The Real Geneva Trust
Raphael Mirabaud
My whole life circled back to this,
to him.
Raphael sat in his father’s office at the bank Geneva Trust and tried not to fear what was happening to Flicka and his child back at his family’s house.
The Geneva Trust building was located in the downtown area near the financial district. Geneva Trust had occupied this crenelatedbuilding for over a century. When the other banks and financial services companies had moved their locations to the squat, mirrored behemoths a few miles away, Geneva Trust had stood on tradition and retained its ancestral home in the heart of the city.
The bank had upgraded its security to be on par with Fort Knox, however. Steel, alarms, cameras, and motion-detecting laser beams laced the antiquebuilding. If a nuclear blast melted the city center, the Geneva Trust building would be a radioactive survivor amidst the slag. Dieter Schwarz would never have tried to break into it. He had no taste for impossible missions.
The ground floor was rented to a florist and a coffee shop, one of which supplied the bank’s office with fresh flowers, while the other was critical to Geneva Trust’s dailyoperations. Outside, pedestrian chatter drifted through the open window on this unseasonably warm day from the wide sidewalks below, while a tram zinged down the cables on the street.
Other offices and meeting rooms comprised the top four floors of the building, plus one well-secured room for safety-deposit boxes. The windows had balconies and teeming flower boxes affixed to the black, wrought-ironrailings. The Swiss breeze ruffled the late-season blooms of pink and peach dahlias, daisies, and sage and carried a bite of wintry alpine snow from beyond the city.
Raphael’s father, Valerian Mirabaud, controlled the board of trustees and the majority of the voting shares, and his office monopolized the top floor of the building. He sat now with his hands steepled on his desk, scrutinizing Raphaelwith his cold, gray eyes.
Raphael crossed his legs and stared back at his father. He didn’t worry about blinking, but he didn’t look away.
“This time,” his father said, “things will be different.”
Raphael prepared himself to listen.
“You, Friederike, and Alina will remain in the guest suite of our house.”
Under Valerian’s control, always in danger.
“If any of you go out, you will take oursecurity with you.”
So they could guarantee Raphael’s abject loyalty by threatening Flicka and Alina, and making sure they wouldn’t escape or be rescued.
“You will be assigned the title of a Vice President of Geneva Trust.”
So he would be implicated in all business dealings.
“You will be given a chance to atone, to come back into the fold.”
Folds were for sheep.
“If you don’t, I cannot guaranteeany of your safety. The Ilyin account—”
Not the Ilyin Bratva, not the Ilyin crime syndicate, but the Ilyinaccount.The Mirabauds were financiers, after all.
“—has indicated in previous years that they would be willing to reconsider their position on you because there was no proof that you had betrayed us personally,ifthey were satisfied that your previous disappearance was due to youth andfear rather than treason, andifyou were shown to be thoroughly integrated into the present business.”
If Raphael groveled, and if he committed terrible crimes and allowed Flicka and Alina to be held hostage for his good behavior.
“Then, the Ilyin account would cease their concern with you.”
The death sentence they had made sure every Bratva member knew about.
Valerian’s gray eyes softened.“Raphael, I’m trying to save your life. If the Ilyins had found you first, you would be dead in the sun on a Las Vegas street. If we reintegrate you into the bank and the business, you’ll be safe. Flicka and Alina will be safe.”
He meant that if Raphael gave up everything he believed, everything he had become, Flicka and Alina would be safe from Valerian’s and the Ilyins’ revenge.
“They willbe safe from everything,” Valerian continued. “Even Pierre Grimaldi won’t be able to touch Flicka, if certain people make it known that he should stop that pursuit.”
