“Enough!” This time, John couldn't sit still. He slammed the coffee table and stood up, shouting at Zuo Yan, "I don't need to sit here and listen to this!"

“No… you have to listen.”

To John's shock, the person who said that was Dauster.

“Don’t look at me like that, John.” Dauster held his glass and said in a drunken tone, “Now that things have come to this… I might as well be frank…” He pointed at Zuo Yan. “Right now, that kid is in charge here. He can go wherever he wants, do whatever he wants, and arrest whoever he wants.”

"What?" John glared at Dauster, his eyes seeming to say, "I've given you so many benefits, and now you're telling me this when I need you?"

“What’s so surprising?” Feng Bujue said leisurely from the side, “He’s blatantly holding important evidence related to the case without gloves, and chatting with you here… isn’t that enough to explain the problem?”

He was right. Zuo Yan was doing things that even Dauster couldn't do, things that were obviously against the rules, which meant that… at this scene, there was nothing Zuo Yan couldn't do.

In fact, Feng Bujue knew after the phone call between the Minister of Internal Affairs and Dauster that… from this moment on, this case was entirely Zuo Yan's responsibility. It didn't matter if Dauster went home from work right away; the only reason this Chief was still on the scene was because… the higher-ups wanted you to stay on the scene to keep up appearances, after all, there were still many ordinary people watching outside.

"You… you guys…" John glanced at the other four people in the room, each with different expressions. He seemed to want to say something, but in the end, he didn't say it.

He reluctantly suppressed his anger again and sat down.

“Mr. Zuo Yan.” After sitting down again and adjusting his breathing, John spoke again, “I hope you have enough ability… and courage to be responsible for what you are about to say.”

“You don’t need to worry about that, Herbert… oh no…” Zuo Yan replied, “I think I should just call you John. Now that we’ve said everything, whether you should be called ‘Herbert’ is a matter for discussion.”

Clearly, Zuo Yan wasn't buying into John's "demonstration" either; even if he didn't have the ability and courage to feed people shit like Feng Bujue, he wouldn't be intimidated by this level of threat.

“Hmm… I keep getting interrupted, it’s making me a little confused.” After a few seconds, Zuo Yan said again, “That’s right, let’s just rewind the topic a little…”

He said these two sentences to buy time, because it wasn't him who was interrupted, but Victor. Zuo Yan needed to give the Meow Detective some time to reorganize his narrative.

“Let’s start with Miller…” Then, Zuo Yan continued unhurriedly, “Pat Miller is a greedy person. This greed has gradually turned him from a promising young man into a criminal with a bad record.

“Years ago, when Miller was still working at ‘John Herbert Investment Co., Ltd.’, he was highly valued by John for his outstanding work ability and performance, and he became John’s right-hand man at a young age.

“In those two years, he and John did a lot of things that were on the edge of the law, and even crossed the line… It was these deals that made John a young and promising entrepreneur in the eyes of everyone.

“Of course, both of them were shrewd, and neither would leave any handle to each other. The two made good use of each other and got what they needed.

“But good times don’t last, Miller’s greed eventually led him to break away from John’s control…

“In the second year of becoming John’s assistant, Miller secretly registered a shell company in his own name. He embezzled funds from John’s company into his own company account to do some short-term, high-risk investment projects to seek personal gain.

“At first, he succeeded a few times. While making money, he could also replenish the funds without anyone knowing. So… his courage grew bigger and bigger.

“As the saying goes, if you walk by the river often, you’re bound to get your shoes wet… Finally, Miller failed and lost a lot of money. Although he used John’s trust in him to cover up his mistakes, this was just a stopgap measure… Before long, John’s company experienced a break in the capital chain.

“Of course, at this time, John didn’t realize that the root cause of the matter was Miller. I guess he didn’t even think about the ‘insider’, so… he once again made Miller his ‘crime partner’ and implemented the conspiracy to seize the old Herbert’s family property.

“What happened after that… I’ve already talked about it before.

“By the time the incident came to light, it was after the final judgment of the inheritance dispute case. At that time… John already had the spare capacity to investigate some things; in the end… the paper couldn’t contain the fire after all. Miller’s embezzlement was exposed, and he was logically kicked out of the house by John.

“Although Miller knew a lot about John’s crimes, as I said just now… neither of them were the kind of people who would leave ‘evidence’. Moreover… Miller himself was John’s accomplice in many incidents. So, even if Miller wanted to blackmail John after being kicked out, he couldn’t find any way.

“In the years that followed… Miller obviously didn’t live well, and his life became more and more downcast. It’s not that he didn’t have the ability to get rich, it’s just that… he no longer had the ambition to get rich through the ‘right path’.

“To use an analogy, he’s like a gambler who’s lost his fortune. It’s almost impossible for this kind of person to get rich by working anymore; because… when a person has become accustomed to obtaining or losing huge amounts of property through gambling, their concept of money becomes distorted. At this time, the small amount of money earned through labor… can no longer give him any ‘real feeling’.

“By the same token… it’s difficult for someone who has easily earned a large amount of money through illegal means to earn the same amount of money in a legal way, and it is difficult to generate motivation psychologically.

“People are like this… It’s okay if they haven’t walked the evil path, but once they do, after experiencing that kind of easy and absurd wealth and vanity, it’s difficult to get them to walk the right path again…

“In a few years, Miller spent all his savings and went further and further down the path of crime… Then, he was inevitably caught.

“With his first criminal record, he had 90% fewer opportunities to find a good job. Besides, even a job that seemed decent to others couldn’t satisfy his greed…

“So, he had a second, third… and nth criminal record; at first, they were all financial fraud cases, but later they became general, not-so-clever scams, and later even petty theft and other violent crimes…”