Chapter Thirteen

It was the day after we took the next steps, and I was currently at Cigno Inc. working on some stuff.

Edward: Are you available for a meeting?

My eyebrow raised.

Bella: What kind of meeting?

Edward: I wanted to meet for a business proposition that would benefit Cullini Corp and Cigno Inc.

Bella: Let me check my schedule.

I pulled up my calendar. I didn't have anything until 4 PM which I still had 4 hours before that one.

Bella: I'm free until 3:30 PM. Where are we meeting?

Edward: I'm leaving another meeting right now. I could come to you. Are you at Cigno or home?

Bella: Come on over. I'm at the warehouse.

I texted him the address. I quickly blocked out an hour for this meeting with Edward, so that my front staff knew he was supposed to be here. I was about to resume my research when someone knocked on my door. "Come in," I called out. Mitch walked in carrying a folder. "Hey, Mitch. What can I help you with?"

He took a deep breath. "I had a couple of questions for my research on distilling tequila that I was hoping to ask you?" I nodded and motioned for him to sit down. "I looked into our base distributors to see what we could purchase for the base of our tequila..." he was cut off by my desk phone dinging.

"I'm so sorry," I sincerely said. I hit the speaker button. "Hello, Bria."

"Hello, Bella. I have the Cullens here. They are stating that they have a meeting with you." I heard her clicking on the computer.

I hummed. "Yes. I do." Mitch started to stand up. I held my finger up to him. "You can send them in here. Can you please get them something to drink as well? Offer them coffee, water, etc."

She giggled. "You got it."

I closed the call. "You can keep going," I told Mitch. "It will be okay if they wait for a few moments."

He nodded. "So, we get our seeds and base for our crops from Brooks. For the tequila base, it's generally used as agave which could take 5-7 years to grow." The office door opened, and he stopped talking.

Bria led Edward, Esme, Carlisle, and an older gentleman into my office. "Hello, come on in! Please take a seat on the couch. I will be with you momentarily." Esme smiled and waved. I turned back to Mitch. "Continue. I appreciate where you are going with this."

"Well, I called our Brooks contact, and they sell the agave plant grown which we could do a practice run on the tequila." He grabbed out a few papers from a fold that he was carrying. "Gretchen was able to give me a breakdown of what it would be if we did the already grown agave for the first five years."

I looked at the numbers and highlighted them. "Have you crunched the numbers for what it would be for this compared to what it would be for us to start it ourselves?" Bria came in and gave everyone their drinks, and one for me. I gave her a thank you smile.

Mitch nodded. "I did." He handed me those numbers. It would cost about the same, but slightly more to buy already grown.

I nodded. "You did what I asked you to do." He nodded. I grabbed the intercom phone. "Lionel come to my office, please. Lionel, my office." We waited a few moments before Lionel walked into my office. "Mitch came to me about us distilling tequila. He has done some of his research." Lionel made an approving face. "Mitch will take charge of this tester, but I want you to work it with him. Use the smaller distiller that is in the back of the brewery." I turned back to Mitch. "Call Gretchen back to get what we need. If it turns out, we will purchase the already-grown agave until we grow our own. Then, we can reconvene. Do you still need these?" I held up the papers he gave me. He shook his head no. "Wonderful. You both may go. Start working on this."

Mitch nodded and stood with a big smile. "Thank you, Miss Swan." Lionel and Mitch left my office.

I turned to the Cullens. "I apologize about that." I put everything on my back desk.

Edward shrugged. "It's fine, Darling." He stood up and came to me. "Hi, Tesoro."

He kissed me. "Hi," I said. I stood up and went to Carlisle and Esme. "Hello."

Esme hugged me. "Hello, my girl." She kissed my head. "This is my father, Edwardo Plattoni."

I held out my hand. "Hello. It's nice to meet you, Mr. Plattoni."

He chuckled and nudged my hand down. He hugged me. "It's nice to put a face to the name. My Edward doesn't shut up about you." I laughed. "How are you deary?"

"I'm doing great." We hugged again. I put two extra chairs near my desk. "Let's all sit." We sat down. "What is it that you were wanting to meet about?"

Edward sighed. "Cullini Corp is always trying to find ways to bring in more money, and Nonno brought up beverage. I told him that you do liquor, so we will not touch that, but then he talked beer." I nodded. "You mentioned winery which is something that Nonno has done in Italy." I just looked at Edward. " Then I started to talk with Dad about possibly creating a business opportunity for us both. We won't step foot in the hard liquor but work together on a brewery and winery."

I took a minute before I responded. "Who would take the lead on this?"

"Cigno Inc would," Carlisle said. "Esme and Edwardo would be your contact for Cullini Corp."

Edward leaned forward. "It would be extra money for both of us."

"It's not a bad idea at all." I took a second to think of my next words. "The only thing that would make me hesitate is because we," I motioned between Edward and I "have a romantic relationship that I don't want them to affect each other."

Edward shook his head no. "I would not let it come to that."

I was just about to say something when there was a knock on my door. I let out a sigh. "Come in." Rosalie popped her head in. "Hey, Rosalie. What are you doing here?"

"I'm so sorry. I thought you didn't have any meetings during the day today. I need to cancel our meeting for tonight. I need to meet Alice instead because something came up with her." Carlisle turned around shocking Rosalie. "Hello, Carlisle."

He looked concerned. "Everything okay with her?"

Rosalie nodded. "Yeah. We were supposed to meet tomorrow, but she has to handle something else at the boutique tomorrow. I think she is having a fall sale that she is getting ready for."

Carlisle let out a sigh of relief as Edwardo stood up. "Are you the bombshell dating Emmett?" Rosalie nodded a little confused. "I'm Nonno Edwardo. Emmett and Edward don't shut up about the two of you." He hugged her like he did me. "How are you, deary?"

She gave him her winning smile. "I'm doing great. How are you?" He nodded. "Sorry to bother you. I just wanted to meet for lunch, but we will raincheck. I'll come over for dinner," she told me. She wiggled her eyebrows at me.

I knew exactly what she was hinting at. The wrong text update. "I will let you know how my weekend went." She winked, said goodbye, and left. Edward chuckled because he picked up what I was talking about. "Oh, hush." My cheeks were warmer than the Sahara Desert. "Back to this." I cleared my throat.

"You have all this real estate for growing, distilling, fermenting. Cullini Corp is interested in buying some land from Cingo Inc.," Carlisle said. "We would build one big building. Half for beer and half of it for wine."

"We could do that." I nodded. "Kelsea, the one who handles the crop growth, would be the one who I will be putting in charge of doing the crop research for what we would need. She's a beast when it comes to vegetation. Cigno Inc. will handle crop distribution and growth while Cullini Corp. will handle the building. You don't have to buy the land from us especially if we will be a part of it."

Edward nodded. "We can do that. However, we want to buy some of the land at least that the building will sit on because we want our name on it as well."

I nodded. "I will need to look into how much the buyout would be, so I would have to speak with Davina first."

Esme's eyebrows furrowed. "Who is Davina?"

"She is my accountant." They nodded. "I think this will be good for us both. Now, I was looking into buying a liquor store." My computer dinged signaling an email. The subject line caught my eye.

Sincerest Apologizes

"Hang on a moment. I need to look at this email." I opened it up to see that one of the high-end clubs in Florida decided that they didn't want to sell my liquor anymore. It was a misogynistic email. I called Brian, one of the bottle guys, to my office. "Hello, Brian. Has the shipment for Vinny's in Florida gone out yet?"

His eyebrows furrowed. "Not yet. It's set to ship tomorrow. Everything okay?"

I let out an angry chuckle. "Come look at this email," I said to him.

He came to my side and read it. "Pardon my French, that is a bunch of bullshit. He is ending the business relationship because you took over Arturo. Has Arturo seen this?" He shook his hand.

I shook my head. "He doesn't need to know about this. He is spending his retirement with his family." I shrugged. "I will call Vinny after this meeting. He may not want to work with a woman-owned business, but if he wants to send me this and tell me that he isn't going to pay for his shipped-out order. He has another thing coming. I won't charge him for the shipping, but he will be paying for something since we took the time to put it together."

Brian rubbed his face. "Do you want me to..."

I shook my head no. "No, I will."

He nodded. "I will go unbox his order. It was a pretty big one too. He had 5 boxes of whiskey, 8 boxes of vodka, and 3 boxes of scotch." I rubbed my face because that was a big order that we were losing some money on, but like I said, I would charge him for some of it.

"I will call him. Just worry about getting that order unboxed." He nodded. "Thank you." He nodded and left. "Fuck," I said. "I don't want to deal with this today."

Esme gave me a sympathetic smile. "Well, we have agreed on this. We can finish this meeting another time. That sounds like something you need to handle." I nodded, and we all stood up. We said our goodbyes, and the three older people left.

Edward walked around my desk and read the email. "I want to be here while you call him."

I knew he wouldn't budge on that, so I called Vinny on speaker. "Hello. It's Vinny."

"Hello, Vinny. This is Isabella Cigno." He hummed. "I'm going to cut straight to the point. The email that you sent me was idiotic and misogynistic. That's fine. We won't sell to you anymore. However, your shipment was set to go out tomorrow morning. It was ready to be shipped, so you will be charged for the bottles because we used the labor. You won't be charged for shipping, but labor you will be." I went ahead and charged his account. "You've been charged, and now I will go ahead and delete your account."

"Whatever," he said and hung up.

I rolled my eyes. I started at Edward who was sitting on the couch. I walked over to him and straddled his legs. "Hi, baby."

He chuckled and held me close to him. "Hi, baby."