“You could spin it. Say it was a gesture of trust.”
“I don’t trust anybody,” he said coldly.
“I met with the new distributor from Hungary. We won’t be able to meet that demand unless the harvest from the expansion is a success. I’m concerned about the soil there. It might be our land, but it’s acres away and on the other side of the hill, so I’m having a specialist come out and do a couple tests.”
“What will that matter?”
“Because if it’s not viable, we can save ourselves headaches and refunds by knowing now,” I said. “There are a few other outstanding balances, and Thomason said they’ve had some issues in America, so their next shipment is going to be delayed between one and two weeks.”
He gave another sigh in frustration. “Fucking idiots.”
“I don’t think it’s their issue, but a customs problem. They’ve had some changes in the States.”
“I don’t give a damn whose problem it is.”
“They’re loyal enough to be our exclusive distributor, so it would be stupid to give them shit. They could easily turn around and sell it to our competitors, but because Mary is your third cousin and family is family…no matter how diluted the blood is, they keep their word to us. So don’t you dare give them shit.”
My father released another irritated sigh. “You were gone for a little more than a week, and it immediately turned to chaos.”
“I’ve been doing it a long time.”
“Leo couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”
“Well, he can’t read,” I teased.
My father didn’t laugh, just continued to look at me with that stare he used to give me, like he was proud of me. It lasted for a couple seconds before he rose to his feet. “I’ll handle Rossi. Give me a list of names from the remaining outstanding balances. I’ll send the crew.”
I already had it written down on a piece of paper, and I pulled it out of the folder and placed it on the desk. “It’s all right here.”I closed the folder and walked out without expecting anything further from him. When I reached the doorway, he said my name.
“Frankie.”
I turned back to look at him.
“Good work.”
It may have only been a week, but since our production was constant, it required continued oversight. Without anyone monitoring the process, it could quickly get out of hand. That led me to the warehouse where we stored the barrels of wine and the bottles. Most of the barrels were purely decorative, and private estates ordered them to place on their property for aesthetic reasons. The majority of our product was bottled in our production warehouse on-site before it was moved to storage. We outsourced our deliveries to a trucking company that carried the wine across the sea on the ferry before heading north up the mainland.
I went to each location in the warehouse and did my rounds, keeping up with our current productivity and storage to make sure nothing was missing. Leo wasn’t involved in any of these aspects. He was mostly a foot soldier, doing my father’s bidding with Andre and Salvatore. He was good at that, but he really had no experience actually running anything.
And to be fair, neither did my father.
He used to do these things when I was younger, but once I was old enough, he happily handed it off so he could focus on the big-picture stuff.
I was in the warehouse when my phone rang. When I glanced at the screen, I saw Wolfe’s name.
I immediately answered it. “Hey.”
“Hey, baby. Are you on lunch?”
“No. What time is it?”
“Almost one.”
“Oh wow. I lost track of time.”
“That busy, huh?”
“Between the two different businesses, there are just a lot of moving parts. We’re also expanding the vineyards to produce a bigger harvest next year.”
