The villa at the end of Narciselor Street is located at the very end of a dangerous road, surrounded by the fir-tree-covered peaks of the Carpathians.
Controversial influencer Andrew Tate's first Romanian address is a far cry from the glamorous life he paraded in Bucharest before he was detained - it's a squat three-storey building with yellow walls, a short drive from the village of Sacele.
The long road to get there from Bucharest winds for kilometers through the snow-covered forest, the branches thickly encased in ice right up to the roots, while mountain peaks loom on the horizon.
You feel like you are driving through a Christmas card.
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Near the village of Sačele, the frozen road, as it climbs towards the villa, narrows to the width of one car, with a steep precipice on one side.
No Ferraris here.
In front of the building, between the drifts of slushy snow, a dacha and Škoda are parked.
The interior is divided into small functional apartments.
Here, in apartments 9 and 17, the Tate brothers started building their Romanian business empire.
Both are currently in custody while Romanian authorities investigate whether they committed serious crimes of human trafficking, rape and sexual abuse.
Vasile Mezdrea, a local building developer, sold them these apartments "in 2015." or at the beginning of 2016", for less than 35.000 euros each.
"They paid in installments because they didn't have the money to immediately buy the flats in full," he tells me.
"They didn't have cars in those days - they took the girls in shopping taxis."
He says Andrew moved here with his British girlfriend Melissa, who bought a third flat in the same building.
According to the locals, she is not the only woman who lived there with her brothers.
Several people told us that the other women either lived in the apartments or visited regularly.
One person, who wished to remain anonymous, told us there were frequent complaints about visibly naked women in the Tate brothers' ground floor apartment.
There are very few people in the building itself who remember the Tates, and those who do are reluctant to talk about them officially.
"They were contemptuous, arrogant," says one neighbor.
"Very discreet - no loud music, no fights."
She says that their dog, a wolf, was left to roam freely in the building and at one point attacked a female tenant and left her bruised.
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Allegedly, nothing was done about the complaints against the brothers.
Seven years later, the brothers reportedly have a fortune of several million, and they lived in Bucharest owning designer watches, private jets and a portfolio of numerous properties.
In the village of Sačele itself, which has a post office, a pizzeria and slot machines, the Tates were most vividly remembered for their recent arrivals - their luxury cars could not remain unnoticed.
Vasile Mezdrea says they moved to Romania because the country has "beautiful women and is cheaper to live in."
However, as he says, the ambition of the brothers outgrew Sachele.
"They always wanted more," he tells me.
Sachele may seem like an unlikely place for two young British kickboxers to start their business careers, but this village reveals a connection with two people who will play a key role in their lives.
One is businessman Sebastian Vieru, who first brought the Tate brothers to Romania in 2014.
Originally from the Brasov district, near Sacela, Vieru brought them on several occasions as trainers or commentators for his organized cage fights.
Vieru was the one who revealed to the Tates the new residential building of Vasile Medrea near Sachela, telling them that the investor urgently needed funds to finish the building and that they would get apartments at a preferential price.
He says that Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate brought some money from the UK, but that their wealth has increased rapidly since they stayed in Romania.
Tracing their wealth - how it was created and where it came from - is believed to form an integral part of the investigation into allegations of rape and human trafficking currently being led by Romania's organized crime unit.
The apartments in Sachele seem to have brought them very little.
They sold them a few years later, when they moved to Bucharest, for a profit of only a few thousand euros.
But the brothers left this hiding place in the mountains to engage in a new business - Talisman Enterprises (Talisman Enterprises) was making money from a web portal, according to official Romanian records.
The company has not reported a profit since 2017.
Sebastian Vieru says that he works as a financial executor of the company, registered at an address 15 kilometers from Sachela, until recently owned by Vieru's parents.
He also has a 10 percent stake in a real estate company called Vor Rum Vegas (War Room Vegas), also registered at the same address, one of whose owners is Andrew Tate.
The other owner is Andrew's girlfriend Georgina Nagel, a former employee of Vieru's cage fighting company.
In August last year, according to official Romanian records, Andrew and Tristan transferred to her all their shares in Talisman Enterprise, as well as the administration.
The transfer of the company to Nagel, a Romanian national, took place four months after police launched an investigation against the brothers.
There is no evidence that the two events are connected.
Talisman Enterprise is also connected with another company that lists Nagel as the sole shareholder, administrator and beneficiary.
It is about a management consulting firm called New Era Learning (New Era Learning), founded in August 2022.
There are no official financial statements for this company.
The third company, a consulting firm called Groundbreaking Developments (Groundbreaking Developments), was also transferred to Nagel in August.
It was sold in October to another company owned by Abigail Tyson, who is believed to be a close associate of the Tate brothers.
Nagel is now in preventive detention along with the Tate brothers and another Romanian national, Luana Radu.
No charges have yet been brought against any of them.
Over the past few weeks, the investigation has seized a wide range of assets belonging to the suspects, including Talisman Enterprise.
The police also raided the brothers' property, including a property in Brasov district and houses in and around Bucharest.
Designer watches were also confiscated, and the brothers' luxury fleet was taken from their warehouse-like property on the outskirts of the capital.
Observers believe that most of the Tate's wealth came from investments in a large chain of Romanian casinos and online training courses according to Andrew Tate's strict model of how to experience masculinity.
The investigation could bring answers to questions about how the two managed to move from cheap mountain apartments to the world of Bugattis, cigars and private jets that they regularly reported on social media.
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