Chapter 52 The Toy Divergence: Darkened Little Yin vs. Evil Fleece Tower...
When Lilith arrived in Venice by boat from the port of Mestre on the Italian mainland, she smelled the familiar salty scent of the sea, a scent she hadn't experienced in a long time. The June sea breeze gently brushed the stray hairs from her face, and the air was fresh and pleasant.
She sat on the deck, holding a small parasol, and from a distance, she could see Tata's figure, craning his neck and looking around, on the harbor next to St. Mark's Square. To her surprise, Sofia was also standing on the harbor to greet her.
Sophia's mourning period for her husband was over, and she no longer wore a black dress, but instead put on her favorite green dress from when she was unmarried, which shimmered beautifully in the sunlight. As usual, a handsome stranger whom Lilith had never seen before stood beside her, but Lilith didn't see him at all, her eyes only on her friend's warm smile.
She paced excitedly back and forth on the deck. Her joy stemmed not only from the prospect of seeing her friend, but also from the satisfaction of bringing back a large sum of money in drafts to Venice. This meant she could finally pay Sofia higher interest than originally agreed for the new quarter, and she felt immensely proud that she hadn't let her good friend down.
As soon as she disembarked, she threw herself into Sophia's arms and urged Heinrich to quickly find the gift she had specially prepared for Sophia. Heinrich could only supervise the crew as they checked the cargo while hurriedly rummaging through his bag and pulling out an exquisite jewelry box.
“There’s no need for us to be so formal.” Sophia smiled and took Lilith’s hand, brushing the stray hairs from her face. “You must be exhausted from the long carriage ride.”
“It’s alright, I don’t have the opportunity to visit my husband Este’s estate in Ferrara as often as you do. This is my first time leaving Venice.” Lilith smiled broadly. “I’m having a great time.”
“I don’t believe it. You always put work first, and even when you’re exhausted, you insist on not resting. You don’t really need to work yourself so hard.” Sofia took her hand. “Cecilia hasn’t come back yet, and I was worried that Ivanka wouldn’t be able to manage the household alone, so I specifically asked them to let you come to my house to rest tonight.”
"I can't accept this!" Lilith was flattered.
"Oh, actually I wanted to hear about the interesting things you encountered on your journey, and what exactly this so-called exchange fund chain means? Or we could talk about anything else. I've been so bored while you were gone, no one's been talking to me."
"Don't you love going to social dances?" Lilith chuckled.
"The ball was full of strangers. I had to put on an act in front of them. It wasn't as fun as chatting with you." Sophia unfolded her folding fan, covering her face with a mischievous smile. "Speaking of balls, while you were away, I went to our convent school's ball and managed to get you quite a few guests. But that's not the point. The point is, I heard a shocking scandal!"
"What story!?" Lilith, who had been sitting on the ship for a long time and was feeling a bit tired, suddenly perked up when she heard the gossip.
“Let’s talk about it when we get home, at least until we’re on the boat. There are too many people here,” Sofia said with a smile.
"Okay, okay. Wait a moment." Lilith released her arm from Sophia's and turned to look at Heinrich, who was checking the goods. Heinrich immediately understood her meaning, put down his work, and ran to Lilith's side.
"Can you handle this work?" Lilith asked.
“No problem. Tata is here too, she can help me as well.” Heinrich shrugged. “You go and rest, don’t worry.”
“I’ll be going now. You should go back and rest after you’ve finished taking inventory. We’ll have our meeting again tomorrow morning.” Lilith nodded to Heinrich, then smiled and winked at Tata. “Tata! Long time no see! Thank you for picking me up. I’ve prepared gifts for everyone; I’ll give them to you later. Heinrich, you’ll get one too, but the contents are a secret.”
Then, Lilith took her luggage and boarded the gondola in Sofia, temporarily separating herself from Heinrich and Tata.
Heinrich, with a list in one hand and a pen in the other, routinely checked on the docks to ensure all the goods had been loaded onto the small boats bound for Lilith's house or rented warehouses. Seeing Tata idly sitting on a wooden crate, watching the crowd, he handed her a list and they checked and counted the goods together.
“I’m here to take Madam home, not to be at your beck and call.” Tata crossed her arms and gave Heinrich a disdainful look. “Don’t think that just because you went out with Madam, you can give me orders.”
"Is this how you should talk to me? Even if you don't like me, we're still colleagues."
Heinrich frowned, utterly perplexed by Tata's undisguised hostility. Even before he and Lilith departed, Tata had been giving him the cold shoulder, and two months later, instead of improving, she had become even more aggressive. What? So much time had passed since the Mauro incident; was she still holding a grudge about being overshadowed?
“Why can’t I talk to you like that? Heinrich, when I was working for the lady, you were probably waiting to be bought in some cage on slave island, weren’t you? If it weren’t for the lady buying you back…” Tata got more and more excited and relentless until a strong hand grabbed her neck tightly, choking her so she couldn’t speak.
“My position at Knarro Bank is Chief Financial Officer, which gives me the authority to give you orders,” Heinrich explained slowly and deliberately, his gaze icy, seemingly oblivious to Tata’s painful struggle.
“We all work for the wife, so I never want to fall out with any of my colleagues. If you are dissatisfied with the work I assign you, you can complain to the wife and see if she will side with the hardworking and conscientious employees or the employees who deliberately cause trouble and humiliate their colleagues.”
After he finished speaking, he lightly let go of her hand. Tata staggered and almost fell to the ground, taking several steps back and coughing incessantly while clutching her neck, which had been pinched red.
"Get to work properly, and I'll pretend nothing happened in front of Madam." Heinrich gave her one last look. "If you don't want to work, then get out."
Tata was speechless for a moment, taken aback by the insult. She had often spoken rudely to Heinrich before, but he had always just laughed it off. She never expected him to actually get angry this time. Tata felt guilty, but couldn't swallow her anger, so she simply threw up and ran away, disappearing without a trace.
Heinrich was relieved to have lost such an unfriendly burden. However, he felt it necessary to tell Lilith about his unjust humiliation. But before that, the first thing he did after checking the goods was to head to the German merchant quarter north of the Rialto Bridge, where he had more important business to attend to.
He hurried into the Bavarian tavern he knew all too well, went upstairs to the room he had been renting there for a long time, placed the mask he had bought in Zurich on the empty bed, took off his dirty clothes and changed into a well-made set of casual clothes.
Finally, he put on the mask in front of the mirror, draped a black cloak over his shoulders, and pulled his hat brim low. In Venice, the land of masks, this anonymous attire was commonplace and would not attract any attention, which was exactly the effect Heinrich wanted to achieve.
He locked the door, left the tavern, and walked straight into the depths of a dark alley. There he entered a dilapidated house. He used the key from his keychain to unlock the door and stepped into a slightly old but very spacious conference room, where a dozen or so men of varying ages were already gathered around a round table.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen." Heinrich removed his hat and mask, expressionlessly pulled a thick stack of documents from his briefcase, threw them on the conference table, and told them in German, "Let's begin. It's working time now."
On the other side of the city, Lilith sat on a soft sofa, basking in the sun through the floor-to-ceiling windows while savoring desserts made with the freshest ingredients by Venice's most skilled chefs. She had just finished explaining the workings of the money exchange chain to Sophia, thankfully without boring her best friend to the point of falling asleep.
"In other words, your clients can use this line you've established to send money to Florence, Rome, or even Zurich in the Swiss Confederation at will, and you only need to balance the trade deficit to complete the remittance, without actually moving the currency physically, right?"
“That’s right.” Lilith smiled and popped her sixth cream cookie of the day into her mouth.
"Furthermore, you can earn money by charging a commission on every transaction."
“Nominally, it is not allowed, but I can use ‘market floating exchange rate difference’ to cover it all up, and at the same time, I can circumvent the inspections of the canon law and the foreign exchange merchants’ guild.”
"Lily, you're a genius!" Sophia exclaimed. "How did you come up with such a brilliant idea, and actually put it into practice so quickly?"
"This isn't my original idea; many different banks are doing this. It's just that most of their operations are confined to the Italian peninsula, and few people think about expanding north of the Alps. Perhaps it's thanks to my German husband that I have the channels to do this quickly. But that's far from enough. Frankfurt, Paris, Antwerp, and London—I hope that one day my bank will be spread throughout the entire Christian world with which we trade, well, even beyond the entire Christian world, with branches in Constantinople."
"Compared to what you just told me, the gossip I'm about to tell you seems rather stupid."
"Nonsense. I love hearing these kinds of silly stories. Just tell me already!"
"Do you remember Luna, a girl who's two years younger than us at our monastery school?"
“I remember she was very sociable and a very charming person.”
"She was originally the daughter of a nouveau riche family, but her parents arranged a good marriage for her. She was to marry a junior member of the Condalini family, and her family hoped to use this marriage to enter the upper class of Venice."
"Then what?"
"Then, this Luna actually eloped with a lowly slave that her family had bought! It is said that she was found to be pregnant during the premarital examination, which caused a huge fight with her family. She even stole money from her family and ran away with that slave."
"Huh?" For some reason, Lilith felt a little sweaty when she heard this.
"But Venice is surrounded by the sea, how could they possibly escape? Her parents soon found them in the Castro district. It turned out that the slave had never intended to elope with her, but had forced her to abort the child and sold her to a brothel in Castro as a prostitute."
"What happened in the end? Did her family save her?"
“How could that be? Their daughter has caused such a scandal, and her marriage to the Condalini family is off. Her parents can’t wait to sever all ties with her and hang her.” Sophia sighed deeply. “Alas, she was born into a bad family, and her parents used her as a tool for upward mobility. In the end, she actually gave her heart to a slave, and was deceived and lost everything. It’s so pitiful.”
"It's...so pitiful." Lilith gasped, took a deep breath to calm herself, and felt a mix of emotions.
Sophia keenly noticed Lilith's unusual emotional fluctuations and, worried that she might have inadvertently said something that would make Lilith overthink, she added, "Well, slaves and the like are fine for widows like us to buy and play with. Once we're tired of them, we just throw them away or resell them. We don't develop any real feelings for them. Although she's pitiful, she also bears some responsibility for being too naive and being deceived."
“Yes.” Lilith nervously touched the ruby ring on her ring finger. “It’s just a toy, how can you treat it like a person?”
Just as Sofia was about to say something more, Tata suddenly burst into Sofia's living room, crying loudly.
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Author's note: More updates tomorrow!
I've been so busy lately that I'm almost going crazy and my body is a bit weak, but I feel really happy when I'm writing... I really want to share the parts I've written that I've already saved up with everyone as soon as possible...!
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