The mere mention of Matthew's name caused an intense, violent tremor of panic to rip straight through Lyndsey's soul, her gaze darkening into an unreadably lethal register.

Her maneuvers on that evening had been executed with such absolute stealth; she had been thoroughly convinced that her digital tracks were entirely seamless. She had never anticipated that her physical form had been monitored by Chloe throughout the process. It was truly a supreme manifestation of the reality that bitter adversaries are destined to cross paths along narrow thoroughfares!

A flash of raw, murderous intent rippled through Lyndsey's eyes, yet she meticulously forced her features to project an aura of superficial composure: "I harbor absolutely no desire to engage in a debate regarding unrelated matters with your form. I shall restrict my inquiry to a solitary question: do you, or do you not, desire to obtain definitive data regarding the precise mechanism of your brother's demise?"

"Naturally." Chloe's response was absolute and unshakeable.

Lyndsey pushed herself to her feet, snatching her designer handbag from the cushion: "Then let us vacate this establishment immediately. I shall personally escort your form to a specific destination, and the moment we arrive, the truth shall stand exposed to your understanding."

Chloe's brows creased into a slight furrow as she executed a swift, clinical inspection of Lyndsey's posture: "Very well."

The duo exited the facility in tandem, entering the cabin of a crimson supercar stationed directly adjacent to the threshold.

The moment they occupied the interior spaces, Lyndsey rolled the glass windows up to seal the cabin, casting a piercing side-glance toward Chloe: "In all likelihood, your internal network has already intercepted this data: this exact vehicle constitutes the precise instrument that violently crushed your biological brother all those years ago!"

Withdrawing her gaze, Lyndsey depressed the accelerator, driving the vehicle forward into the street.

Chloe's expression darkened significantly, her form anchored rigidly against the passenger seat: "And what happens subsequent to that reality?"

The moment the question left her lips, Chloe suddenly detected an absolute, crushing weakness spreading across her limbs, an intense wave of vertigo completely hijacking her cognitive faculties. Lyndsey's facial features became violently distorted and monstrous before her failing vision, until the entire world dissolved into an absolute abyss of total darkness.

"Subsequent to that? Subsequent to that, my only source of profound regret is the reality that I failed to thoroughly eradicate your roots during my initial execution!"

Chapter 33: Inside Story and the Sea

A biting, freezing sea wind blew straight against her face, and the rhythmic, roaring sound of crashing waves surged from the shoreline.

Chloe slowly opened her eyes, and the blurry silhouettes before her gradually sharpened into focus.

She saw Lyndsey looking down at her with a mocking sneer, a deeply sinister light flashing through her eyes.

A sudden wave of absolute clarity broke through her consciousness, and she realized she was currently positioned on a desolate cliff overlooking the ocean. The horizon was locked in a dim, half-dark twilight, and the misty night had settled over the area; under normal circumstances, not a solitary soul would venture out to the coastline at this hour.

Furthermore, her frame was slumped completely helpless against a massive sea rock, her limbs completely devoid of any baseline strength.

"Awake?" Lyndsey slapped her cheek lightly, before crouching down directly by her side. "In absolute reality, I harbored no initial desire to execute your demise. However, on this occasion, your eyes bore witness to something they never should have seen, leaving me with absolutely no alternative."

Discerning exactly what Lyndsey intended to execute, Chloe manifested absolutely no trace of panic across her features, merely offering a highly derisive smile: "You have already attempted to harvest my life on more than one occasion; there is truly no necessity to articulate such hollow, hypocritical fabrications before me now."

To her surprise, Lyndsey merely let out a cold laugh, shaking her head in a clinical manner: "Your deduction is entirely erroneous. The individual who orchestrated the assassination attempt against your life a month ago was by no means myself. Although I initially harbored a burning desire for your absolute demise the exact moment I unearthed the reality that you were Eric's genuine savior, four years eventually drifted past. Once I recognized that your own memory harbored absolutely no recollection of that event, I abandoned any active plans to take your life."

After all, at that specific juncture, Eric was entirely prepared to deploy his absolute resources to fulfill her every whim, leaving her with absolutely no logical motivation to burden her hands with a lethal crime.

A profound wave of shock registered across Chloe's features: "Aside from your own faction, who else could possibly command a motivation to demand my absolute demise?"

Lyndsey cast a brief glance toward the deep, turbulent ocean roaring behind her frame, before redirecting her clinical focus onto Chloe's paralyzed form, finally parting her lips: "Seeing as your existence is tracking toward an absolute end regardless, I harbor no objections to delivering the data to your knowledge. My domestic return on this occasion was directly orchestrated by the matriarch herself. You were precisely the asset she commanded me to eliminate from this world."

It turned out that long before Lyndsey initiated her domestic return, she had already forged a covert alliance with Isabella to systematically undermine Eric's positioning. Isabella was unshakeably resolved to prevent Eric from absorbing the massive fortune left behind by the late patriarch, and had consequently deployed Lyndsey to return and fracture the structural integrity of their marriage.

Yet, beyond their tactical calculations, though Eric successfully secured the signed divorce instrument, he stubbornly refused to finalize the actual dissolution of the bond. Witnessing the mandatory three-year threshold rapidly approaching its natural conclusion, Isabella was left with absolutely no alternative but to command Lyndsey to execute a permanent elimination.

Chloe's mind traversed a rapid loop of analytical deductions, instantly decoding the underlying corporate logic: because the collective factions operated under the absolute assumption of her death a month ago, the legal inheritance frameworks tied to the completion of that three-year marriage defaulted to a state of total invalidity automatically.

As for their subsequent discovery that her physical form had survived the inferno, that was a development that materialized long after the tactical damage had already been finalized; with the timeline permanently disrupted, the compromised contract naturally retained absolutely no legal leverage.

"You stated a moment ago that during the initial phase, you harbored an intense desire for my demise. Why did your hands abstain from launching an execution against my person at that juncture?" She forced her paralyzed eye muscles to shift, training her gaze onto Lyndsey's form.

Lyndsey systematically began untying the ropes binding Chloe's feet as she casually articulated her response: "An execution was indeed launched. Regrettably, your personal luck proved to be exceptionally robust, and my own courage was entirely too fragile back then to push the execution to an extreme. I had merely consumed a quantity of alcohol on that evening, intending to violently crush your frame beneath my wheels."

A massive piece of Chloe's emotional foundation completely collapsed upon hearing the syllable, a sudden realization detonating within her consciousness as her volume spiked violently: "Whatever are you articulating?! On that evening, you..."

Lyndsey offered an unreadable, noncommittal smile: "Precisely, it was that exact evening. If blame must be assigned, it rests entirely on the reality that the physical profiles of you and your biological brother shared an entirely too flawless a resemblance. My cognitive faculties were thoroughly compromised by intoxication on that night, and the moment my eyes monitored your brother sprinting out from the perimeter of your workplace, my vision committed a total error of identification. Mistaking his silhouette for your own frame, I depressed the accelerator and crushed him with absolute violence."

Her delivery carried a distinct trace of light, effortless amusement, as though the violent termination of a human life were an ordinary occurrence equivalent to running over a stray street animal.

Confronted with this raw horror, Chloe found it entirely impossible to maintain her veneer of superficial detachment. Her eyes instantaneously flushed a violent crimson, a burning desire to physically beat the woman before her to death hijacking her consciousness, yet her paralyzed frame remained entirely incapable of mobilizing a single shred of physical force.

Her teeth ground together with such absolute force they nearly fractured, her entire frame trembling with a volcanic surge of agonized fury: "Which means... the occurrence was entirely intentional from the very inception! Your objective was to assassinate my person, yet your actions violently slaughtered my innocent brother?!"

Lyndsey systematically unraveled the restraints anchoring Chloe's hands, her features projecting a subtle wave of profound arrogance: "Precisely. At this current juncture, I harbor absolutely no trepidation regarding delivering the unfiltered data to your ears. That man named Matthew Vance you mentioned previously—he was cast down into the abyss from this exact location."

"Or rather, I should articulate the reality that his physical form was personally hurled into the void by my own hands. In a handful of minutes, your existence shall mirror his trajectory perfectly—cast into the deep waters without a single shred of physical strength to mount a struggle, left to drown alive. The authorities and the public will universally classify your demise as a tragic suicide, or perhaps a common accident."