Chapter 26 The fire celebrating the opening did not kill, it was arson.

Since working for Lilith, Heinrich has committed numerous murders, and now it's his turn to set fires.

A raging fire ignited the dark night sky, quickly engulfing the spice warehouses on the docks, the billowing smoke carrying the smoky aroma of roasted pepper and cloves. After confirming the fire's spread, Heinrich swiftly evacuated the scene according to a pre-planned route. Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, Lilith sat comfortably on her balcony, watching the fire from across the river.

“Cecilia, you know what? A lot of people say that Venice looks like a dolphin when viewed from above. That’s utter nonsense. Look at the map! There’s no such thing as a fat dolphin. It’s clearly a flounder, a plump flounder.” Lilith sniffed the air with satisfaction. “And now it’s become a roasted flounder.”

Even Cecilia, who had served Lilith for two years, was at a loss for words when she heard Lilith utter such a heinous statement. Fortunately, the thick smoke would soon wake the Venetians from their slumber to put out the fire, and the water flowing in the lagoon was readily available, preventing the fire from spreading too far and causing casualties. However, it would still achieve Lilith's goal—to destroy Venice's largest spice warehouse and drive up the price of spices.

A week ago, Lilith's bank successfully opened. The new bank directly used the original office space of the acquired bank. Similar to Lilith's residence, it is also a three-story building. The first floor has a counter for receiving guests and conducting business. The square table is covered with a green tablecloth. This small table, which connects people with people, people with money, and money with money, is the original meaning of the Italian word "banca" (bank).

The second floor has office space and bedrooms for bank staff, while the third floor houses a high-class meeting room and vault. Although the furnishings are somewhat old, the tables and chairs are readily available, and all that's left is for the workers to hang up a new sign on the opening day so they can start operating.

Banca di LCSchmidel (LC Schmidel Bank) is Lilith's newly customized signboard and the new name she has given to the bank.

The abbreviations L and C refer to Lilith's given name and her mother's surname, Knarro, respectively, while Schmidl is her husband's surname. Using these as the name of the bank emphasizes the bank owner's status as a "married woman" while also distancing herself from the Knarro family. This gives Lilith more freedom, and the family can extract profits without bearing any responsibility for the bank's debts and losses.

Sophia, Elena, and several of Lilith's good friends from the convent school came to congratulate her on the bank's opening. Apart from a few staff members of the money exchange guild and bankers who had received bribes from Lilith, the not-so-spacious hall was packed with ladies in their crinolines, making it more like a social ball for aristocratic ladies than a business setting. Elena brought many of her business friends to help Lilith expand her network, while Sophia was still followed by a tall, handsome man in fashionable clothes, though clearly not the same person she had taken to the funeral last time.

The host, Lilith, instructed Ivanka to prepare a sumptuous refreshment and fine wines to entertain all the new and old clients. Lilith herself, dressed in a black dress, stood smiling in the middle of the crowd, elegantly and confidently discussing the bank's future development direction and goals. In addition to the existing deposit and credit businesses, she hoped to further expand the reach of foreign exchange transactions, opening branches in different Italian city-states and even further afield.

Cecilia, Tata, Heinrich, and Sherlock, as key employees, also donned formal attire to introduce the bank's current situation and business scope to the guests Lilith couldn't attend to. They all wore silver medals engraved with "LC Schmidel" on their chests, and Lilith even commissioned small cards for each of them with their names, positions, and contact information, supposedly following a business tradition from Cecilia's hometown.

Heinrich only learned the reason why Lilith had helped him get rid of slavery when he received the business card—it was to register him as the legal representative of LC Schmidl Bank, a position that only a free man could hold.

“This is, of course, out of trust in you, my dear Heinrich.” Lilith smiled slyly, pressing Heinrich to press his fingerprint on the documents for changing the legal entity.

However, hidden beneath the grand opening ceremony, the gorgeous gowns, and the ethereal vision, what Lilith was truly facing was the huge expenses and debt crisis caused by the acquisition.

The acquisition process was largely a matter of moving accounts. Before the debt restructuring was completed and repayments began, the money remained firmly in Lilith's hands, just under a different name, which didn't matter for the time being. However, the money used to bribe the bishop and the tips used to smooth things over at the exchange guild were all real cash, not to mention the additional expenses incurred from personnel maneuvering during the power struggle with Mauro.

Some expenses could barely be recorded in the company's accounts. For example, the one-way ticket Lilith bought for her former bank patron, Solomon Goldstein, to Jerusalem was a "reward" for his storming into the hall on the night of Mauro's trial, which forced Lilith to concede to her family. This sea pilgrimage was arduous and extremely dangerous; nearly a third of the people on each ship would not survive until reaching the Holy Land, succumbing to serious illness. Therefore, Lilith went to see him off in person, only feeling relieved after watching him board the ship.

However, some expenses simply couldn't be included, such as the cost of hiring someone to kill Mauro. Because he was imprisoned by the Venetian Commission of Forty and under close guard until his exile, Lilith couldn't send her own people. She had to entrust the task to someone else on the ship taking him to Crete, which added another expense. To pay for this expensive assassination, Lilith even sold a pair of her pearl earrings.

Worse still, the bank's official opening brought Lilith no new clients. Instead, it attracted several aristocratic young women who, fearing their husbands or fathers would discover their deposits and interest payments, came to withdraw their funds. They felt much safer conducting their transactions in secret, hidden within their boudoirs than in a prestigious bank on the main street. Despite Lilith's repeated assurances that she would do everything in her power to protect the privacy of all her clients, she couldn't sway their already made decisions.

So on the third day after opening, Lilith was already frantically anxious and worried about the newly calculated accounts by accountants Sherlock and Heinrich.

"The bank is up and running, but the money has disappeared." Lilith irritably fiddled with the well-worn abacus in the president's office, complaining angrily, "Goldstein's debts have to be paid off. Dragging it out isn't a solution; we need to inject new funds."

"What do you plan to do?" Heinrich asked absentmindedly as he stood beside her checking the accounts.

"All you do is ask me what to do. Can't you take the initiative to think of some ways to help me?" Lilith glared at him irritably.

“There’s an old saying,” Heinrich said casually, “that all the ways to make money are written in the criminal code, it just depends on whether you dare to do it.”

"Are you encouraging me to break the law?" Lilith raised an eyebrow.

"Haven't you broken the law enough times?" Heinrich teased. "I'm learning from you, taking you as my role model."

“Very good.” Lilith lightly brushed Heinrich’s face with the end of her quill. “I like bold employees like you. Tell me more.”

"In order to pay off Goldstein's debts, you bought all the wool and silk that Miss Elena brought from Florence this time, as well as a spice futures contract that someone else will deliver to her in seven days."

“Yes, but the price of spices hasn’t been good lately.” Lilith blinked. “That’s why Elena sold that batch to me cheaply. She won’t be staying in Venice for long, and given the current low market prices, it will definitely take some time to clear out this batch.”

"So, if spice prices surge in the short term, the value of your spice shipment will naturally increase."

"How can we make it surge?"

"The reason spices are so expensive is because of the supply shortage. If you could reduce the overall supply in the market..."

"How to reduce it?" Lilith urged Heinrich impatiently to get to the point and not beat around the bush.

"Next to St. Mark's Pier is the largest spice warehouse in all of Venice."

“That’s the territory of the Condarini family!” Lilith exclaimed, her eyes wide. “A Venetian noble family on par with the Dandolo family. They are the largest of all the famous families in Venice that deal in spices. Their warehouses hold goods from various families, and I even have a small batch of cloves stored there.”

"Spices are dried for easy transport and storage, making them very flammable. If the largest spice warehouse in all of Venice were to catch fire, then..."

“Not bad, Heinrich.” Lilith smiled with satisfaction. “You’re incredibly bold.”

"Isn't this a bit too blatant?" Cecilia asked with some concern after listening to the whole thing. "If Heinrich is caught, there's a possibility that the lady might be implicated."

Lilith frowned, fiddling with the ring her late husband had given her, and pondered, "If it succeeds, the value of this spice shipment will be enough to resolve all our current financial crises. Let's take a gamble, just this once. Heinrich, since you've come up with such a good idea, then you should carry it out."

She won her bet.

Four days later, the Condalini family's spice warehouse caught fire. Although the fire was extinguished in time and there were no casualties, precious spices worth tens of thousands of ducats were completely destroyed. Even the unburnt spices were doused with seawater, rendering them all worthless.

The next morning, the Condalini family held an emergency meeting, inviting all customers who had goods stored in their warehouses to gather in their company's conference room.

Lilith arrived in a black dress and saw several familiar figures sitting around a round table, angrily accusing the Condalini family of negligence. Massimo, the head of the Knarro family, was also present, arms crossed, silent, presumably having suffered considerable losses as well. Lilith, with her extremely small inventory, had no seat at the table and could only sit on a few small stools placed around the edge of the round table with several other small business owners.

The current head of the Condalini family was a young man who had just turned thirty. His chestnut-brown, shoulder-length hair was tied back with a ribbon, and he wore round-framed glasses. He was also beardless, making him look younger than his actual age. He walked solemnly through the crowd and sat down at the head of the round table. His gaze swept over everyone present, lingering briefly on the red-haired widow veiled in black.

Lilith disliked being stared at by a man. Although Lorenzo was relatively young among the nobles, he was still more than ten years older than Lilith. Even though it was only for a moment, that sharp gaze, seemingly able to see through everything through his glasses, still made her very uncomfortable.

Lorenzo's experience differed greatly from that of most scions of noble families in the Republic. Unlike most aristocratic youths who embarked on nautical trials, he did not squander his time like a spoiled brat such as Mauro. As the second son, he was sent to the University of Bologna to study theology, logic, and rhetoric, intending to immerse himself in academia for the rest of his life. However, due to an accident involving his eldest son, he was forced to return to Venice to inherit the family business.

However, the inexperienced Lorenzo never disappointed the elders of the Condalini family. The family's main spice business grew larger and larger, and although there were occasional losses due to price fluctuations or pirate attacks, the overall profits continued to rise. But this time, the warehouse fire dealt him a heavy blow.

Lilith, the mastermind behind it all, felt no guilt or remorse. Instead, she pouted indignantly and mimicked the old man's expression of sullen displeasure at the loss, responding to him in kind.

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Author's Note: The second male lead makes his appearance! Although he seems quite serious at first, he's actually a long-haired, bespectacled guy with squinty eyes and a smiling face. [Starry eyes] Next update on Friday!