Page 9 of Roberto

“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 youLETthem 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 eventen,” 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 wereCosa 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 Kongin person –while Fausto is trying to kill us,andwe’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.

---