Chapter 8.21: Not the laundering I had in mind

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Hello! Today I'm here with a small introductory comment to specify that, even if it happened off-screen, also Juno had her birthday and is now an adult sim. I didn't find a nice spot to introduce it in the story, it happened one day later than Rowan's and it would have made the story very repetitive. 

Even if it happened off-screen without a whole house party, she already received her happy birthday wishes from River and Iris in the last chapter, and had a chance to celebrate it with her friends and colleagues in town, so no need to worry about it!

This said, it's time for the next chapter!

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About six months later

From Rowan's diary

Quite a lot of things changed since my last diary entry. First of all, both I and Juno talked to our bosses, asking to reduce our overtime working hours to what is strictly necessary. The clearest point in all our conversations was that we needed and wanted to spend more time together and with Gaia, thus this step seemed the main point to address. 

In any case, we earn enough money to live comfortably right now. The house still needs a lot of renovations, which at this point will take longer than initially planned, but this isn't the point. Maybe our life is not perfect, but for sure it is way more enjoyable now than it was before, and also Juno and Gaia are smiling way more now. 

- Buy new curtains and rods

(Sorry for using you to write down my shopping list, my dear diary, but right now there is another weirdo stopping right in front of our house and taking pictures. I haven't understood yet why they would do so, but for sure the first thing we need to invest in for our house renovation is some serious curtains and shutters for the windows facing the main street). 

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Rowan: (coughing) It's even worse than usual this morning…

Juno: Hi! Were you watching the sunrise?

Rowan: I was trying to, but with all this smog it's not easy...

Juno: The air quality in this season it's just terrible, that's true... Rather, the paint buckets and floor tiles we ordered should arrive at the store today. Are you still sure you want to try doing the renovations on our own?

Rowan: Sure, it's not the first time I've done something like this.

Sure, renewing the whole house will take a while, hiring someone for the job would definitively save us a lot of time (but would make the cost rise a lot too). But I had done it many times already back in Sulani, the scout group was often asked to help every time someone had some renovations to do in their houses. For sure it will take a lot of time, but it's not like we have to do everything all at once anyway. Our house is about to improve a lot, that's for sure.

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Some other months later...

Rowan: Assembling this flooring was trickier than I was expecting, but the results aren't bad at all, right?

Juno: I was expecting it to be even more difficult instead. But now I'm so happy, everything is so much prettier now!

Of course, we only used recycled and low environmental impact materials for the renovations. We have also ordered a couple of rainwater collectors and some solar panels for the roof, which should be available within a few months.

In a polluted place like this our effort might seem as useless as trying to empty an ocean with a teaspoon, but this does not seem like a sufficient reason to give up before even trying.

Juno: I really like the colour of the walls, it turned out even better than I imagined looking at the catalogue in the store. And…

Beep beep!

We were suddenly interrupted by a notification on my cell phone. So, instinctively, I took it out of my pocket to check what it was about.

Rowan: …

Juno: Did something happen?

Rowan: (puzzled) It looks like an urgent work email.

Then I showed her the phone screen, so that also she could read the words "URGENT, READ NOW!" which had been used as the object. I was trying to work from home as little as possible, but I couldn't ignore that message too. And Juno seemed to agree, because she immediately told me:

Juno: Don't worry, if I received an email like that I would rush to my work PC too.

So I immediately went to my PC to figure out what it was. The more I read the more I was surprised, did they really manage to find decisive evidence for that case of...

Juno: Is there any issue at your office?

Rowan: No, it's quite the opposite, actually. It looks like the names of a few companies involved in that money laundering ring I've talked about a few times are finally starting to surface. It seems lilke the police is still unsure about the method they used to launder the money, but at this point it won't be long before that detail will come up too.

Juno: Oh, that sounds great!

Juno seemed at least as happy as I was about that news, at least until she got close enough to read the lists of company names and numbers on the screen.

Juno: ... How strange, a lot of the companies on that list are also our customers, you know?

Rowan: Are you sure?

Juno: Yes, of course, I see those names all the time in our monthly budget sheets, and...

Then you Juno went pale, suddenly falling silent.

Rowan: (worried) Hey, is something wrong?

Juno: ... Also the numbers in the last column are the same as our budgets, they correspond precisely with the amount they pay us every month.

I was able to make the connection, and therefore understand why Juno seemed so upset, a few moments later. The column of that table to which she was referring to corresponded to the undeclared earnings of each of those companies, or even to the money they earned from illegal activities, but we were not yet aware of the method they used to launder that money. But if those exact figures were really paid every month to the company where Juno worked, then it was difficult not to suspect that…

Juno: I can't believe it, it's not possible that our company may be laundering so much illegal money!

We talked about it again and again, late into the night, because this news took that old case I'd been working on for so long to a whole new level.

In some ways I am also frustrated by this situation, that case had been the most interesting procedure going on at our firm for ages, until a few hours before I couldn't wait to obtain new evidence to finally be able to close it. 

But now we found ourselves personally involved in the case, placing the matter on a completely different level. The more we compared the information in our possession, the more evident it seemed that Juno's company was guilty of an unprecedented money laundering ring, for which the contracts for the ecological transition of their customers suspiciously appeared as a mere method to cover their illicit activities.

What should we have done? If we had brought all these new elements to court, the company where Juno worked would have closed and she would certainly have lost her job, and perhaps she would have even risked being included among the suspects. However, on the other hand, it would be morally wrong to pretend not to know and allow such illicit activities to continue.

Juno: It seems so absurd to me, all the nice words about promoting the green transition, and all the work we've done... And it was all for a farce?

Rowan: … What are you going to do?

Juno: I do not know! Instinctively I would never want to work for them again, they basically fooled me until now! But I'm also afraid that after working in that place for so long I may have inadvertently helped them in whatever they're doing, I don't want to be arrested or anything like that!

Juno: (scared) You're the lawyer, what do you think I should do?

I thought about it for a few more moments. Realistically, how much was Juno risking? Had she committed any illegal act? And morally what should we be giving priority to?

Rowan: (serious) Honestly, I think you should testify. It's only a matter of time, even if you aren't the one to lead the detectives on the right path, sooner or later other evidence will come out and your bosses will be incriminated. But it would be the right thing to do, and even if any evidence against you was found, you would certainly find yourself in a much more favourable situation if you cooperated with the police from the beginning.

Juno: I see... But you would help me, right?

Rowan: Well... the law firm I work at will handle the prosecution of the incriminated companies, I certainly couldn't help you on that side. Anyway, from the moment your name came out, I would no longer be allowed to continue working on it.

Juno: …

Rowan: However, at that point, I don't think anyone could stop me from being your defence lawyer. After all, in this country, everyone has the right to be defended in court by whomever they choose.

Juno nodded, but she continued to seem troubled and afraid of what awaited her.

But after all those years I thought I knew her enough to know that she would, in the end, decide to do what was right, no matter how hard it was. And, as if to confirm it, shortly afterwards she said to me:

Juno: I think that in the end I would have testified anyway, it would be the only right thing to do. But I'm so scared...

Rowan: I'm sure you haven't done anything wrong, you'll see that everything will be fine.

And I sincerely hope that this is really the case, you don't know how much, my dear a diary…

Next Chapter -->

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§HermioneSims§ corner (yes, another one)

I know, you may be thinking I'm too evil with my sims, I didn't give them even a single nice chapter to recover from the previous story ard! However, I'm here to say that this is actually a chapter suggested by the gameplay, and not by my evil mastermind. 

Basically, you have to know that in-game Juno is working in the political career from the City Living EP, in the charity organiser branch. She had a promotion around this time, and I started to see notifications when she was at work saying stuff like:

Translation:

"Juno writes an email to the accountant, 

who explores the matter and finds out that

a close organisation is laundering illegal money!

Juno informs the authorities and receives a price

for her honesty"

This is actually a notification she received several times, and that popped out for the first time after I started to write about the money laundering case related to Rowan's job. Also considering that I had no idea yet about how to conclude the laundering storyline, I told myself: