The round chamber felt like a twisted gallery of grandeur, its white walls plastered with gauche gilded appliqué ornaments that mocked the gravity of the scene... it echoed secrets and sins. A fat man wearing a red necktie was slumped in a leather chair, the weight of his sins dragging him down, while thick, dark blood conspired to tell a story of betrayal. The oak desk bore witness to chaos—blood-stained documents lay scattered like fallen soldiers, and crimson streaks marred the once-pristine walls and flanking American flags, whispering of multiple violent strikes from the letter opener that stood defiantly plunged in his back.

It was a brutal punctuation mark on a life riddled with greed. Natalia, his Romanian bride, lingered in the doorway, unfazed by the horror before her. Calmly, she dialed my number, her accented voice as steady as the sharp blade that had delivered this grim fate. “Sam Di-a-mond, I need you. Geet over here right a-vay,” she pronounced, her accent wrapping each syllable in a thick, melodic lilt... struggling to form the syllables with her botox infused lips. The words cut through the silence with unsettling ease.

In that moment, beneath the gilded veneer, the air thickened with the scent of betrayal, body odor, urine, and spray-tan.... it create foul stench hinting that the real danger was still out there, lurking in the shadows of a world where $870 million had vanished into the ether, leaving nothing but blood and unanswered questions behind.