“You take away her power. How do the royals have any power? Their money.” The thought had occurred to me the other day when we’d been talking to Donatello on the phone. Moneywaspower. “Take away the money, and the power disappears.”
“How the hell do we do that?” Maddy asked.
“Luis is working on that.”
The next day,Luis and I were at his house on the computer. He’d used his research knowledge from being a private investigator to dig into the royals’ finances. It was a tangled web. He’d worked for nearly twelve straight hours, had called every financial or banking contact he had, and had even texted Donatello, but even he didn’t know everything the royals, or their public persona, The Monroe Group, had their fingers in.
Luis leaned back and rubbed his eyes, then pointed at his screen. “Bro, this is intense. I’ve never researched the business dealings of a company this old. Especially not one trying to be this secretive.”
I sighed in frustration. We needed something. Some place to start. “What do we have? Anything at all?”
Luis clicked through his computer. “Looks like most of the original business stuff has been to time, but most big families back then did a lot of shipping and trading. If I had to guess, they traded goods like tea, spices, and precious metals. Once the threads start to pick up in the early eighteen hundreds, it gets easier. You won’t be surprised by this, but Viola’s ancestors werebiginto the slave trade. It seems that they made a huge amount of money back from the late-eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. They were smart, though. They must have seen the tides shifting and diversified right before the big abolitionist movement pushed through the United States. They went into the typical rich guy bullshit for the times. Newspapers, railroads, and shipping. Stuff like that.”
“What about now, though?” I asked.
“Things get interesting around the time of the First World War. A division of their holdings began to pump tons of money into military sciences. After the Second World War, they liquified all their assets and then reinvested in three main areas. Medical science and philanthropy.”
I stared at him. “You said three. That’s only two.”
Luis gave me a sly grin. “That third one was very well hidden. The third area they pumped money into was private for-profit armed services. Basically mercenaries. If you thought Blackwater was secretive, they have nothing on these guys. Their private military was used in everything in the second half of the last century, from the Vietnam War to the war on drugs. They are good, and they command a high price. Those three areas, along with the stocks and bonds they’ve accumulated over the decades, have increased their fortune exponentially. Even their philanthropic efforts nets them money. People donate a shit ton to them, but they only use a fraction of that for actual good. The rest? Right in the pocket.”
“Jesus Christ, are you serious?” The sheer size of their operation was astounding. It made me feel like a little fish in a very small pond with a hungry great white shark circling.
“I am. They’ve got money everywhere. Offshore accounts, Swiss banks, Chinese holding companies., I even found out they own an entire banking chain in South Africa, and that’s probably only so they can launder their dirty money from their militaryoperations. This is not going to be easy. They’ve got over a dozen different income streams. Cutting them all off is gonna be a hell of a job.”
I sat for a moment, thinking. We wouldn’t be able to do this on our own. We needed help. Lots of it. “I’ll call the alphas again and tell them you’ll be in contact. You need to get their guys to help out. Anyone they have. Hackers, bankers, programmers, whatever. Get them on this. Once they understand what it could mean if we’re successful, I bet they’ll be like dogs on a bone.”
Luis sucked at his teeth, looking a little worried. “The help will be welcome, but is it enough?”
It was all I had, and we had to work with it. There was no way to know if it would be successful, but we couldn’t roll over and die. The alternative was to run and hide on Donatello’s island or commit murder. Killing Viola would be like cutting off the head of the snake. The way Maddy had been feeling lately, I was worried she’d be the first one to try to go for Viola. Maddy’s hatred towards her was palpable, but I wanted to do everything in my power to get this over with before it reached that point. Taking a life, even one of a hated enemy, was a deep, dark hole to go down. I didn’t want that for Maddy, not unless there were no other options.
90
MADDY
Even though Luis’s friend Donatello had been right about the deadline getting pushed back, it wasn’t any comfort. Even if some people were pushing back against the royals and slowing their war on shifters, Viola wouldn’t allow that. While we were scrambling to find a way to take her down, she was off somewhere planning another big show. A singular event that would finally tip the scales in her favor. It’s what I’d do, and it had to be what she was doing. Whatever she was cooking up would be the final nail in the coffin—the last push the world needed to shun us completely and make us into public enemies.
I was sitting on the couch, staring at the endless bad news rolling by on TV, thinking about all the ways Viola could ruin our lives when Nico walked in. He looked tired. I turned the TV off and went to him. “How did it go with Luis?”
Nico rubbed a hand across his face in irritation. “Those assholes are gonna be more difficult than I thought. They’ve got money all over the world in multiple forms. One person can’t cut it all off.”
“What’s the plan?”
“We called the other Florida alphas. Their computer guys are gonna work with Luis and see what they can do. We might not be able to fully cut off the funding, but we can probably do enough damage to slow them down.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“Maybe.” Nico looked depressed. I think he’d really thought it would be an easier plan. After researching it, it seemed like it might be equally as hard as going against them toe-to-toe.
“Can I do anything for you?” I asked, feeling a little helpless.
He shook his head. “Honestly, I’m exhausted. I’m gonna grab a snack and then take a nap. Is that cool with you?”
I nodded and smiled. “Want me to make you something?”
“Nah, I’ll grab an apple or something. Don’t worry about me.”
That was difficult. I worried about everyone I cared for. Each of them was in danger. It was like a sniper scope was focused on our little community here, and any day now, someone might pull the trigger and end everything.
