Hong Kong variety show: The mastermind behind the scenes is emerging.

Turin.

The winters in this city are colder and grayer than in any other city in Italy.

Snowy winds from the Alps swept in along the Po River valley, carrying with them white smoke billowing from the industrial chimneys, shrouding the entire city in a hazy, gray fog.

Unlike Rome, which is full of Baroque fountains and Renaissance domes, Turin is straight, with a checkerboard pattern of streets and Neoclassical box-like buildings. Even the plane trees lining the streets are trimmed like soldiers standing in formation waiting for inspection.

This is a city shaped by Fiat; every brick, every chimney, and every asphalt road is inextricably linked to the Agnelli family name.

At this moment, the city, which Fiat holds in its grasp, is experiencing an unprecedented fire.

The fire was lit by Lu Chen himself, and it burned all the way from Rome to Turin, then spread from Turin to Milan, and finally crossed the Atlantic Ocean, causing a complete sensation in the Western world.

……

On January 16, Fox News, owned by Golden Harvest Holdings, aired a 12-minute feature during prime time in North America titled "Cocaine and Cadiz: The Two-Sided Crisis of the Fiat Empire."

A seasoned commentator with a thick Texas accent famously said to the camera: "This company has the blood money of dictators in its left hand and supports drug-addicted successors in its right."

Subsequently, this sentence was cut into a 15-second audio clip and broadcast repeatedly during news segments on major radio stations across North America.

In Asia, ATV's evening news also devoted nearly half an episode to reporting on Edoardo Jr.'s scandal.

The accompanying photo is a picture of him taken in Argentina—Edoardo Jr. is standing on the deck of a white yacht, his sunglasses askew, his shirt wide open, and his Latina companion laughing and sticking out her buttocks, on which there is a suspicious white powder, while Edoardo Jr. is leaning close to her.

ATV did not comment on the photo, but simply added a caption at the bottom of the image: "Fiat heir Edoardo Agnelli, photographed last summer."

Even more fatally, as the media frenzy intensified, old grievances hidden in the cracks of post-war Italian history began to be uncovered page by page.

The first to strike was the French newspaper Le Monde, which unearthed a copy of a 1943 German-Italian trade agreement from the national archives. The agreement clearly stated that Fiat had produced more than 3,000 military trucks and 400 tank engines for the German armed forces during Mussolini's rule.

This intelligence was included in the "defascistization" censorship files at a high price by the Agnelli family back then, but unexpectedly, a copy still exists in Gaul.

At this moment, it was reprinted in a large print by a reporter from Le Monde, with a thoughtful old photograph attached next to it—the elder Agnelli and Mussolini standing side by side in the Turin workshop, Mussolini's hand on the shoulder of the old chairman Giovanni Agnelli, smiling like old friends.

The headline in Le Monde consisted of only three words: "Commercial Fascism".

The next day, The Guardian followed up, The New York Times followed up, and even The Washington Post, which never bothered to report on Italian news, published a signed article in its opinion section with an even harsher title—"From Mussolini to Gaddafi: Fiat's Fascist Genes."

The author weaves together the collaboration between the elder Agnelli and the fascists, Gianni Agnelli's dealings with the Soviet Union, and Gattuso's shareholding history into a narrative spanning half a century, before arriving at a chilling conclusion that sends shivers down the spines of the entire Agnelli family: "The company's business model was never about building cars, but about making deals with dictators."

One tabloid went even further, featuring an illustration on its front page—Fiat's four-ring logo was changed to a skull wearing a fascist armband and sucking on a cocaine straw.

This time, even the most composed board members couldn't sit still.

It's important to remember that only forty years had passed since the Allied liberation of Italy, when Mussolini was shot by partisans on the shores of Lake Como, and his body was hung upside down from the beam of a gas station in Piazza Loreto.

Many of those who survived the concentration camps are still alive, and veterans of the resistance who fought guerrilla warfare on the Apennine Peninsula with rifles can still go to vote with the aid of canes.

The word "fascism" was as damaging in Europe as "heresy" was in the Middle Ages—once you were associated with it, you couldn't get rid of it without suffering a severe blow.

This is no longer a public relations crisis; it's a political death sentence.

……

On the evening of January 19th, in the top-floor office of the Turin headquarters.

Gianni Agnelli stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, gazing at the snow-covered Alps in the distance.

Although he is 65 years old this year, he still stands tall like a cavalry officer, and the wrinkles on his face look like they were carved out of oak with a chisel.

He held a glass of bourbon without ice in his hand, twirling the rim of the glass around his fingertips twice, but didn't drink a drop.

The administrative secretary behind him looked worried: "Chairman, the board of directors has sent another inquiry, hoping you can handle this matter properly..."

"...I understand. Arrange a press conference," he said to his secretary behind him, "tomorrow morning."

"clear."

……

The next morning at 10:00 AM, in the lobby on the first floor of Fiat headquarters.

This hall is usually used as a car showroom. In the center is a replica of the Fiat 500 Topolino, and next to it is the latest Ferrari Testarossa, symbolizing two glorious moments in Fiat's history.

The two cars have now been temporarily removed and replaced with a podium, behind which hangs a huge Fiat diamond logo.

Despite the public relations department filtering out many radical tabloids in advance, the presence of major global media outlets such as the BBC, CNN, Reuters, AFP, and the Italian national television station still packed the entire exhibition hall to capacity.

At exactly 2 p.m., Gianni Agnelli walked in through the side door.

Today he was wearing a dark blue three-piece suit, a white shirt, a silver-gray tie, and a neatly folded white handkerchief in his left breast pocket.

He walked to the podium, placed his hands on the table, and looked around at the long lenses and microphones in the room.

"First of all, thank you to all the media friends for being here today," Gianni began slowly. "Over the past few weeks, the Fiat Group and my family have suffered numerous unfair accusations. I am standing here today to give a clear and unambiguous response to all these rumors."

"First point—Fiat was never an accomplice of fascism; Fiat itself was a victim of fascism," he paused, then raised his left hand above the podium, fingers spread, palm facing outward, like a witness taking an oath in court.

"Of course, many people here may disagree with this statement. After all, many people believe that the Agnelli family were partners of fascism, and that the Agnelli family amassed their wealth through war..."

Gianni admitted that his grandfather, Giovanni Agnelli, did indeed have business dealings with the Mussolini government in the 1920s. However, that cooperation was not an ideological alliance, but rather the only option to protect businesses and workers from further harm by the fascist regime under the political realities of the time.

After all, even without Fiat's factories, Mussolini would have found other suppliers. But without Fiat's factories—what would have become of the workers on those production lines, the technicians who had spent decades in the workshops, and the civilians with nowhere to escape under fascist rule?

He paused briefly, lowering his hand to rest on the edge of the podium. Then he brought up a story deliberately ignored by most media outlets—during the war, Fiat's factory sheltered thousands of displaced Italian civilians, as well as at least dozens of Jewish refugees, during the massive bombings.

These people were registered on the factory roster as "temporary workers," but Fiat never actually let them work a single day on the assembly line. They simply needed a hiding place, a space to survive between the fascist ideological machine and Allied bombing.

"Yes, my family once ran a business under Mussolini's shadow." Gianni looked at the audience, his voice rising slightly. "Yes, I myself was swept up in the tide of war—I was drafted into the army when I was young, but I never pledged allegiance to the fascists!"

"In September 1943, Italy surrendered to the Allies, and Mussolini established a puppet regime in the north—I refused to serve that puppet regime. I used my family's personal connections with high-ranking political and business figures in the United States and Britain to come to the south and join the Allied Liaison Office, where I served as a liaison officer to help the Allies advance in Italy. In other words, I was a member of the Allies, and so was my family."

There was a brief silence after he finished speaking.

Several veteran journalists sitting in the front row exchanged glances. They knew that Gianni's resume was true—the Agnelli family did indeed side with the Allies at the end of World War II, and Gianni himself did serve in the Allied Liaison Office; this was a fact that could be verified in the archives.

The problem is that Jani rearranged this history with extremely clever rhetoric: he divided the family's fate into two parts, the period before the 1940s as "business in the shadows" and the period after September 1943 as "the Allied camp".

He cleverly evaded sharp accusations such as manufacturing arms for the fascists and enjoying protective tariffs, using his latter role as an "Allied liaison officer" to exonerate himself from the former. The implication was: if my family were truly accomplices of the fascists, why would the Allies reuse me after the victory?

This narrative may be full of flaws in historical research, but it is perfectly adequate for a crisis public relations press conference, at least enough to remove the label of fascism.

Immediately afterward, before the silence from the audience could escalate into a new round of questioning, Jani quickly shifted the focus to Gaddafi's shareholding.

"It is a fact that Cavalieri holds 15 percent of Fiat's shares through LAFICO, and I cannot and need not deny it. This investment took place in 1976, when Fiat had just suffered the double blow of the oil crisis and the shrinking Italian domestic market, with a production line shutdown rate as high as 40 percent and the company's cash on hand only enough to sustain operations for six months."

"Without that $400 million external investment, the Turin factory wouldn't have survived that year. As the chairman of Fiat, my most important responsibility at that moment wasn't choosing the cleanest investor in the world—but protecting my workers from layoffs, protecting my supply chain from disruption, and protecting the Fiat brand from being eliminated by history. So, I accepted the Libyan investment. This was a business decision I made under specific historical circumstances, and I, Gianni, am willing to take full responsibility."

He used the word "I," not "the Agnelli family," not "the board of directors," and certainly not "historical reasons." Between personal reputation and company honor, he wanted to choose to shoulder the entire burden himself.

"However, times have changed. Gaddafi's support for international terrorism is something I, along with the Agnelli family, deeply abhor. I fully understand and support the Reagan administration's sanctions against Libya. Therefore, in the same week the sanctions were announced, I officially initiated an orderly buyback process—we will use our own funds to buy back those 15% of shares at a reasonable premium!"

Upon hearing about the buyback plan, a stir broke out in the audience.

Jani raised his hand and pressed it down, silencing the murmurs.

"Finally," he said, "about my son—Edoardo Agnelli the Younger."

The atmosphere on stage suddenly became tense when this matter was mentioned.

"My son has made many mistakes over the past few years, and as his father, I bear an undeniable responsibility. I am not here today to defend him; I stand here to take on this responsibility. Because he is my son, his failure is my failure."

He took off his glasses, rubbed his temples deeply with his thumb and forefinger, paused for a few seconds, and then put them back on.

"Therefore—I declare!" His voice returned to its cold and decisive tone.

"From today onwards, Edoardo Agnelli will no longer be considered the heir to the Fiat Group. The Fiat succession will be re-established, and the Agnelli family will designate a new legal heir. All my personal shares will be protected and managed through the joint decision-making of the board of directors of the family trust fund to ensure that the Agnelli family's long-term commitment to Fiat is not affected by any personal actions."

The audience was silent.

Three seconds later, the spotlights exploded like a storm, illuminating the untouched glass of water on the podium until it was pure white.

Gianni Agnelli did not accept any questions. He bowed slightly, turned, and walked off the podium.

A reporter noticed that his back was slightly more hunched than when he went on stage.

……

Two days later, at Fiat headquarters in Turin, in the boardroom.

The conference room was full of people—the CFO, the General Counsel, the head of public relations, several core board members, and Jani, whose hair had turned completely white overnight.

The blinds in the conference room were all drawn, blocking out the dim midday sunlight of Turin in winter.

"What is the funding gap for the buyback plan?" Jani sat in the main seat of the boardroom on the top floor of Fiat headquarters, rubbing his temples. The various crises of the past two days had left him exhausted.

The CFO opened the report and his finger stopped on a line of numbers: "Three hundred and fifty million US dollars, but on the condition that the Alfa Romeo acquisition must be suspended—with our current cash flow, we really cannot afford such a huge acquisition."

"We can't postpone it," Gianni refused decisively. "The Alfa Romeo acquisition is crucial to our group's ten-year strategy, and we must continue... We need to apply for a loan from Credit Suisse. Our current debt ratio is still within a safe range, and they should agree..."

The directors exchanged glances, but no one objected.

"Bang!--"

Just then, the heavy oak door of the conference room suddenly swung open, and the door frame slammed against the wall with a dull thud.

Jani's secretary walked in, holding a fax paper in her hand.

Jani's administrative secretary rushed in, pale-faced, clutching a fax paper.

"Sir—news just came from the Ministry of Industry: this morning, Prime Minister Bettino signed an internal resolution. The government has decided to withdraw its support for Fiat's acquisition of Alfa Romeo and instead engage in exclusive negotiations with the High Table Group!"

"Our informant told me that Bettino doubted our group's inability to afford the huge sums of money required for the acquisition, and therefore refused to cooperate with us."

The conference room immediately fell silent, the only sound being the warm air from the central air conditioning. All eyes were fixed on Gianni Agnelli.

"..." Jani took the fax paper expressionlessly, placed his right hand on the paper, and picked up his reading glasses with his left hand to put them on.

However, just as he picked up his glasses, a wave of dizziness washed over him, and the conference room in front of him turned into a blurry yellow-green mass, accompanied by a sudden ringing in his ears, as if someone were scratching the inside of his eardrums with a needle.

The next second, he lost control and fell forward, his back slamming heavily against the back of the swivel chair with a dull thud.

"Sir—Sir! Call an ambulance!!"

That afternoon, the reporters who stayed behind witnessed a white ambulance speeding out of the main gate, its blue siren swirling wildly against the leaden sky of Turin, before disappearing around the corner at the end of Boulevard Marconi.