“I am, yes,” he said.
“Then you came to the right place,” I said with a grin. “Our newest line of product has some things I think you might be interested in.”
“Talk to me, then.”
“Cameras you can hook up with night-vision surveillance. Applications you can install to access those cameras on your laptop wherever you go. Closed circuits that are accessible only to those who know the frequency and the passcode, so no intruders from the outside can see what’s going on with your institution.”
“I like what you’re offering,” he said.
“We have a variety of products, from cameras to lasers to ear-bleeding alarms that trigger when someone walks past them. Those things can bring a person to their knees within a half a second of hearing that noise. Stops anyone dead in their tracks.”
“Those could be useful in my vaults,” he said.
“Very. We also have cameras with backup batteries that are rechargeable in case power goes down. And we also sell top-of-the-line custom-made generators, so your institutions will never lose power.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about. This is the kind of company I should be doing business with,” he said.
“We’re happy to help. Keeping my billion-dollar players safe in any way I can is my specialty.”
“Do you have material you can send me on all the things you offer?” he asked.
“Yeah, give me an email address and I can send it to you along with our standard contract.”
I walked out of that meeting with my head held high and a pep in my step. This would be huge for my company. For the longest time, I had been trying to break into the banking industry. I was in the hotel industry, the technological industry, and I’d even released my own line of high-end home security products. But banks were not only lucrative, they were also hard to get into. The banking industry kept a tight web of who they could trust and who they couldn't, and it was hard penetrating that web and proving someone was tr
ustworthy.
And if I could nail this contract with Gianni, I could prove just that.
I was prepared to celebrate. I called my chef and told him to prepare a celebratory dinner because the future of my company was on another cusp. I drove back to the house and relieved Brooke of the kids, but before she went to leave I grabbed her hand again to stop her.
I didn’t want her to go.
“Stay and have dinner,” I said.
“I can’t,” Brooke said. “I need to get back to Morgan.”
“Then invite her. What happened with Gianni today was massive. I want to celebrate. Come on, Brooke. It’s a good meal prepared by a five-star chef. Where else will you find that on the island?”
“I don’t need to eat five-star meals to be happy,” she said.
“It’s just dinner. Nothing else.”
I watched her mull it over before she pulled out her phone. She had a quick conversation with Morgan, but I could tell she wasn’t happy. She rolled her eyes as she hung up the phone call and I could hear my chef striking up the stove in the background.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Yep. Morgan’s found herself a man to spend the evening with,” she said.
“Good for her?”
“Eh, if she’s having fun then that’s all that matters.”
“Good, then stay and have dinner with us. You can brag to her about all the wine you got to drink that she missed out on,” I said with a grin.
That joke seemed to lower her walls and she finally agreed to stay. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to earn Brook’s trust again. I had really screwed things up in the past and I had a ways to go to make up for it.
I was grateful that she was giving me the chance – at least I’d hoped she was.