Chapter 1

Peter couldn't believe what his ears were hearing.

"Do I understand you correctly sir? You not only want to buy Township Plumbing & Landscape services, our family business of over forty-five years, and merge it into your company operations but you also want to want me to marry your eldest daughter as well?" He asked, obviously very confused.

"In a nutshell, yes, but that's a bit of a crude generalization. Let's just say our dual family interests could be better served via a merger rather than a normal buyout. Our merged company, incorporated into the Alliance Services conglomerate, would then be the largest single home services provider in the entire three county area. One-stop customer service for electrical, heating, air conditioning, appliance repair ... and now plumbing and lawn sprinkler systems, with the addition of your business. We'd be the largest contractor in the entire Tri-city region." The older man sincerely replied.

"Think of it," The elderly titan of business, Mr. Bautista Minotas earnestly continued, "you would receive a more than fair price for Township's assets and a well compensated senior management position overseeing the plumbing division of the company. Everyone keeps their jobs, and everyone — including us, makes money. This alone would satisfy me, but what would really make this old man's heart happy would be to see my eldest daughter fixed in marriage with a most extremely suitable young man who could then hold the reins of this empire firmly in his hands someday upon my retirement."

"I don't think you're that old yet, Mr. Minotas!" Peter laughed, with just a slight hint of unsettled nerves.

"It's never too early to be thinking about the future." He replied with a laugh. "Besides, gaining the hand of my daughter presents certain challenges not unlike managing a successful business empire and this would be most suitable training for a young executive. My younger daughter Bianca is already well beset with several suitable suitors, but her mother would see our eldest, Katherine setting off into married life first, and this presents certain ... challenges."

'Challenges' was a bit of an understatement as far as Pete was concerned. Katherine, or rather 'Kate' was famous and infamous in the tri-city party circuit as one of the top local party girls, ever constantly on the lookout for her next thrill fix or public indiscretion. She adored publicity, even if it landed her on the scandal pages of the local newspaper. She was absolutely shameless and beyond any reins of practical decorum.

She was notoriously wild, uncontrolled like the ocean wind of the El Nino - hot and stinging. She left a trail of abandoned and ruined lovers in her wake and had been responsible, if the tabloids were even half accurate, for the destruction of several previous suitors' finances and reputations. Her name was becoming poison at the highest levels of the tri-city coastal society, but still her name and notoriety continued to open some lower, and more infamous doors for her. Not yet thirty she was already old and worn beyond her years as she disregarded any prudence and all sense of discretion in her daily affairs.

Pete, being a basically sensible man, decided that there weren't enough stock options in the world to dip a single toe in that well frequented and rather acidic pond.

Mr. Minotas was not the kind of man to give up easily and his counter-offers were certainly enough to make Pete think twice. Literally he was now passing up a fortune!

"You will receive ten percent of preferred stock in Alliance Services just to make an honest concerted effort, to try your best until even I admit it's hopeless. With another fifteen percent on the date of your marriage. Plus another percent for each year of the marriage. And for each grand-child, another five percent! Up to the 82% of stock that I own."

He was certainly quite willing to put his money where his mouth was! This was a huge fortune!

Mr. Minotas was quite right that the combined merged company would have a near monopoly over household repair and maintenance services for several counties around the tri-city area. Even a single percentage of this preferred stock was said to be worth nearly a million dollars! The profits over time would certainly significantly increase after the merger.

"You make an extremely tempting offer Mr. Minotas, only a fool would pass up such a fortune and the chances of earning so much more ... but I'm inclined to believe that your daughter is not particularly the matrimonial kind, nor am I entirely sure that I'm particularly suited on that front either."

"The fact that you have such doubts, and can express them honestly to me merely confirms the trust that I feel you are worthy off. Preparing for these merger talks I have investigated your manner and habits quite carefully, and you are a indeed a careful and circumspect man ... but I feel that inside of you, you possess the firmness of purpose and the boldness that would make you a most desirable son-in-law. No action is required of you at this time, and this offer is not any sort of prerequisite or requirement for our merger. I merely offer it as an attractive opportunity to you, as an option for your later consideration."

"I shall consider it, Sir, however I do feel that your daughter is highly unlikely to be receptive to my advances. She has money and interests all of her own and our paths are unlikely to cross except by direct intervention. I fail to see at all how she would ever be likely to consider me as a romantic interest, let alone as a potential husband."

"That, my good young Sir, you should leave up to me!" The old gentleman chortled. "The high flying and quite imperious falconess of the social stratosphere is about to be brought down to the roost and have her wings clipped ... probably indefinitely. You may find upon our next encounter, at a more purely social occasion, that her attitude and behavior may be a bit more circumspect. In short, I'm going to slash her allowance to virtually nothing and let her stew at home for awhile. Undoubted in a few weeks you might find her feeling a bit more congenial and perhaps even connubial!"

The business and pleasantries now completed, the two soon-to-be partners shook hands and concluded the meeting. Projected inter-family ties or not, the purely business parts of the merger was simply too lucrative to pass up and even the old-timers, his father's old co-workers and fellow cronies would be pushing at him to accept the offer, for the job security if nothing else. Indeed, the old family company was well known and highly respected, but the recent economic downturn had been hard on them recently. Oh, the company was in no danger of folding up or closing, but some lay-offs had been recently considered and economic belt-tightening was very much the order of the day. The merger with the services giant Alliance would prevent all of that. To save the jobs and the future of the company, Pete was willing to make just about any sort of reasonable deal.

This deal was very, very reasonable and Mr. Minotas had a very stern, but honorable reputation. He fought competitors fiercely, and with every legal trick in the book, but to his friends and allies he was stalwart. His word would indeed be his bond.

Mr. Bautista Minotas wasn't quite the devil incarnate, but this would mean the end of nearly fifty years of independence. His late father would have quite understood the situation, but his widow and his oldest son, Pete's brother would not be quite so understanding. Fortunately Pete was the company president now and had sole control over the vast majority of the family shares. Still, informing them that the old family business had been sold off would not be a pleasant meeting!

"Your sainted father would be rolling in his grave now to see you just give away everything he worked so hard all of his life for!" Pete's mother sobbed loudly in her handkerchief in a posed and highly exaggerated fashion. His mother Patricia was always given to stage hysterics at any minor inconvenience or disruption to her life and Pete was well used to living with it for over thirty years. She could turn the waterworks on and off like a switch and the act was so old that it fooled absolutely no one. His father had admitted more than once during his life that he worked long hours and made the business a success largely to avoid returning home at a reasonable hour to face his wife each evening.

"Bullshit mother! Our 'blessed father', that paragon of hard work and all other virtues, spent most of the last ten years of his life trying to sell ... I mean give away - this company to anyone that would sit down long enough to listen. The best offer he ever got, the year before his death was about a thousand dollars a share. Today, Alliance's offer is a little over thirteen thousand dollars a share. He wanted you and Rennie to have a secure trust income and not to depend upon the business — that had always been his primary goal. Times were fairly bad a few years ago. Business is better now, but it might not stay that way and even now we're not really running much of a profit. Things could very easily be worse next year. If dad is trying to stand up and shout from his coffin at all, it would be to say "Goddamn right! Take the money — Hell Yes!"

Privately, Pete had expected his older brother William Renault, called 'Rennie' nearly exclusively, to take his side. He was only a nominal stockholder in the family business and pretty much hated having to work for a living anyway. In his heart of hearts, Rennie would want the cash money — in a heartbeat. But since this was a family business meeting, Rennie just couldn't resist the opportunity to stand up for his mother and try to make his smarter little brother look stupid or petty.

Thankfully, logic and rational debate weren't Rennie's strengths, and as usual he had already had three or four drinks before the meeting ever started. He lumbered off target quickly and raged for the thousandth time about how he had been 'cheated' out of his rightful share of the family business and how it had been stolen from him. It was an old sad (and wildly innacurate) story that Rennie could recite in his sleep (or dead drunk, as he often way) that had even less sincerity, and far less validity, than even his mother's frequent theatrical dramatics.

"You stole this company from me! Poor Dad was sick on his deathbed and you browbeat him into giving you the controlling interest in the company and pushed me out! If I'd been left in control, it would have been Alliance coming to us ... hat in hand, and we'd be the ones buying them out right now instead!"

Figures, another discussion of the same old tired crock of shit all over again. Pete sighed.

"Rennie, you ran this company alone by yourself for almost a full year after dad's first heart attack while I was off at college and you, all by yourself, nearly put us completely out of business and into bankruptcy. You fired half of Dad's long time employees because they wouldn't kowtow to you and then you also pissed off most of our biggest longtime corporate customers as well. Some of them are still so pissed that they won't come back and do business with us over ten years later! It was Dad who fired you, all by himself and then he pulled me out of college, where I was quite happy to be, to try and drag what was left of the company out of the fire. I didn't expect any thanks from either you or mother, but if I hadn't taken over this company we would have been in bankruptcy within another six months and we'd have lost everything! If I hadn't taken over the company, more than likely you'd be now flipping burgers for a living somewhere instead of stealing from the petty cash drawer and earning an unfortunately large paycheck that you've never once earned or deserved."

"How dare you!" Patricia roared, coming in at once at the first sign of trouble to defend, as usual, her favorite son. "Why Rennie works his fingers to the bone and..."

"Comes in drunk every single morning late, usually about 10 a.m, or sometimes closer to eleven!" Pete retorted, calmly but firmly, daring his mother to meet his eyes. She knew the real truth, dozens of times over, but couldn't ever face admitting it. Rennie was a lazy wastrel who had no ambition or desire for anything other than the easy path in life. This fight was now on old and very familiar ground.

"Then he sleeps in his back office for an hour or two until lunch when he goes over to Rusty's Tavern for four or five beers and stays until at least 2 p.m., after which he takes another nap in his office until he 'leaves early for a meeting' every afternoon sometime after 4 p.m. to return to Rusty's for another couple of beers before he goes off elsewhere to do some really serious drinking." Pete added, giving the dagger of truth another sharp twist.

"It's the pressures of the job! You know how delicate his health is and you've never done anything to help him, except to put even more pressure on him!"

"The only thing Dad and I have ever asked of Rennie, was to show up to work on time and actually do something, anything to justify even the slightest amount of his pay. He has basically stolen from the company every single minute that he has been on the payroll, in addition what he swipes from the office petty cash drawer for drinking money. Those days are now going to be over. Alliance will probably merge our parts department with theirs and Rennie will now have to report to a new boss that won't care if he runs crying home to his mother's skirts anytime anyone says anything mean or cruel to him. The big thief is going to have to learn how to work for a living now or he'll find his lazy ass out on the curb ... and it's about time, too! After all, Rennie is thirty-five now ... isn't it time he learned how to grow up?"

Pete turned to leave and caught from the corner of his eye a glimpse of Rennie's fist heading towards the side of his head. It was just a glancing blow, but enough to knock Pete into the side of the living room wall, knocking down several old family photos. Typical. When Rennie couldn't win by wits, he'd resort to the sucker-punch — the same tired trick that his brother had done all of his life since they were boys. Pete remained on his feet and was wary for the next blow, but Rennie withheld it. His drink dimmed brain had realized that his sneak attack had failed and that he would now be in for a fair fight if he continued, and he was just barely sober enough to realize that he wouldn't like the odds much.