Page 117 of Niccolo

“He’s stolen almost all our money,” my twin said as Dario stared at him in disbelief.

Roberto had pulled me and Dario into a room away from Bianca, Alessandra, and Adriano.

Thank God he had, because I was about to have a coronary. If Adriano had heard the news, he might have gone on a murderous rampage.

It was devastating: fraudulent wire transfers had drained all our bank accounts to the tune of 28.3 million euros.

The only money remaining was in some Bitcoin accounts, and that was only worth about 5 million euros – enough to last us a few weeks.

Worse, there was no way to get the money back, at least not quickly.

Roberto believed Fausto had blackmailed or extorted bank employees into executing the transfers. Once the cash went out, it was likely funneled into offshore accounts and was completely unrecoverable. Our only alternative was to sue the banks, and that could take months.

Roberto had removed Fausto as a co-signer when Papa died. However, Fausto still knew which banks held our accounts – which was how he had targeted them so precisely.

I initially got furious, but Roberto reminded me that we’d only found out about Fausto’s treachery lastnight.

I couldn’t exactly blame him for somethingIhad failed to figure out until it was too late.

We were now in a war with our uncle –

And we were broke.

And whether you were a nation, an army, or a mafia family –

If you were broke, you were going to lose the war.

However, no matter how stunned or angry I got…

Professionally speaking, I was in awe.

Impressive, Sofia.

VERY impressive.

For a moment, I thought we were done for –

But Roberto came up with a plan.

Months before, with Dario’s blessing, Roberto had invested 50 million euros in a global gaming syndicate out of Hong Kong. International casinos, online gambling, that sort of thing.

The idea was that the revenue we earned from the investment would be enough to get us out of ‘the business’ within five years. No more political corruption, no more crime. That 50 million was supposed to be our ticket to legitimacy.

Roberto thought he had a chance of getting it back… but he insisted on going to Hong Kong to meet the head of the syndicate face to face.

Dario said no, it was too dangerous –

Which started a back-and-forth between them.

While they argued, I remembered something I’d seen last night.

Sofia had attended poker tournaments in Paris, London, and Amsterdam…

And she was registered for one in Macau…

Which was happening in the next day or two.

“How far is Hong Kong from Macau?” I asked Roberto.

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