4
Mentium
Massimo Capuleto was known to be a bastard, but there was someone even worse than him: his son. He had pretended to be my brother”s friend, only to steal his idea and ultimately annihilate him.
I contacted the Capuletos through an email.
I only saw Massimo Capuleto once. He showed up in St. Petersburg for Yuri”s funeral. He came alone, without his beloved son, intending to offer condolences to my father and take the opportunity to make an offer to buy the pharmaceutical company. Such audacity!
Days later, he insisted again, this time via email, and my father gave him the same response. We were not going to sell.
I didn”t hear from the Capuletos again until the news of the suicides emerged.
The Italian contacted me again via a phone call that left me trembling with anger.
”Don”t take it the wrong way, Miss Koroleva. My intention is to help. As you can understand, the value of your company has decreased significantly, and now that neither your father nor your brother can take care of it, I thought I might relieve you of this burden.”
”You”re offering me three hundred percent less than last time!” I exclaimed furiously.
”Well, last time, your star medication wasn”t killing people. You must admit that the reputation of your pharmaceutical is under scrutiny, and you don”t have too many options, nor offers as advantageous as mine. Think about it.”
I felt like spitting in his face. The bad thing was that it wouldn”t make an impact over the phone.
I became more and more convinced that he and his son were behind everything.
I didn”t want to respond. I needed to reorder my mind and get things straight before making a decision.
I could sell and do something else, or fight and regain the lost credibility.
I considered all options, letting the rage turn into something much colder and more calculated.
If I analyzed it carefully, it was a big game where the winner wasn”t the one who moved first, but the one with the best strategy.
I fit each piece together in my brain, like one of those five thousand-piece puzzles I loved to do.
I pondered each possibility and didn”t stop until I came up with the right strategy.
Only then did I pick up the phone and ensure a call with Massimo Capuleto himself.
”I didn”t expect to hear your voice so soon.”
”I hope it”s not an inconvenience.”
”On the contrary, I”m glad to do so. Have you decided whether to accept my offer or not?”
”That”s why I was calling you.”
”And?”
”I”m sorry to say that although I would love to accept, I must decline.”
”And why is that?”
”As you may know, my family”s affairs are tied to the government. The president does not agree with the sale. He insists that I marry and that the pharmaceutical be managed by me and my future husband. Unfortunately, in Russia, the mindset is still very patriarchal.”
”I understand.”
”I promised him that perhaps the best thing would be to sell it to you, since you have a lot of experience, but he wouldn”t even consider it. For the government, it”s important to have a company that lends credibility to our other businesses,” I sighed.
”Then, there”s no possibility of a sale.” It was not a question, but a statement.
”No, I”m sorry.”
”And has Putin already chosen the groom?” ?That”s it, bite the hook, little fish. ?
”The president is considering some names, but the problem is that I can”t make up my mind. I was raised in a family of entrepreneurs and I don”t trust marrying someone who could further sink the company. It”s very important to me to do it with someone who shares my values, someone who would give their life for the family and its wealth. My brother and father dedicated themselves to it, I wanted to do the same and things were going well...”
”Until they didn”t,” he corrected. I had to clench my fists to not tell him that it was his and his son’s fault.
”Yes, the malfunction of our star drug has been a setback.”
”Don’t worry. I understand you more than you think, I share and value your principles. In fact, hearing you talk reminds me of myself.”
”I hope that”s a compliment.”
”It is.”
”Well, thank you,” I sighed, adding a sweet tone to my voice. ”I wish there were more marriageable men like you, who shared my vision for the future.” I heard him laugh on the other end of the line.
”There are, Miss Koroleva, and I believe I have the solution to your problems within our reach.”
”I”m all ears.”
I even crossed the toes of my feet, hoping he had fallen into my trap.
”Let’s give Putin what he wants and you the way out you need for your company. My son will marry you, we’ll welcome you to our famiglia, clean up the pharmaceutical’s name. We’re going to take over the entire market niche on the Costa del Sol. I will personally ensure that the memory of your brother and your father remain intact.”
I smiled inwardly; it even seemed like the idea had been his, not mine, just as I intended.
”Do you really think that”s possible? I thought you didn”t want an association with my family.” I played a bit of the doubter.
”And I didn’t, but sharing a business is one thing, a union through marriage is quite another.”
”And your son agrees to this?”
”Leave that to me. You just worry about the dress and saying ”I do.” Do we have a deal?” I waited a few seconds before answering.
”We have a deal.”
It was done!
”Marriage,” that was the key to everything.
I was going to make them eat dust from the inside, they had no idea who they were letting into their home.
We agreed on the date, the place, the number of guests who would attend, and closed the deal as if it were just another business transaction.
Massimo asked if I wanted to travel to Spain to meet my fiancé before the wedding. I saw no need. I cared very little about what his son was like, because what I wanted was to erase him from the face of the Earth, along with the rest of the Capuletos.
What I needed to focus on was tying up everything and strategizing. Everything else was secondary. There was no time to lose.
I picked up my phone and typed the name of our star drug.
I scrolled through the news of recent events and looked for one of the first by date.
My brother”s face appeared, the one I was looking for, his first unpaid interview, where his face beamed with happiness.
Mentium was the legacy of his effort. He put a lot of work into it. In the discovery of a new psychopharmaceutical much more addictive than morphine or diazepam.
You couldn”t get off it after having tried it, and the side effects were like any other drug of similar characteristics, nothing noteworthy, until now.
The exceptional aspect of Mentium lay in its effectiveness. You didn”t have to wait fifteen days for the neurotransmitters to catch fire. Mentium”s effects were noticeable from the first dose. Several studies concluded that within a week of taking the first pill, patients felt as excited as a seven-year-old about to receive birthday gifts. We had in our hands the revolution of psychiatry, much like Prozac had been years ago.
Yuri was ecstatic for having discovered the Holy Grail for the illness of the 21st century. Sales skyrocketed, and its high price didn”t deter everyone wanting to try it. They bought it as if it were candy bars in the supermarket.
We no longer needed to pay doctors, pharmacies, or grease the palms of prestigious medical journals to publish positive reports about it. It sold itself. Its effectiveness spread like wildfire, and the final touch was added by a prestigious TikToker with millions of followers, who claimed that our little golden pill saved her life.
The press dubbed it the miracle drug that pulled the famously known @Anne_Shein out of depression.
Tecnosalute, our main competitor, had a product with similar characteristics, but it didn’t work as well as Yuri’s design. And as you might have guessed, the company belonged to the Capuletos.
My father couldn’t stand the Italian, who came from the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia. They controlled 80% of cocaine distribution in Europe.
They gained business capability through a holding mindset that allowed them to acquire a multitude of businesses, hotels, and properties all along the Spanish coast. They had shell companies and frontmen to camouflage the drug money within the legal economy.
I massaged my temple, overwhelmed. I never told my brother, but in part, I blamed him for the Capuletos” interest in the pharmaceutical sector.
He and Massimo”s eldest son had attended the same university. I think they met on campus; the Italian was two years older than Yuri. They hit it off and one thing led to another. They became ”friends.”
Ha! I laugh at friendships like that.
Tecnosalute was established before our company, only they lacked my brother”s prodigious mind.
When Yuri finished his studies, he tried to get our father and R”s, as he called him, to smooth things over, aiming to unite forces, even talking about a merger. According to him, times were changing and the Chinese were entering the market
forcefully. My father was outraged.
The Russian mafia did not collaborate with any other mafia, no matter if they were Italian, Chinese, or from hell itself. We only answered to ourselves and, of course, to Putin. As my father used to say, ”tights are for women.”
My father flatly forbade his ”friendship” with R, warning him of the Capuletos” bad intentions. They wanted information for personal gain; they were using him. My brother could not trust someone from the ”Ndrangheta.
”Courage and loyalty,” that was their motto, but only towards their own. We were the competition, and they wanted to eliminate us.
In 2007, the Calabrian mafia was accused of cold-bloodedly killing six Italians marked as belonging to other mafia bands. They were brutal, finishing them off next to a restaurant in Duisburg.
If they killed their own compatriots, what wouldn”t they do to Russians?
I sided with my father; it was the first time I argued with Yuri and the last. We never spoke again in our house about the possibility of joining forces with the Capuletos.
Until now.
Pharmaceuticals, the third-largest sector of the global economy after arms and drug trafficking, moved the world, exerting pressure on legislators who promoted or blocked laws in their favor. They directly pressured the World Trade Organization to enforce their exclusivity rights on essential medicines that could save millions of lives yet remained accessible only to those who could afford them. That”s why we chose this sector, given my brother”s passion for chemistry.
”We”ve arrived,” announced Andrey, in front of the Anantara Villa Padierna Palace Benahavís Marbella Resort. The place where I was staying and where, in an hour and a half, I would become a Capuleto.