Page 7 of Roberto

“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 – ifWEdon’t get our hands on themFIRST!”

“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’reCosa 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 gangstercould 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’thavemonths.

Not with the onslaught Fausto was unleashing.

“So threaten the heads of the banks!” Niccolo snarled.“Makethem 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 – policenot 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’tkeep 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 uslast 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 – ”

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