Chapter 18

About the wedding, well it was; just ask Jess. Yup, finally happened for real. Nothing really changed, I thought of her as my wife long ago. Jess would always be Jess and me ... well that’s a deep subject. Brenda caught the bouquet. Jeff and Bren gave a combined gift; 2 large drones and had them land at the ranch next to ‘Black Beauty II’; his and hers I guess. I wanted the silver one with the 20mm cannons.

Bren and Jeff never left each other’s side. Jess told me Jeff was getting a divorce so ... Bren seemed happy at that she said. I had a question, a serious one. What were we going to do with 11 toasters, inquisitive minds wanted to know?

We, Jess and I; all of us really had reached the saturation point with all that we were doing. There were more things we could do than we had hands and the time to carry-on with even half of them.

In a ‘Family’ meeting one day; ‘What to do about it’ was discussed. No one offered an answer. One recurring question during those 6 hours was: ‘How much money was enough and how much was too much if... ‘

Jess was undecided; Tony wanted 4 grand kids, he even threatened to assign that task to Lila if we ... A sort of temp solution presented itself, almost. Amazon, food, the PC and video library and, and ... That was still unanswered, what else?

Vince wanted to include the casinos and lottery. Tony made a plea that ‘most(almost) facets of The Business were legit now) right and Jess and I were getting them anyhow.

That decision of where to expand was answered when the whole world began to turn to shit. People started to die, factories, small business and most customer contact operation were folding left and right. Four in-process deals were put on hold, our ‘war chest’ of $25 and $ 10 billion respectively, became our survival fund. Of course crime, gaming and ‘entertainment’ remained good as ever.

Jess had lasted most of those 6 hours but she was not herself. I asked her: “Whats up?” three different times. In the 5th hour she leaned over and whispered: “You may become a Daddy in about 8 months.”

She went over to Tony and must have repeated what she told me because he leaned right and fell off his chair. Needless to say that last hour did not accomplish much except watching Tony and I mimic a mirror, looking at each other then back to Jess who just smiled.