“I want you to know how proud I am of you.”
“For screwing up so many times?”
“For never giving up.”
Sincerity. Was anything more painful to a Castilian? “Please.”
Another tug to remind him who was boss. “I know things haven’t gone as smoothly as we would have liked since we left Geneva.”
“Smoothly? No, they have not gone smoothly.”
“I want you to know, it’s all right,” said Delphine. “I never expected you to be perfect. What I love about you…maybe the reason I married you…is because you never give up. Never. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you not get back on your feet. It’s who you are. These past years, sure we’ve made a few mistakes.”
“I’ve made a few—”
“We’ve made a few. But look at what you’ve built here. It’s magnificent. None of that matters anymore. Right now, right here, I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long, long while.” She put his hands to her lips. “Thank you for not giving up.”
Rafa took his wife in his arms and held her to him. After a moment, he put his mouth to her ear and whispered, “Sweetheart, may I ask you something?”
“Of course, my darling,” she said, head to his chest. “Anything.”
“How long until they get here?”
The Villa Delphine was indeed magnificent. Built on the last open plot of land atop the hill separating the island’s two beaches, the hotel was a masterpiece of whitewashed concrete and limestone offering thirty guest suites, a dining room overseen by a Michelin-starred chef, a spa, two swimming pools, and the island’s only tennis court.
It was Rafa’s first foray as a hotelier, but not as an entrepreneur. Since fleeing Europe, he had opened a Mexican restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, a chain of tanning salons in Singapore, and a spin studio in Jakarta. Each had launched amid a flurry of great expectation and high hopes only to quickly and spectacularly crash. If his current maxim was “By the book,” formerly it was “Cut every corner” and “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” Time, experience, and the demise of his personal finances had dictated a change in ethos. The Villa Delphine was Rafael de Bourbon’s last stand.
And so it was that Rafa did not hurry straight to the shower as he’d told his wife but stopped first in his private study. There, after locking the door, he sat at his desk and logged on to his email. It was not his regular email, but a secret address used for the most sensitive matters accessed through an encrypted website on the dark web.
A single message from “PM” waited in the inbox.Pfor Paul.Mfor Malloy.
Rafa’s finger hovered above the trackpad.
Once, in better times, he had worked with Paul Malloy in the Swiss city of Geneva. Their business had been finance—more specifically, capital: the raising thereof. In those days, they’d communicated via shared company servers using standard email addresses. No longer. The closest of friends had become what might politely be called “estranged colleagues.” Depending on the contents of the message blinking on Rafa’s laptop the nature of their relationship would change once again. For better. Or worse.
Rafa opened the message.
Go to hell.
Three words. Impossible to misunderstand.
Rafa felt his guts twist. It was not the answer he’d wanted. Regardless, he must now embark upon a threatened course of action. It was not a matter of a wounded ego. It was a question of justice. Of right and wrong. Of keeping one’s word and honoring one’s promises. As in all business affairs, it dealt with money. A severance payment of five million Swiss francs, already several years late.
For worse, then.
He double-clicked on an icon titledPETROSAUD. A list of spreadsheets appeared. They had names like: “Emirates Lease 7.14,” “Indo Drill 1.15,” “Saud Refine 3.16.” And others named: “Commissions.”
He’d always been good with other people’s money: asking for it, investing it, spending it, losing it. But this…this in front of him was different. A crime. Not a single instance, but many. Over and over again. With malice aforethought. Rafa had objected. He was many things, but not a criminal.
An offer had been made. Join them. Not just Malloy, but all the big boys at the company, PetroSaud SA. It was easy money, Malloy had argued, over white wine and Dover sole at the Lion d’Or. Victimless. No one would find out. Billions for the picking.
Rafa knew better. There were always victims.
He hadn’t participated, but to his lasting shame, he hadn’t done anything to stop it. He was making too much money working the clean side of the business. He was in love. He planned on getting married. This was his chance to build up a stake. After a while, those justifications had worn thin. Silence amounted to complicity, sure enough. He had resigned, asking only for the bonus owed him. Five million Swiss francs.
Before him on the screen was a compendious record of Malloy’s acts: names, dates, banks, accounts, monies taken in, monies invested…or not. Commissions paid. And more commissions. The sums were staggering. Millions. Tens of millions. Hundreds of millions. It was all there in its fantastically illegal glory.
A flash of blue caught his eye. A spray of red. Rafa looked out the window to see a procession of automobiles enter the hotel forecourt and stop in front of the fountain. He’d been expecting one inspector, maybe two. Not the entire Thai Hotel Association.
