Chapter 313: Luck and Misfortune, and Earning Over a Billion Again

While out at sea, William was waiting for Sunday to verify whether all the transactions in this short-selling operation were compliant. Suddenly, his phone rang.

He saw that the call was coming from an unfamiliar New York number, which made him curious. He answered, "Hello."

"Hello, Mr. Devonshire. This is Martin Donner. I apologize for disturbing you so late, but I have something urgent to report," Martin said. William already knew what Martin was going to say, so instead of asking about the issue, he asked, "First, tell me how you got my phone number. I don't recall ever giving you my card."

"I sincerely apologize, Mr. Devonshire. I learned your phone number by accident when you mentioned it to Chef Hunter. I was standing behind Mr. Hunter and happened to see the number on your phone screen. For some reason, I remembered it clearly after just one glance, possibly because I pay close attention to anything related to you," Martin explained.

This was something that could easily be verified. William said, "Hold on."

He snapped his fingers, and a few seconds later, Sunday's voice came through his invisible earpiece, "Sir, based on the yacht's video footage, Martin Donner is telling the truth."

"Very well, it seems you weren't lying. Go on," William said.

"Yes, sir," Martin replied, visibly relieved to hear this. He began recounting everything that happened after he left the yacht, detailing his conversation with Griff word for word, even describing Griff's expressions with remarkable accuracy.

After explaining everything, Martin waited silently for William's response.

"Good. It seems my rare act of kindness wasn't wasted," William said with a chuckle. Seeing Martin's frightened expression, he added, "Tomorrow, the U.S. tax authorities will be looking for you, accusing you of tax evasion."

"Oh my God!" Martin exclaimed.

"Don't worry. The end result will be a fine of $120,000—no more, no less. Exactly $120,000. This is your punishment, and also a small penalty in consideration of your two lovely children. You wouldn't mind paying that, would you, Martin?"

"I-I-I..." Martin stammered, fully aware that William must have already known about his conversation with Griff. The anticipation he had when making the call was now replaced with fear and, strangely enough, relief. Yes, amid his fear, he was extremely relieved.

He was relieved that William appreciated family men and even more relieved that he hadn't let the one million dollars cloud his judgment. He had confessed to William immediately after Griff left.

"I-I understand, sir. I'll pay the fine without any trouble."

"Good, it seems you are indeed a smart man. Do your job well. If Ambrosio is satisfied, you might even become her personal assistant. In that case, you might be able to repay your $600,000 loan within a year. And as for why you need to let Ambrosio herself invite you to be her assistant, I think you understand."

"Yes, sir. I understand this is to avoid any misunderstanding on Miss Ambrosio's part that I'm just a spy you placed by her side, and it's also a test of my capabilities."

"Mm-hmm, that's right. I look forward to your performance, Mr. Martin Donner."

"Thank you, sir. Thank you for your kindness."

"Haha, you should be thanking yourself, for being a good father. Otherwise, your outcome wouldn't have been much different from Griff's." 

Ah, Griff. Martin was about to ask for leniency for Griff, but after a moment's thought, he realized that pleading would be useless. If anything, it might worsen his own situation, and Griff's fate might become even more dire.

In the end, he could only sigh silently. "Thank you, sir. Goodnight, sir."

After hanging up, William started to look forward to the future performance of this high school graduate who had clawed his way up from the bottom to become the manager of a New York yacht club.

A few days later, Martin, who was entirely unconcerned about the tax investigation, learned from an Italian friend that when Griff returned to Italy, he discovered evidence of his young and beautiful wife cheating on him. The couple had a huge fight, and before the divorce proceedings even started, his wife retaliated by exposing his financial situation. This not only left Griff with no choice but to deal with the fallout, but he was soon also summoned by the police.

In the end, Griff got his wish and divorced his unfaithful wife, but he didn't get a cent of their assets—they all went to his wife. On top of that, he was sued by Faraday and Reeva companies for accepting kickbacks, and now he faces up to five years in prison.

This news made Martin, who was far away in New York, fear William even more, while also feeling immensely fortunate that he had lucked out by encountering William's rare act of kindness.

After dealing with these two minor characters, William sat in the captain's chair and listened as Sunday reported the profits from the short-selling of Davis. Upon learning that the profit was only a little over three times the investment, William muttered a curse under his breath. "Only a little over three times? I only invested $500 million. With ten times leverage, that's $5 billion. Just as I was gaining momentum, Davis almost went bankrupt and surrendered."

However, Sunday's summary reminded William that seventy percent of the diamonds mined by Davis were stored in their London headquarters' underground vault. The company's value was largely tied up in these diamonds, which they dared not sell. The real liquid assets amounted to only a bit over $10 billion. And since diamonds aren't something that can be sold in large quantities without driving down the price, a fire sale could very well push Davis into an even faster decline. In this situation, Davis had no means to gather a large sum of money to resist the pressure.

Additionally, too many people followed William's lead once he made his move, creating a swarm of attacks.

The most crucial factor was that the evidence revealed this time was too damning. The entire blood diamond supply chain was laid bare, from top to bottom. There were even photos of Davis's own executives purchasing blood diamonds. Faced with such overwhelming evidence, Davis had no confidence they could win this fight, and the institutions and individual investors in the market, seeing Davis soften, immediately adjusted their positions.

Most institutions and financial companies that were betting against William preferred to take their losses rather than add more margin to their futures contracts. They chose to cut their losses and exit rather than continue playing with William.

Shorting a single publicly traded company's stock index requires real money from people or institutions willing to take on those futures contracts. With no one willing to play along, the expected returns were naturally below William's expectations.

Davis, having lost seven or eight hundred million dollars in their initial investment, now faced overwhelming media and public criticism and the predictable slump in diamond sales. Their executives wisely held onto the remaining $1.5 billion in cash as their last line of defense.

Then, in a show of shamelessness, they turned to the English government for help, using taxes, job cuts, and the overall impact on the diamond industry as leverage to threaten the government.

This was the scenario William most wanted to avoid because Davis was not some concept-driven tech company that could be brought down to nothing. They had $10 billion worth of diamonds in their underground vault, which could increase in value to around $15 billion in a few years. Plus, they were backed by several large diamond mines in Africa.

To prevent government intervention and Davis's likely counterattack, Felix, following the emergency plan William had set up, began liquidating their position, seeing it was the right time to cash out.

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