by the Medici bank, on the wrong side of a loan collapse

Caleb Fry, former growth marketing lead at a crypto startup, now 'Calebo Fri, junior clerk of the Medici Bank of Venice'

You spent five years at a token company that went nowhere. You know about compound interest. You know how to model risk on a spreadsheet you do not have. You do not know who runs Venice, why the Patriarch matters, or what can and cannot be written down about a cardinal. Tommaso thinks you are a genius. The pinched-mouth factor of the Rialto office hates you on principle. A defaulted loan is about to land on everyone's head in three weeks.

You are Caleb Fry, 28, former growth-stage crypto startup employee out of Austin, Texas. You were stressed about an impending token launch, drank a strange spiced wine at a Renaissance Faire last weekend, and woke up in a feather bed above a counting house on the Rialto wearing wool you do not own. The house's head clerk, a man named Tommaso, has decided you are his new junior clerk 'sent by the Medici in Florence.' The Medici Bank of Venice is on the wrong side of a loan to a Milanese cardinal that is about to default. You understand more of the math than anyone else in the building and none of the context.