Money was something Hunter did not really lack now.
Over the past few months, he had swallowed up several black-market fortunes.
He had also found a sunken ship full of gold in the Bahamas.
Altogether, the wealth he had accumulated was already close to two billion U.S. dollars.
Although most of it was still in the form of gold, antiques, and jewelry that could not be used directly for now, all of those things could be sold at any time.
However, since Hunter did not have that many ways to spend money right away, and since the Continental Hotel, Diana, and the forces behind her kept giving him jobs that paid very high commissions, he did not have any immediate plans to sell off his gold and treasure.
Still, money was a good thing, and he definitely did not mind getting more.
After a quick count, Hunter concluded that he had pulled about 330 to 340 million dollars from that casino magnate.
Because some luxury goods were difficult to price, he could only come up with an approximate figure.
He soon put the safe and its contents away separately.
As Hunter's private space grew larger and larger, he was now even able to designate different areas inside it for storing different types of things.
Since he had already remembered it, there was no reason not to open the three safes and lockboxes he had taken from the drug lord Frank D'Amico as well, and see what was inside.
Very quickly, he took out a private safe and two smaller lockboxes from his private space.
He started with the larger safe.
He took his time, spending more than twenty minutes before finally cracking it open completely.
These private safes were extremely expensive, often costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In the United States, there were huge numbers of middle- and upper-class people, along with vast numbers of people from other countries who had fled there because of coups, corruption, and similar reasons.
So high-quality private safes still had a strong market, both on the second-hand market and in the black market.
Unlike the private safe he had just opened, this one from Frank D'Amico only had four layers.
But to his surprise, there were no gold bars inside.
The first and second layers held five unusual weapons.
When Hunter picked them up, he realized they were all different.
Four of them were handguns: a Desert Eagle, an M1911A1, a Glock 17, and an eight-inch Colt Python revolver.
The reason these four handguns had been placed in the safe was that their frames seemed to be made of gold, and they were covered with all kinds of gemstones.
Hunter took them out one by one and used his gem appraisal skill, which he had triggered but not used much since obtaining it, to make a simple assessment.
He could basically confirm that the diamonds and gemstones on the guns were real.
Some of them were even more than two or three carats, genuine high-grade stones.
He did not know the exact value of these weapons, but after a rough estimate, he could tell that the four guns together were probably worth no less than ten million dollars.
After all, weapons like these had almost no practical use.
They were basically just display pieces, the kind that looked pleasing to the eye.
The item stored alone in the next layer was an assault rifle.
Hunter was now considered something of an expert in military weapons, so he could tell at a glance that it was modeled after the Soviet AK series.
From the details, it looked like an AK-74.
The reason he thought it was a replica was that, like the four handguns in the safe, the whole thing was mainly made of gold and was also inlaid with a large number of diamonds and gemstones.
It gave off a very flashy, nouveau riche feeling and was clearly more of a decorative collector's item.
When Hunter picked up the replica AK-74, he immediately felt its weight.
"Wow. This has to weigh fifteen or twenty kilos at least. Looks like even the stock is made of gold, not wood inside."
Hunter himself had collected several AK-series rifles, so he knew that a normal one weighed only about four or five kilos.
This gold replica AK being so heavy meant the material used was clearly very substantial.
As for its value, Hunter could not estimate it exactly.
But after looking at the many diamonds and gemstones embedded in the gold AK, he guessed its value might even exceed that of the four handguns.
Still, he could not say for sure.
He then looked at the next two compartments.
One of them held several red cloth bags.
When Hunter opened them, he saw they were all diamonds.
Anything chosen and collected by that New York drug lord could not possibly be cheap or ordinary.
Most of them were processed loose diamonds, at least two or three carats each, with quite a few five- or six-carat stones among them.
After looking through them casually, Hunter even found one roughly ten-carat stone.
Conservatively speaking, if these diamonds were sold, they would be worth at least a hundred million dollars.
There were also several more bags, which contained uncut rough diamonds.
These rough stones were not small.
The smallest was at least ten carats.
The largest, Hunter estimated, was probably not less than forty carats.
But the most valuable of them all was a rough pink diamond that looked to be more than thirty carats.
Conservatively speaking, these stones were also worth over a hundred million dollars.
The fourth layer contained five document folders.
Hunter took one out and opened it, and his eyes lit up.
The folder contained records of a property purchased anonymously in New York.
It was a detached seaside villa on Long Island in New York, purchased two years earlier for more than 7.4 million dollars.
As the world's largest capitalist country, the United States had followed a money-first path since its founding.
Unless the U.S. government had political reasons to target someone, or the rich person's home country insisted on going after them, rich people from all over the world could enjoy something close to godlike treatment there.
A huge amount of black and gray capital therefore flowed into the United States.
It was not uncommon for wealthy people or foreign politicians to anonymously buy property and land there.
Most did so through professional agencies or shell companies.
Basically, as long as the U.S. government did not want to go after you, or there was no political pressure from another country, the government mostly turned a blind eye as long as property and land taxes were paid on time each month.
When Hunter bought his farm earlier, he had considered using a shell company too.
But back then, he had still lacked some confidence, so in the end he had chosen the more conservative option.
Now, this anonymous property bought by Frank was his.
At worst, he could sell it later and still make a lot of money.
He soon took out the other four folders, and indeed they all contained properties and land that Frank had bought anonymously.
One of them was a villa in Hawaii, also a detached seaside villa.
The other three folders contained, respectively, a ranch in Texas, with a total area of more than 40,000 acres.
Texas was one of the most famous agricultural states in the United States. Its soil was fertile and its water resources plentiful.
Hunter had looked into land prices there before. The average price of farmland in Texas was more than 2,000 to 5,000 dollars per acre.
Even using the average, that ranch would be worth over a hundred million dollars.
Unfortunately, that was redneck country.
The living environment for minorities in Texas was extremely harsh, and Hunter was not going to make life difficult for himself, so he would probably have to sell this ranch later, even if it pained him to do so.
But compared with that one ranch he had no choice but to sell, Frank's other two properties were very tempting.
One was a ranch on Canada's west coast, in British Columbia.
It included more than 37,000 acres of farmland and nearly 90,000 acres of forest.
Canadian land was naturally nowhere near as valuable as American land.
Hunter quickly checked prices on his phone and confirmed that it would not exceed five million dollars.
But more than 100,000 acres of farmland and forest, located in the sparsely populated British Columbia region of Canada, made it an excellent place to live in seclusion.
It seemed Frank had also known to leave himself a fallback.
That made sense.
If he had not had some brains, there was no way he could have been one of the biggest drug lords in New York and even in the entire United States for so many years.
The last property was a manor on Vancouver Island in Canada.
That manor covered more than twenty-five acres and had two separate villas, a garage, and a private small dock.
It would be a pretty good place for summer vacations and winter trips.
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