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“And she is,” Rain said.
“She is ruthless, and conniving and I agree, she is smart enough. Robert always planned for her to take over and run his legit businesses while he and Ronnie stuck to what they knew. But she was the future of their business.” He looked at Wanda. “Like you were before you got all gangster.”
Wanda laughed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mike, I was always a gangster.”
“And that’s exactly my point, Wanda. Even though you’re a lawyer, you’ve always been a money-making gangster.” He paused. “Suppose Lyric Sky killed me and Bobby, but he left you alive and with money. What would you do?” Black asked, and everybody in the room already knew the answer.
Wanda nodded her head. “I’d rebuild and when I was ready, I’d come after him with everything I had.”
Black shook his head. “But his plan was to take over from within, it’s all his. So, you have nothing to rebuild and no resources to come after him with. What would you do?”
“I’d have the resources because he left our legitimate businesses alone.” Wanda smiled and nodded her head. “It would take me longer, but once I had my mone
y right, I’d recruit an army to destroy him for me.”
“Just like the bitch is doing now,” Rain said. “We should have killed her too.”
“No.” Black shook his head. “What we should have done was taken over everything Robert had, brought her in-house and kept her close.”
“And if she didn’t go along, then you could kill her,” Bobby said to Rain. “I believe that’s your thing.”
“I’m on her, Black,” Rain said and stood up. “I’ve got Carla following the money. If it is Rona King, and I’m sure that it is, I’ll know for sure soon enough.”
“I know that you will,” Black said before Rain left the office. Bobby sat back in his chair and pointed at Black.
“You know what, Mike?”
“What?”
“We are getting too old for this.”
“You’ll get no argument from me. All I wanna do is go home to be with my wife and kids.”
“I’ve been trying to take us completely legitimate for years,” Wanda said.
“Yes, you have. Except for those years that you were consolidating your power, you have been trying to take us legit,” Bobby said, and Black laughed. “But despite that, here we still are after all these years, fighting another war.”
“Maybe it is time that we stop trying to go completely legit and just do it.”
Wanda and Bobby looked at Black and then at each other before they both looked at him.
“What are you saying, Mike?” Wanda asked.
“What does it sound like I’m saying?”
“I know. I just wanna hear you say it.”
“I do too,” Bobby said.
“Maybe it’s time that we get out,” Black said and there was silence in the room as the three old friends quietly contemplated a future without war. “Tell me what’s up with the bank?”
“Now that Jada is no longer available to help me with Desmond Pennybrook, I don’t know. I will be able to give you a better answer when I get down there.”
Her efforts to buy the bank required several steps. Wanda had identified the institution in Nassau that she wished to buy, and she had negotiated a price. Once they had accepted her offer, she had conducted her due diligence to look at the bank’s operations, its financial performance, its legal and tax compliance, customer contracts, assets and other details within the time period specified in her letter of intent.
She organized a team of attorneys and divided them into teams to thoroughly investigate specific categories and identify areas of concern, such as antitrust and regulatory issues, information technology concerns, insurance coverage, litigation, summary of complaints, as well as current market share values and fixed assets.
With that completed, Wanda negotiated a definitive agreement and began to put together the financing. Seeing that they could have funded the entire deal in cash, funding for the acquisition wasn’t an issue. However, it was agreed that since buying an offshore bank for twenty-five million in cash would raise too many red flags, it was the reason for her trip.