment her body became Victoria’s.

Her fingers tightened on the paper until the edges crumpled.

Whatever game Vivian was playing, it had started long before the apocalypse.