Chapter 4
My grandma stood quietly behind Grandpa.
She wore a dark red dress, her face adorned with a graceful smile.
But I noticed that the look she gave me was nothing like the one she reserved for my grandpa.
When she looked at him, her eyes were thoughtful and respectful.
But when she looked at me, she was sizing me up.
"What a pretty girl. She looks like her mother," my grandma said, reaching out to touch my face.
I started to cry softly, feeling wronged.
My grandma's hand froze in mid-air.
My mom quickly comforted me. "It's okay, sweetheart. Don't be scared. It's Grandma."
My grandpa tried to smooth things over. "She's shy. She'll get used to it in a couple of days."
My grandma pulled her hand back, her smile never wavering, but there was a barely-there, icy glint in her eyes.
I knew that look all too well.
In my previous life, after I was brought back to the family, my grandma always looked at me like that. She was all smiles on the surface, but deep down, she kept me at arm's length.
It wasn't until later that I found out my grandma had been against my dad marrying my mom from the very beginning.
She thought my mom's background wasn't good enough for the Sherman family.
She always hoped my uncle Zack Sherman would be the one in charge, since his wife was her niece from her own family.
To put it bluntly, Zack's side was the people my grandma truly saw as her own.
*****
After moving into the Sherman residence, everything looked calm and peaceful on the surface.
Before I was a month old, I kept up the act of trusting only my mom.
As long as my mom was nearby, I stayed quiet. But the moment she left my sight, I'd start crying.
That meant my mom barely left my side, and nobody, not the nanny, not the butler, not even my grandma, ever got a chance to be alone with me.
Meanwhile, my dad's investigation was moving forward.
He had someone pull Fiona's phone records.
One number stood out. Fiona called it often, never staying on long, but with a regularity that felt deliberate.
That number was a burner phone, not registered to anyone.
But after analyzing the location data, they found that about 70% of the time, the phone was being used near the Sherman residence.
My dad sat in his study, his face grim as he spoke to his assistant in a low voice, "So, the one pulling Fiona's strings is someone inside the Sherman family."
I knew exactly who the mole was. But since I couldn't talk yet, there was no way I could tell my dad.
All I could do was wait for him to figure it out on his own, or for the mole to slip up and expose themselves.
It turned out I didn't have to wait long at all.
Two days before I hit one month, it was eleven at night. My mom was fast asleep, my dad was working in his study, and the nanny had already gone home. I was all alone in the nursery.
It was dead quiet.
Moonlight slipped through the curtains, casting faint patches of light on the ceiling.
I lay there with my eyes open, counting my breaths.
One, two, three.
Suddenly, the doorknob turned, and someone quietly opened the nursery door.
The footsteps were extra soft. Whoever it was clearly didn't want to be heard.
A dark figure crept closer to my crib.
I couldn't see her face, but I recognized the familiar scent. It was Amy, the housekeeper who had served my grandma for over twenty years.
She leaned over the crib and reached for me, trying to pick me up.
But the second her hand brushed my blanket, I let out the loudest wail of my entire life.
At that exact moment, the nursery's smart alarm system went off. A shrill alarm blared through the whole villa.
My dad's phone buzzed with a notification at the same time.
Amy's face looked ghostly pale, flickering in and out of the harsh red light from the alarm.
In less than twenty seconds, my dad rushed into the nursery, my mom right on his heels.
"Amy? What are you doing here?" My dad demanded.
Amy was trembling, her hand suspended awkwardly in the air. "I-I heard the baby crying, so I came to check on her."
My dad grabbed his phone and brought up the nursery's security footage.
The surveillance footage was crystal clear: Amy walked in through the doorway, went straight to the crib, bent down, and reached inside.
She wasn't checking on me. She looked like she was here to take me away.
"Tell me the truth," my dad said, his voice cold as ice. "Who sent you?"