“It’s nothing much, just an old tablet with some important data stored in it,” Sylvia said, not revealing too much. The secret left by Jaida was dangerous, and the fewer people who knew about it, the better.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Adriel; she just didn’t want to involve too many innocent people.
She and Franklin always believed that Jasper’s car accident wasn’t as simple as it seemed.
“I’ll have someone send it to you. No need for you to make a trip,” Adriel chuckled. “By the way, the Saunders family is having a wedding soon. Do you and Mr. Maskelyne want to attend?”
“Isla?” Sylvia was surprised. “I’ve been busy lately and haven’t received an invitation from the Saunders family.”
She looked at Franklin. “Isla is getting married? Did you get an invitation?”
Franklin shook his head. “I haven’t received one either.”
They should have received one, considering Isla was his former subordinate. It wouldn’t make sense not to invite him and Sylvia.
“Maybe it will arrive in the next couple of days,” Franklin added.
Sylvia nodded. “If we get the invitation, we’ll go together. Adriel, it’s been a while; we can catch up then.”
“Sure,” Adriel laughed heartily. “By the way, Jess, our company has hit a bottleneck recently. When do you have time to come over and help us out?”
Jess was Sylvia’s alias in the tech world. Everyone knew there was a tech genius named Jess.
Sylvia continued eating as she replied, “I’ve been busy lately and need to go to Middle Evroya. I’ll come by when I get back.”
“Alright, I’ll wait for you,” Adriel said before hanging up.
Sylvia smiled at everyone. “It seems like I’m always taking calls during meals.”
“You’re a busy person,” Mollie said with a smile. “Hurry up and eat. You can’t waste the food your uncle and Mr. Maskelyne cooked.”
About half an hour later, Sylvia received the tablet.
To outsiders, it looked like an ordinary tablet.
The cracked screen had been replaced with a new one. She took the tablet upstairs, where Franklin was studying a blueprint.
The light cast a glow on his shoulders, giving him an almost ethereal appearance.
His usually stern face was softened by the light.
The room was warm, and he wore only a thin wool sweater. Standing there studying the blueprint, he looked like a leading man straight out of a TV drama-very pleasing to the eye.
Hearing her footsteps, he turned to look at her, his handsome face dazzling.
Sylvia raised an eyebrow as she walked over and turned on the tablet.
No password could stump her.
She went straight to the home screen and began examining what was special about this tablet.
Jasper and Evie couldn’t figure it out, and Jasper nearly lost his life over it.
“What’s the blueprint?” Sylvia asked Franklin while looking at the tablet.
“It’s a blueprint of a research institute building. I don’t know where this institute is,” Franklin pointed to the main building on the blueprint. “This is the main building, and this is the residential building designed like a hotel with individual apartments.”
“And here is the warehouse.”
“And here…”
He explained each part of the blueprint to her. After finishing, he frowned slightly. “This is a very well-designed research institute with a large area. I wonder if anyone has built it.”
If it were built, it would be quite impressive.
“Someone designed such an institute, but we don’t know where it is or if it really exists,” Sylvia said. “I think it must exist somewhere in the world; we just don’t know where.”
“Yeah. What about the tablet? Did you find anything?” Franklin took the tablet from her and studied it for a while. “It doesn’t seem particularly special.”
Sylvia agreed that it didn’t seem remarkable. “If it’s so ordinary, why did Jaida guard it so closely? Why did those assassins pursue it so relentlessly?”
“Maybe… the most ordinary thing is actually the most attractive?” Franklin opened a folder containing several TXT files of web novels. “Look at these web novels. See if there’s anything special about them.”
“‘The Overbearing CEO Falls in Love with Me,’ ‘Girl, You Must Marry Me,’ ‘Can the Girl Reveal Her Identity Again?’ What kind of titles are these…” Sylvia muttered.
She hadn’t expected Jaida to have a taste for cheesy web novels about domineering CEOs.
She randomly opened one, and the first page was a summary.
“This summary is quite interesting: A scientific research expert keeps revealing her true identity. The expert is actually a rich heiress,” Sylvia read for a while before closing that book and opening another one.
“This one is about a real and fake heiress. The real heiress is imprisoned in a research institute, doing research for an evil boss until she’s rescued by a CEO.”
“This one is about a genius heiress from a big family who gets lost due to sabotage by rivals and ends up being adopted by a small family in a small country where she’s exploited…”
“I feel like these books are quite similar yet different.”
Sylvia couldn’t understand why Jaida’s taste was so singular.
Only this type?
“Wait, all these authors are Jaida! Oh my god! She was a web novelist in her spare time. Let me search for the website where she published these works.”
Sylvia opened her laptop.
She entered the book titles into the search bar and quickly found the website where Jaida published her works.
“These books have high click rates and good ratings,” Sylvia observed Jaida’s web novel stats while pondering what she was trying to convey.
Franklin suddenly had an odd thought.
“Is it possible that Jaida, being from the Hogan family, knew many secrets of big families-either from the Hogan family or others like the Sweeney family or Kaur family? And because she knew too much, she chose to flee from the Hogan family and was hunted by them? She feared that if she died, no one would know these secrets, so she wrote them into web novels?”
“Even if that’s true, we wouldn’t know which family’s secrets are which. How do we match them up? And what use is knowing these secrets?” Sylvia still didn’t quite understand.
Franklin said sharply, “Lucille is very crazy. To reach her high position, she must have used extraordinary means. For example… she might hold secrets of various big families that could lead to their downfall, forcing them to obey her.”
Sylvia immediately understood Franklin’s point and continued, “We just need to investigate the families close to Lucille and compare them carefully to understand which family’s secrets are in these novels.”
“Smart,” Franklin nodded.
Sylvia decided right away, “I’ll take some time in the next few days to read all these novels and record these details.”
Though she disliked cheesy web novels, she would endure it to find secrets.
Especially… she wanted to see if there was anything related to her mother. If there were secrets of so many families written down, maybe there were some about the Hipps Family too?
With this hope in mind, she opened the first book.
Meanwhile, Franklin began investigating research institutes worldwide to see if he could find one matching his blueprint exactly.
As night deepened, they continued working hard.
Searching for clues.
At the hospital.
Evie stayed outside the ICU door, sitting on a bench in the hallway, staring blankly at the closed ICU door.
The nurse beside her had long fallen asleep, snoring loudly.
But Evie felt no sleepiness.
Ever since she had been with Jasper, they had faced constant turmoil and never had a peaceful time together.
Thinking about this made her heart ache.
The night was extremely cold. Although there was heating in the hospital, it was still chilly.
She had wrapped herself in a thin hospital blanket but couldn’t fend off the cold.
At that moment, Jasper lying on his bed with tubes all over his body slowly opened his eyes.
It hurt!
His whole body hurt so much he could barely stand it. How could it hurt this much?
The ICU nurse heard a beep from an instrument and woke up instantly to find him awake.
“You’re awake? You were in a car accident. Dr. Sylvia saved you. You’re in ICU now and can’t eat yet; you can only be sustained with nutrients.”
“Post-surgery pain is normal. You’re lucky to be alive. Don’t worry; your wife is outside waiting for you!”
The nurse spoke rapidly before explaining some ICU precautions.
“You’d better sleep more; being awake will hurt too much.”
Jasper heard her say Evie was outside and tried to move but felt excruciating pain with even slight movement.
He groaned in pain, tears of worry forming at his eyes’ corners.
In such cold weather, how cold must Evie be outside? What if she caught a cold?
He remembered everything about his car accident now and wanted to speak but found his mouth dry and painful like sandpaper; he couldn’t utter a word.
He wanted to tell them to send his wife home but passed out from pain again, sinking back into darkness.
The nurse shook her head and left the ICU.