I slipped into the driver's seat but didn't fire the engine right away. I leaned back wearily against the seat, picking unconsciously at the steering wheel. Five million dollars sat quietly in my account, and the ashen, defeated faces of the three White family members still lingered vividly before my eyes. It was a total, unqualified victory. Yet my heart felt like it had been hollowed out-empty and achingly cold, as if a sharp wind was blowing straight through the gap. Satisfaction? It was there, but as thin and tasteless as watered-down wine. What lingered more prominently was a vague, overwhelming sense of emptiness. It was like completing a grueling, energy-draining journey, only to find that the destination was not the oasis I had anticipated. In the original plot, after Ethan Knight fully and completely sided with Winnie Carter, Chloe White had drugged me, stripped me naked without mercy, and stuffed me into Dylan Armstrong's suite with
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