Page 267 of Roberto

I did my best to play it cool –

Not at all like a man with a gun and plastic explosives.

The receptionist looked up, saw Mei-ling, and smiled.

Mei-ling came into the office every single day to drop off the payments from De Sade. The receptionist usually buzzed her in without a word.

Mei-ling had told me the same thing would happen if we were lucky.

We weren’t lucky.

The woman was just about to let Mei-ling in when her gaze darted over to me –

And her eyes widened.

I’d been escorted out the previous day by Han and half a dozen thugs.

If she had seen that, no doubt my face would have been burned into her memory.

I got ready to pull out the gun if necessary –

But Mei-ling started speaking Cantonese.

She’d told me beforehand what she would say:

Mr. Rosolini has decided to accept the terms Mr. Lau offered him yesterday. I’m here to broker the deal.

The woman looked confused, but she wasjust a receptionist, not privy to the inner workings of the company.

Plus, she knew and trusted Mei-ling…

So she buzzed us on through.

We walked through the door at a normal pace.

“Good job,” I muttered under my breath.

“Thank Lau,” she murmured back. “He’s the one who told everybody I’m a loyal employee.”

We continued down the hall until we reached a beige office with an open door.

Mei-ling had told me it belonged to a man named Gongsun, Lau’s chief accountant.

There was an entire department on the 69thfloor devoted to accounting, but Lau kept Gongsun close because he handled all the firm’s illegal transactions.

As we’d planned, I kept behind Mei-ling, trying to stay hidden behind her.

When we walked into the room, a fat, middle-aged man with thinning hair and dark circles under his eyes was clicking away on his keyboard.

I shut the door behind us so none of the workers outside the office would see anything.

If Gongsun looked up, he only saw Mei-ling because he spoke Cantonese in a bored voice.

Mei-ling replied, then ended with a question I’d told her to ask:

Are the crypto accounts open on your computer?

Gongsun sounded confused, but he must have answered in the affirmative –

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