2 What happens in a Small Town

Nicholas

"Mr Bishop, there is a Miss Crowe here to see you..Alaia Crowe... She insisted that you will want to see her.."

My father's assistant Salva tells him as we are about to step into a meeting.

I crunch my eyebrows trying to remember knowing an Alaia Crowe. Ohh yes..Steven Crowe comes to mind... This must be his blind daughter we were talking about not too long ago, But what is she doing here, how did she get here?

"Have her wait for me in the lobby,, we will be with her when am done here". My father says, looking at me.

"We have more pressing issues to attend to at the moment." He says making me sigh, do i really have to be part of this today. I have other plans after this meeting.

Throughout the Meeting however, i couldnt help but think about this whole Steven Crowe fiasco and his daughter being here. She is probally here to beg for her father's freedom. Tsssst, i frown.

Am surprised my father is willing to entertain her, normally he wouldn't even have time to deal with such matters personally, but i guess the seriously of this project can be reflected in his willingness to meet with her and now am anxious to meet with her too. We really do need to wrap up this land thing, and time is not on our side.

As the meeting progresses, i couldnt help but recall the last time we met Steven Crowe, the bloody bastard. He is one of the engineers at one of our old electronic manufacturing plants in the small town of Rocky Hill, close to our city, Hartford, and a good one am told, but the man tried to steal from the company.

He and two other men from the company were trying to sneak some high tech equipment from the plant and sell to a private buyer. Luckily, we found out about it before it was too late and caught them red handed during a meeting with their buyer. We had them arrested soon after.

But as luck would have it, we came to find out, Crowe's family are owners of a diner that sits right in the heart of the piece of land that is very vital to the next project our company wants to embark on.

We bought off all the surrounding property but my team failed to reach an agreement with the owner of the diner who turned out to be Steven Crowe's family, the thief himself.

Unfortunately, due to a special condition, in the ownership of the property, it led to me joining our legal team to personally meet with him and try and negotiate a deal, which we then discovered would prove to be a bit of a complicated matter.

This offence on his part, should have made things easy to negotiate a good price for his property in exchange for his freedom, which is pretty straightforward, or so it should have been.. Turns out the original owner of the land, Steve's Mother left it to her first born granddaughter who happens to be blind by the way, who again is not allowed to sale or transfer ownership only until after her first wedding anniversary.

Psshhh, what kind of condition is that? The old woman must have been pretty desperate to insure her blind grand daughter is not taken advantage of by adding such a condition to the ownership so that no one marries her for the wrong reasons or something like that i assume.

Anyway, according to our investigations, the dinner is making a loss as of late, hence they are better off selling than holding onto it, especially now that the rest of the surrounding property has been bought off by us, but ofcourse the dilemma of that special condition still stands and since it seems no one has been willing to marry the poor girl so far, technically, they would not be able to sale even if they wanted to.

On top of that, they are basically drowning in some other debt, which would explain why the old man tried to steal from the company.

Anyway, last we spoke i made the man an offer that would sort out all his financial problems if he can find a loop hole in the contract and some how make the sale.

"Mr Bishop?

Mr Bishop" someone calls my name.

" Nicholas" My father Allesio, finally calls when i appeared to not actually be present in the meeting.

I snap out of my thoughts upon hearing my father call my name and find that everyone is looking at me expectantly. Ohh shit, the meeting.

"I will have the development team look into it..I expect to have a work plan delivered to me by friday.. So we should be looking to have this off the ground by Monday" i say in my business mode, tapping my fingers on the table.

Everyone seems satisfied with my response.

My father gives me a quick glance and shakes his head smiling. Hell yeah. My ability to multi task never ceases to amaze him.

The rest of the meeting goes on smoothly for about another hour after which, i walk out with my Father and brother Aaron, who also works at 'Bishop group of Companies' or 'Bishop Corp' as it is populary known.

My father is getting ready to retire due to health problems, so i have been slowly taking over most of his responsibilies in the company and also preparing to be chairman of the board.

I had to step back from my own businesses to take care of the main family business which mainly involves, Electronic, Automotive and Aircraft Manufacturing and Engineering.

"How are we doing with the land acquisition issue Nick? You just declared to the whole board to have things going by Monday, am i right to assume you finally made an agreement with Crowe?" My father asks with some worry evident on his face.

We have really been stuck concerning this issue with our team for obvious reasons for some weeks now, and now it appears time has finally run out. We need to set up a new Automotive factory and even though we had trouble getting the locals to sell out their properties, we finally managed to get that done, except ofcourse the property belonging to Crowe.

"Well not exactly....I'll figure something out. And since Steve's daughter is here ...lets see what we can work out"

I hope for the best.