The Halfbreed Threat

Chapter 12 - Preparations - Part 1

"Send him in, Sam," Vincent said through the voice-com on her phone.

"This way, sir," she said opening the door for the tall stranger in a 4 piece dark blue suit.

"Thank you, miss..."

"Samantha. Would you like some coffee sir? Maybe tea or water?"

"Coffee, black and with a hint of cinnamon, if you please."

"Of course, sir. Coming right up," she said closing the door after him.

"Johnathan Gray! You are a hard man to get a hold of."

"Hello Trent. It's been a while. And Sam told me how you bullied your way into today's agenda."

"Well my friend, the matter was pressing. Well pressing for me, for you mostly profitable."

"Go ahead, I'm listening but I don't think we can do any better on the terms of our existing contract."

"It's not that. I find it fair as is. But I find myself in need of liquidities."

"You realize I'm not a bank, right? I don't give out loans."

"Nothing of the sort, John. But I need your permission to expand, my pack has grown."

"Keep your voice down, please. Sam is not in the loop."

"Understood. About the proposal? Allow me to apply for a permit to cover more land so I can extend my lumber business. I'm running out of fallen trees and you know I hate cutting down healthy ones."

"Remind me where you are now," Vincent said pulling and spreading out a map from one of his drawers.

"I'm working Manistee and Huron right now, but they are as healthy as possible. Unless a violent storm comes by, there is almost no wood left in those forest, without cutting the good trees down."

"So why don't you apply for Wisconsin?"

"Well I'm not getting shit if you don't agree with it. It's like you own the damn country. So which one should I go for?"

"All of them. As in the big three."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"I've seen the reports of what you did so far. Chequamegon doesn't have a service like you are providing active at the moment; Nicolet will have the lease expiring in 2 weeks and Headwaters is about to have it's contract denounced due to bad service."

"Wow that's... That's a lot! I'd actually have to expand and get more people."

"I want you to get a proposal ready. Oh and open a second company for furniture. I'll fund the second company 100% but you have to run it with your own people and it has to be under Evolight umbrella. You get to keep 20% of the profits from there. From the 3 new active forest sites you'll get, send 40% of the wood to our new furniture factory, and out of the 60% you sell, you keep 30% and send 70% my way and then we switch when you pay back the investment capital I'm making available to you so you can expand to handle the new work load. Or you bring your own company under Evolight and we simply go 50-50 from now on. Again you have to continue to run it as you have. Don't care what you do, just want to see the money rolling."

"That is... you have no idea how relieved I am right now."

"No sweat. There's a catch though."

"Oh? And what might that be?" Trenton said, wondering what he would have to do to make things happen. But as long as things were reasonable, even if he was on the losing side for a while, he had to take it.

*Author's Note

Many thanks for the reads, comments and votes (hopefully :D ).