Part 3Reborn as a Baby, I Rewrote the Switching Script

The day we were discharged, my father brought four bodyguards to pick us up. Two vans, a seamless transition. During the twenty-minute drive from the hospital to the Summer mansion, my mother held me without letting go for a second.

My father sat in the front passenger seat, making one call after another.

“Upgrade the entire home security system. I want zero blind spots.”

“Install a smart alarm in the nursery. Real-time notifications to my phone anytime someone enters or leaves.”

“Yes, re-screen all the nannies. Full background checks, including relatives three generations back.”

I nestled in my mother’s arms, listening to his commands, feeling a deep sense of security.

Last time, I was stolen because the Summers, despite their wealth, were too complacent about security. The idea of a baby swap was something they had never even considered.

This time was different. My father was already in battle mode.

Arriving at the Summer mansion, I entered this home as its rightful heir for the first time. Last time, I was twenty when I first walked through these doors. I was wearing a cheap dress, clutching a crumpled DNA test, shaking from head to toe. The security guard at the gate stopped me three times. “Who are you looking for? You don’t belong here.”

Now, the butler respectfully opened the car door. The nanny rolled out a red carpet. My grandfather stood at the entrance, his face a web of smiling wrinkles.

“My granddaughter is home! Let Grandpa have a look!”

He reached out to hold me. As usual, I scrunched up my face. But this time, I managed not to cry. After all, my grandfather had been very good to me last time. After I was reunited with the family, he was the first one who wanted to give me a share of his inheritance.

I just turned my head slightly and buried my face in my mother’s neck.

My grandfather wasn’t offended at all. He just chuckled. “This little girl is just like her mother. Once she’s set on someone, you can’t pull her away. Good! She’s got character!”

My grandmother stood behind him. She was wearing a dark red traditional dress, a polite smile on her face. But I noticed the way she looked at me was completely different from the way she looked at my grandfather.

When she looked at him, her eyes were filled with attentiveness and deference.

When she looked at me, there was only scrutiny.

“Oh, she’s such a lovely baby. Just like her mother,” she said, reaching out to touch my cheek.

I started crying without hesitation. A soft, pitiful whimper.

Her hand froze.

My mother quickly soothed me. “It’s okay, sweetheart, don’t be scared. It’s just Grandma.”

My grandfather smoothed things over. “Haha, she’s just shy. She’ll get used to us in a couple of days.”

My grandmother withdrew her hand, her smile unchanged, but a flicker of coldness crossed her eyes.

That expression. I knew it so well.

Last time, after I came back to the family, my grandmother had looked at me with that same expression. Polite, but with a deep-seated distance.

I later learned that she had been against my father marrying my mother from the start. She thought my mother’s background wasn’t good enough for the Summer family. She had always wanted my uncle, Robert Summer, and his family to take over. Because my uncle’s wife was her niece.

In other words, my uncle’s family were her people.

The days after moving into the Summer mansion were quiet on the surface. For the first month, I maintained my “only-mommy” persona. Wherever my mother went, I was quiet. The moment she was out of my sight, I’d start to cry. This meant she barely left my side, and it also meant no one—not the nannies, not the butler, not even my grandmother—had a chance to be alone with me.

My father’s investigation was also moving forward. He had someone pull Brenda Wallace’s phone records. There was one number she contacted frequently. The calls were short but regular. It was an unregistered burner phone. But through cell tower triangulation, they found that 70% of the time, the phone was used near the Summer mansion.

My father’s face was grim as he spoke to his assistant in the study, his voice low. “So the person who hired Brenda is inside the Summer family.”

An inside job. I already knew.

But I couldn’t speak yet. I couldn’t tell my father who it was. All I could do was wait. Wait for him to find out himself. Or wait for the mole to slip up.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long.

Two days before my one-month celebration, at eleven at night.

My mother was fast asleep, and my father was in his study working. The nanny was off duty. I was alone in the nursery. It was quiet. Moonlight filtered through the curtains, casting pale patches of light on the ceiling.

I lay with my eyes open, counting my breaths. One, two, three.

Click.

The sound of the doorknob turning.

Someone pushed the nursery door open. The footsteps were light, deliberately so.

A dark figure approached my crib. I couldn’t see her face, but I recognized the scent. It was Mrs. Davis, my grandmother’s housekeeper of over twenty years.

She bent down and reached into the crib to pick me up.

The moment her hand touched my blanket…

“WAAAAAHHHHH!”

I let out the loudest cry of my life.

At the same second, the nursery’s smart alarm system was triggered. A piercing siren blared through the entire mansion. A notification popped up on my father’s phone.

Mrs. Davis’s face, flickering in the red alarm light, was deathly pale.

Less than twenty seconds later, my father burst into the room, my mother right behind him.

“Mrs. Davis? What are you doing?!”

She was trembling, her hand still frozen in mid-air. “I… I heard the baby crying, so I came to check…”

My father pulled out his phone and played back the nursery’s security footage. The video was clear: Mrs. Davis entering the room, walking straight to the crib, bending down, and reaching in.

It didn’t look like she was just checking. It looked like she was taking.

“The truth,” my father’s voice was as sharp as a knife. “Who sent you?”