Mafia Kings: Roberto: Chapter 6

“HOW IS THIS EVEN FUCKING POSSIBLE?!” Niccolo roared.

Niccolo, Dario, and I were in a windowless storage room in the interior of the house. Adriano and the women were still in the safe room as we awaited Lars’s return.

My twin was being his usual theatrical self.

Dario’s reaction was worse: he just stared at me in silent disbelief.

“I called one of the banks,” I said calmly, though I felt anything but. “They informed me that once the wire transfer went through, there was no getting the money bank.

“When I said I hadn’t authorized the transfer, they checked the records and said the manager who sent the transfer checked off a box saying I did authorize it. When I demanded to speak to the manager, they found out he had left the branch a few minutes after the transaction.

“My theory is that Fausto bribed, threatened, or blackmailed people at every single bank to do the wire transfers.”

“How is that even possible?” Dario asked. “Don’t they need your permission?”

“Embezzlement happens all the time without anyone’s permission.”

“Why would they do it so blatantly?!” Niccolo shouted. “They’ll go to jail for it – if WE don’t get our hands on them FIRST!”

“I doubt that mattered to them if Fausto’s men were pointing guns at their children’s heads.”

Niccolo grumbled but didn’t say anything.

“We should get the cops on our payrolls involved,” Dario said. “We can get the money back that way.”

“Probably not,” I said grimly. “All the banks are international conglomerates, and the police on our payrolls have no jurisdiction outside Italy. Plus, I can guarantee that the money has already been routed through shell companies and transferred someplace like the Cayman Islands. It’s gone.”

“Then how do we get it back?”

“The banks would have to reimburse us – but they already suspect we’re Cosa Nostra. If they don’t now, they will once they do some digging.

“Once they ask their employees and find out they were threatened, the banks won’t cooperate. That would set a precedent that any gangster could do what Fausto just did and leave the bank on the hook for millions. In fact, it could even be turned into a racket: a gangster could steal from himself and then demand reimbursement.

“No – the banks will tell us it has to go through their insurance companies, and the insurance companies will balk for the same reasons I just told you. We’ll have to pursue legal action, which will take months in court.”

I left the obvious point unspoken:

We didn’t have months.

Not with the onslaught Fausto was unleashing.

“So threaten the heads of the banks!” Niccolo snarled. “Make them pay us back!”

“It doesn’t work like that. You’re talking about multiple levels of management that would need to sign off – CEOs, CFOs, and boards of directors. If we threaten them with violence, they could go to the police – police not on our payroll – and we could wind up in the same sort of situation that sent Dario to jail.”

Dario clenched his jaw in frustration. He’d taken the fall for our entire family when one of our subordinates had been busted in a bribery sting.

“How did Fausto know where all our accounts were?!” Niccolo demanded.

“He used to be a co-signer on them.”

Niccolo stared at me in horror. “You didn’t keep him on as – ”

“No, of course not!” I snapped. “I removed him from the accounts when we split our territory in two – but that’s how he knew which banks to target.”

“You should have switched to new banks!” Niccolo snarled.

“I only found out he was trying to destroy us last night!” I yelled.

“…alright… that’s true,” Niccolo grumbled. “But still – ”

Dario raised a hand. Niccolo immediately shut up.

“How much do we have left?” Dario asked me.

“Five million euros worth of Bitcoin, and maybe another hundred thousand euros spread across a dozen accounts.”

“How long will five million last us?”

“Barely a month,” I replied.

Niccolo and Dario both stared at me in shock.

“Payroll for our servants is 150,000 a month,” I explained, “plus another 800,000 for our foot soldiers. Bribes to cover the police in Florence and Tuscany are a million, and the judges and politicians are 1.5 million. Then you have the dock workers we employ, our lawyers – ”

“Alright, we get the fucking picture,” Niccolo snarled.

“What do you propose we do?” Dario asked me.

Niccolo interrupted. “We visit each of those fucking bankers and ‘persuade’ them to give us our money back!”

“I already told you why that won’t work,” I said.

“I don’t care!” Niccolo snapped.

“You sound like Adriano,” Dario rebuked him.

“Don’t insult me like that,” Niccolo replied with dark humor.

Dario turned to me. “What do you propose?”

“Well… I can think of one way to get 50 million euros.”

“That’s fantastic!” Niccolo said, suddenly overjoyed.

“How?” Dario asked me. “A loan?”

“No. I’d have to ask Hong Kong for our money back.”

I was referring to the massive investment we’d made two months ago when we’d joined an online gambling syndicate run out of Hong Kong.

The investment was supposed to be our ticket to legitimacy – a source of revenue that was 100% legal. If things worked out as projected, we could leave behind organized crime in two years and live on the proceeds from our investment.

Dario realized the implications immediately.

“That was supposed to be our way out,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

“We don’t have a choice!” Niccolo said. “We’re at war with Fausto. Fuck two years from now – without money, we won’t last two months!”

Dario sighed wearily. “Alright… call Hong Kong and get the funds back.”

“It’s not quite that simple.”

Dario and Niccolo both looked at me like What the fuck are you talking about?

“There’s a two-year period during which no funds can be withdrawn,” I explained.

Their confused expressions turned to stares of shock.

“What the fuck?!” Niccolo snarled.

“It’s standard in investments of this sort. If you let people withdraw any time they want, they get spooked when the market goes down, and everyone wants to get their money back.”

“Why didn’t you fucking mention this before?” Niccolo barked.

“I did! I told you there was a two-year window where the funds were committed and we wouldn’t see any returns – ”

“You made it sound like we wouldn’t see any PROFITS for two years – not that they’d lock it inside a vault and throw away the fucking key!”

“That’s what ‘committed’ means,” I snapped.

“Well MAYBE you should have explained it in everyday language, Mr. Fucking Finance Nerd – ”

“ENOUGH!” Dario shouted.

Both Niccolo and I fell silent.

Dario turned to me in exasperation. “If we can’t touch the funds for two years, why did you even bring it up in the first place?”

“I think I can convince them to make an exception,” I said.

“How?”

“We made the transfer in Bitcoin. Since we did that, Bitcoin has gone up over 50% in value. If I let them keep the 50% overage, maybe they’ll return the initial investment.”

“If you LET them keep the 50% overage,” Niccolo said with a nasty laugh. “That’s funny.”

“What if they say ‘no’?” Dario asked.

“Then I negotiate. I might not be able to bring back the full 50 million, but perhaps I can get 40.”

“Or 30… or 20…or, who knows, maybe even ten,” Niccolo sneered.

I glared at him. “There’s one other reason they might be amenable.”

“And what’s that?”

“Because they do business with the triads and the Yakuza. So they understand what happens when their customers go to war.”

The Syndicate’s operations were completely legal…

But not all of its investors were.

After all, we were Cosa Nostra…

And ‘triad’ was the term for various organized crime groups in China.

The Yakuza were the same, just in Japan.

A prosecutor would say that the Syndicate was a money laundering front. They would technically be right – although plenty of the Syndicate’s investors were 100% legitimate. Only a small number of investors did business outside the law.

Dario glowered at me. “Call them up and see what terms they’ll agree to.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. If I call, they’ll turn me down immediately. I want to go there in person.”

Dario stared at me. “You want to go to Hong Kong in person – while Fausto is trying to kill us, and we’re nearly out of money?”

“Yes.”

“Why?!”

“Because I went there in person to sign the documents and transfer the funds. When I did, I met several of the principal investors and the CEO, Mr. Lau.”

The name ‘Lau’ rhymed with the English word ‘how.’

“I think I can be far more persuasive in person,” I continued. “And if I’m standing there in front of them, they can’t simply hang up on me.”

Dario shook his head. “No – the danger’s too great – ”

“How far is Hong Kong from Macau?” Niccolo interrupted.

I glanced at him in surprise. Macau was a ‘special administrative region’ in China, a city that operated under the same ‘One Country, Two Systems’ policy as Hong Kong. Meaning that the city’s government answered to Beijing, but was far more Western – and capitalist – in how it operated.

Macau was like an Asian Las Vegas, filled with dozens of casinos. It even had its own currency, separate from mainland China. The same was true of Hong Kong.

“They’re practically right next to each other, just across the bay,” I said. “Why?”

Niccolo looked thoughtful. “Give me and Dario a minute alone, will you?”

Dario looked just as surprised as I felt.

“Whatever you’re going to say, why can’t you say it in front of me?” I asked.

“Just give us a minute, alright?” Niccolo snapped impatiently.

“Fine,” I said grumpily, and stepped out into the hallway.

Three minutes later, the door opened and Niccolo ushered me back inside.

“Alright,” Dario told me, “I’m giving you permission to go to Hong Kong to negotiate with the Syndicate in person. I would prefer you come back with 50 million, but I authorize you to accept as little as 20 million.”

“I’ll come back with at least 40,” I promised.

“We still need to deal with the bankers who fucked us over,” Niccolo said.

“Handle it when you get back,” Dario replied –

To Niccolo.

Not me.

I frowned. “Wait – what do you mean, when Niccolo gets back?”

“He’s going with you,” Dario said.

I stared at him in shock. “What?!”

“I’m going with you,” Niccolo reiterated.

I got angry. “Why?! Don’t you trust me?!”

“Of course we do,” Dario replied soothingly. “You’ll handle the finances all by yourself. Niccolo has other business to attend to.”

“What other business?!”

Dario gave me a steely-eyed look. “Roberto… your don has spoken.”

That was a warning to let me know I was overstepping my bounds.

“…yes, Don Rosolini,” I said quietly.

“Good. You’ll leave as soon as Niccolo makes the arrangements. Once you speak to the Syndicate in Hong Kong, inform me of their answer.”

“Of course.”

Dario patted my shoulder reassuringly, then stepped out into the hall. Two foot soldiers immediately escorted him back to the safe room.

I stared at Niccolo. “What the hell was that all about?!”

My twin brushed me off as he stepped out into the hallway. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But – ”

“You just concentrate on getting us enough money to survive a war,” he said as he pulled out his cell phone and walked away.