When the carefree, size 00 Instamodel-turned-mail-order-teenage bride aboard your speedboat shoots her husband a fear-stricken glare and shrieks “Wire the money!”, you know your Amalfi Coast vacation is probably headed south in the worst of ways. Being stranded on an incomparably remote — yet, picturesque, pastel-sprinkled — foreign hillside might not sound so bad, until the cops are seizing your bags, demanding passports, answers, and favors in languages only one of us understood.
Flavia — our dual citizenship-gloating (and Positano villa-owning) host-turned-translator — wasn’t quite as panicked as Yasmin, but she arrived at the same conclusion: A wire transfer was the fastest way out of this, and it had to happen now.
Herb’s perpetually-plastered salesman’s smile stiffened as he batted his hands at the cap-donning officers, motioning to his phone, while praying “Peter” (his finance manager) would pick up. He did — and that’s when the real trouble began. And no, we never did make it to the Sorrento hotel with the rooftop pool Herb had booked or the “Path of the Gods” hike Flavia had been raving about; I’m just glad we made it home at all.
…
An Italian meltdown (no, that’s not a sandwich)
“Babe, I want the turtles!”
Herb flashed Yasmin a grin, disappearing into a back room and taking my husband with him. Believe it or not, we were here on business — sort of. I think not-so-secretly, the only reason Hubby whisked me away on this pre-birthday surprise romantic — yet group — “vacation” was to quell my further probing into his July 4th deception.
We both knew he’d lied about his whereabouts that week, and we also both knew he’d spent the night at Flavia’s house, without her uttering a word to me until their conveniently synchronized coverup. It wasn’t a white lie either; his itinerary placed him in Abu Dhabi, until I passed his car in her driveway in Newport. I’d call an 8,300+ mile difference material, but who’s counting…
Suffice it to say, when both your husband and your close friend — who’s admittedly never been his biggest fan — join forces in furtive international escapades, you start to wonder why. Today, however, it wasn’t Flavia nor my husband who were sending up red flags.
Herb chuckled submissively, granting Yasmin free rein to buy all the turtles she wanted, while he got down to “business” with the boys, also known as my husband and a couple of Italian guys who were apparently expecting us at this hole-in-the-wall jewelry shop off a winding road in Capri.
A velvet-lined drawer revealed a rainbow spread of tiny sparkling pave turtles, from emeralds on yellow gold to pink diamonds on rose, blue sapphires on platinum, and everything in between. At 2 millimeters in size, they ranged from $2k to $4k each, thanks to Italy’s finest craftsmanship and skyrocketing precious metals and gemstone prices. Yasmin spent the next hour arranging her reptilian bracelet, which would easily exceed $60k+, while Flavia aggressively pitched her nearly-nude portfolio to the shop owner in the hopes of landing an Italian jewelry modeling campaign.
By the time we returned to the boat, an undeniable swagger had descended upon both Herb and my husband. Whatever wheeling and dealing occurred in that backroom must have far outweighed the cost of the international excursion — at least, up until then.
“Fermo!”
All five of our necks snapped back as an unannounced waterfall of percussive thumping rained down from the steep cobblestone pathway behind us, evocative of a stampede of wild cantering horses. It wasn’t until the uniformed men caught up with us that the command registered as having been directed at our party; by this time, both armed guards had their unforgiving grip on Herb’s and my husband’s elbows.
Within seconds, the dockside detainment escalated into a trans-linguistic shouting match, with Flavia stepping in to broker the bilingual negotiation.
“They said the account is frozen. You need to re-initiate the transfer.”
Apparently, the jewelry shop’s backroom business meeting wasn’t quite over, and a transfer of funds had failed to process. To be completely honest, it was at this point, as unarmed tourists carrying significant cash and merchandise, that I — well, I think we all — started to feel vulnerable, stranded at the dock of a foreign island, as the sun shrank into the ocean, with a boat, plane, train, and several taxis (and 8,000+ miles) impeding our stateside return.
“So, liquidate something else!
Mid-sentence, Herb’s throat seized up and his orders ceased, as his face rapidly cycled from exasperated to confused, then undeniably horrified. Peter, the wealth manager on the other end of the line would be the first to deliver news that was slowly, then quickly, permeating the global economic markets and headlines.
“…Impossible — it’s an exchange…”
Tensions heightened along with Herb’s eyebrows and cortisol levels, sending the armed guards into an augmented state of distrust and unrest. They relayed the unfolding scenario in frigid Italian mumbles into the radios clipped under their collars, seemingly calling for backup in preparation to address our party’s procrastination-masked noncompliance.
Herb shot my husband a panicked grimace, then asked “Did you transfer everything?”
Hubby — still as oblivious as the rest of the world before the market-shattering news broke — nodded affirmatively, with a violent vertical jerk of his head intended to placate Herb’s concern. Unfortunately, his instant palm to the forehead was anything but the intended reaction.
One of the most insidious forms of spousal abuse or dysfunction is financial, and it doesn’t always involve malicious withholding or blatant deceit. Sometimes, it can be the overarching and unilateral decision-making one partner exercises that is the abuse itself, keeping the other silent, in the dark, or lulled into the false sense of security that their spouse knows best. Today, I — well, we — would both suffer one of the largest consequences.
“Little financial hiccup…”
We all must have very different definitions and translations of the word “hiccup”, because neither I, nor Flavia, nor the siren-blaring backup guards coasting towards our waterside holdup seemed to consider the global freezing and seizure of an entire financial exchange’s assets — one holding 9 figures of Herb’s and 8-figures of my husband’s finances — a “hiccup”.
Long story long:
- Herb had been an early investor in this alternative asset (think crypto, alt coins, etc.) trading exchange (par for the course for a 9-figure loan shark)
- He’s held equity in their company and was staking 9-figures worth of alternative investments on their platform, generating passive returns
- As the former pro-network marketer he was (Herb started his career selling billions in an early and now infamous MLM), he’d encouraged his friends — Hubby included — to dump the bulk of their crypto holdings onto this ROI-generating platform
- At his friend, unofficial mentor, and business partner’s suggestion, Hubby did — to the tune of over 90% of our non-real estate net worth.
The short part:
- The platform took out hundreds of millions in loans to provide the promised returns to its investors and users, but when the alternative assets tanked (alongside the entire economy), they froze
- By froze, I mean they ran out of money to pay out the promised returns
Within the past 24 hours, they hired a top lawyer — the kind that gets very well-known, but also ostensibly guilty public figures off the hook, who advised they freeze all assets instantly
Now, all trading — and the ability for investors and platform users to retrieve their staked holdings — has been halted…indefinitely - The catch? Italian cops and backroom diamond dealers don’t care if some crypto exchange gets coincidentally “frozen” the same day your husband and his partner attempt a major international transaction. They want their money now.
As the siren-wielding car skidded to a clunky stop, with the backup officers’ boots marching heavily onto the floating wooden panels, Flavia interjected:
“Posso trasferire…”
Flavia may have been the hero of Capri, but her fronting the money is just a temporary Bandaid over what’s sure to become an increasingly tangled, litigious, and soon-to-be bankruptcy-riddled web. On the bright side, her Italian bank’s wire transfer went through; on the dark side, no one was smiling by the time we boarded our returning Lufthansa connection; and yes, this time we all flew commercial.
Come again — or don’t
Moments after swiping the green toggle left, reverting airplane mode back to WiFi, a barrage of texts and picture messages flooded my phone. My mom’s elation sent the device into ongoing convulsions, as she continued “hearting” her prior messages while I attempted to catch up on the whirlwind of developments we’d missed during the vacation from Hell.
The first image was a screenshot of her realtor’s text — and most likely a breach of buyer confidentiality. I expanded the microscopic snapshot of the “proof of funds” from the prospective buyer’s bank account; it significantly exceeded the $1.3M asking price, and accompanied an all-cash offer, waiving the inspection contingency and committing to a five-day close.
Considering the condition Star’s “Airbnb” squatters-turned-exotic-breeders left the place, an all-cash offer with no inspection was probably the only golden goose miracle protecting my parents from six figures in repairs or a condemned property altogether. After a year’s worth of sequential disasters since their marital meltdown, this was an unequivocal win — finally.
“Also, the TV people were here again. They left a note about filming your close?”
This is where the excitement ended and the confusion began. During our Italian getaway-cut-short, my mom had been housesitting at our place with the kids. As far as I know, no “TV people” should have been there at all, and there is no “close” to film — or anything else. Unless my daughter, husband, or someone else with access has been inviting cameras onto our property without my knowledge; if they got all the way through our gates, somebody had to let them in…
“Babe — you know what she’s talking about?”
I ribbed my husband lightly, piercing the bubble of intense concentration enveloping him in his tablet’s email app, and handed over the phone. He scanned the texts, and I watched a brief flicker of distress tighten the veins in his neck, but they just as quickly relaxed, the ephemeral reaction camouflaged by a casually dismissive quip as he swiped the text closed:
“It’s nothing — just a logistical mix-up. I’ll take care of it.”
That sounds about as right as the ocean front property his friend George promised me in Arizona…
…
Innocent until framed or proven guilty — your choice
I descended the sticky Terracotta steps into the only Irish pub in CDM — and the one place dark and dingy enough where we couldn’t possibly run into a single friend, neighbor, or anything short of a daytime alcoholic. Craig waved from a dimly lit back-corner table for two; perfect.
I ignored the text pulsating through my hand, shoving my conscience and Kate’s plea out of sight, out of mind. Cruella may be able to spook, guilt, or threaten Kate into a compromising position, but I’ve been manipulated too many times to take the bait lying down.
I plopped myself into the rickety wooden chair, leaned in, and prepared to recuse myself — and Kate — of whistleblower status. The whistle would be blown, handcuffs would (and did) come out, and they’d all thank me later…well, some of them.
Moral of the story? If you play the game of telephone for too long, the wrong information is going to get into the right hands at some point. Don’t engage with people, assets, or ventures if you aren’t willing to accept the consequence of smooth sailing-turned-turbulent. I think we can all apply that advice in one way or another — myself included.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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