chapter1118

Lydia was supposed to leave for school first thing in the morning, but with everything going on at home, she just couldn't relax. Sitting at her desk, she stared at her computer and tried to figure out exactly when her grandfather's personality had changed. After thinking it through, she realized it must have started after his fall. He went to the hospital, and when he came back, he just wasn't the same.

She wasn't the only one who'd noticed. Her parents and even the house staff had picked up on it too. The old man's temper was different these days. Sure, when she first got back, his mood was already a little off, and he'd been super protective of Lucinda, just like now, but it still felt strange, like there was something she was missing.

At dinner tonight, she'd paid extra attention to his wrist, looking for anything that might be hiding something, but there was nothing there. Still, she couldn't rule out the idea that he might be using fake skin to cover something up higher on his arm.

With that thought, she put her hands on the keyboard and got to work. If everything changed after his hospital stay, then that's where she needed to start digging. In just a few minutes, lines of code flew across her screen as she hacked into the hospital's surveillance system and pulled up footage from her grandfather's room.

She hovered over the keyboard, watching as the timeline jumped to the night before he was discharged. Everything looked normal at first. Her grandfather was lying quietly in bed, the monitors blinking beside him. Lucinda was asleep on the cot next to him. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Lydia frowned and skipped ahead in the video. At two in the morning, the screen suddenly went black. The whole room disappeared into darkness. It wasn't just her grandfather's room, either. All the hospital cameras were down. So the entire building lost power?

She did a quick search online and found that, sure enough, there was a record of a power outage in that section of the hospital around two in the morning. The official report blamed a problem with the transformer, and the power was back after three minutes. Most people were asleep at that hour, and with the outage being so brief, only the hospital staff on duty seemed to know about it.

Three minutes later, the cameras came back online. Lydia played the footage from her grandfather's room again Her eyes widened. Mr.

Norwood was sitting up in bee

Then, with stiff, unnatural

movements, he lay back down, closed his eyes, and pretended to be asleep.

Lydia's fingers flew as she pulled up the hallway cameras. Nothing

seemed unusual there, either. She

tapped her fingers on

the desk deep

in thought. Three minutes didn't sound like much, but for someone who knew what they were doing, it was more than enough time.

Taking a deep breath, Lydia decided to widen her search. She checked the surveillance from all the entrances and exits of the building, but still nothing looked out of place. Whoever planned this had done a perfect job. If her grandfather had really been swapped out with someone else, there had to be someone on the inside helping them.

She hadn't expected the enemy's reach to go this deep. This was something she had to get to the bottom of. And she needed to stay quiet for now, so she wouldn't tip them off.

Suddenly, a name came to mind. Frank. If her grandfather hadn't hurt his ankle, he wouldn't have ended up in the hospital at all. And if he hadn't been in the hospital, then none of this would have happened.

After piecing it together, Lydia realized Frank must have had more than just personal gain in mind when he drugged her grandfather. There was someone else pulling the strings.

This wasn't just about her grandfather anymore. Lydia was starting to worry about Kylie and Cameron, too. If their enemies had already gotten this close to the Norwood family, they all had to be on high alert.