“I wasn’t sure what to expect. You’re just a name. Most people don’t think you’re real, even if they have heard of you. But no, you don’t look like the leader of a crime syndicate to me.”

He chuckled. “A crime syndicate? Hardly. I’m merely a business man, one who happens to understand that morals and compassion are the biggest roadblocks to success.”

“Christopher said that you’re the biggest fish in the pond.”

Mobius shrugged. “In some respects, perhaps. But I like to diversify and keep my involvement limited. You see, I’ve built my empire by approaching people who I thought I could use. Then I assess their weaknesses and strengths and exploit them both. Felix Ginger for example. I blackmailed and threatened him with humiliation and death, but then I came in and—using the principles of process analysis and beyond the box thinking—I told him how to increase his profit margins and expand his business. He pays me a percentage and banks ten times what he was making before. A win-win situation.”

“And what if someone doesn’t want your advice or your partnership?”

“That depends. If you’re asking if I would kill them, then of course, I would do so without batting an eye. Back in England, my parents always knew there was something wrong with me. I felt no sympathy or empathy or attachment. So they took me to the shrinks, who diagnosed me at a young age as a classic psychopath.”

Isabel’s lip curled up in disgust, and her eyes grew large. She had met some crazies over the course of her career who would likely share that diagnosis, but she’d never heard someone claim to be one, or do so in such a conversational manner.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Psychopaths are serial killers and sexual sadists and blah blah blah. But the truth is that there are a lot more psychopaths in the world than you think, living perfectly normal lives, adapting, being quite successful. In fact, I find it somewhat prevalent among the CEOs of large corporations. It simply means that my brain and view of the world are different than that of the average person. Just because I’m a psychopath doesn’t mean that I want to kill you or that I enjoy killing. It just means that I have no problem with it. In most instances, killing people is messy and bad for business.”

“Good for you. That’s very reassuring.”

“I’m not trying to reassure you. Just telling you the way of things. You asked about what happens when someone doesn’t want to work for me. That’s simple. I don’t see all of you as ‘people’. I don’t care about your lives and your hopes and desires, at least not beyond the point of exploiting them for my own purposes. I merely see other people as tools to achieve my goals. If a hammer breaks, you don’t cry about it or worry about its feelings. You fix it, or you throw the bugger away and get a new one, whichever is more cost-effective. It’s simple logic and math. No emotion, just analysis and reaction. And I’m jolly good at both.”