Chapter 8 - THE TRACTOR ON MAPLE STREET
The following afternoon, the sleet had cleared, leaving a bright, cold winter sun over Bellweather.
Adrian was sitting on the front porch steps of the house on Maple Street, wearing a plain gray sweatshirt and heavy boots he had purchased at the local hardware store. For the past three hours, he had been helping Claire fix the sagging wooden railing on the porch, driving nails into the old wood with a claw hammer.
His hands were scraped, his fingernails were dirty, and his six-thousand-dollar watch was sitting inside on the kitchen counter.
Down the street, the sound of a heavy diesel engine rumbled through the quiet neighborhood.
A bright green John Deere tractor, towing a large flatbed trailer filled with bales of hay, wooden crates, and fresh pine garlands, pulled up directly in front of the house.
Stepping out of the tractor was a rugged, forty-year-old man wearing a flannel jacket and a worn baseball cap. His name was Thomas Mercer—the eldest son of the Mercer family, owners of Mercer Steel Components.
Thomas looked at Adrian sitting on the porch with a hammer in his hand, a surprised laugh escaping his lips.
"Well, I'll be damned," Thomas said, leaning against his tractor tire. "The richest man in the Midwest is doing carpentry work on Maple Street."
Adrian set his hammer down, standing up. "Thomas? What are you doing in Bellweather?"
"I came looking for you, Wolfe," Thomas said, walking up the driveway. "Your CFO, Victor Sterling, called my father yesterday afternoon. He told us you were out of your mind, that you were stripped of your CEO title, and offered to sign the steel acquisition for twenty million dollars less if we dealt with him directly."
Adrian’s face went cold. "Victor tried to bypass me?"
"Yeah," Thomas nodded. "Dad was ready to sign. But I told him something didn't smell right. You've been trying to buy our company for eighteen months, Adrian. You never struck me as a man who just gives up on a deal because he lost his mind."
Thomas looked past Adrian toward the front porch door, where Emily, Sophie, and Naomi were standing, watching the green tractor with huge, excited eyes.
"So I drove down here myself," Thomas said softly, his tone shifting into genuine warmth. "And now I see why you didn't show up to the Fairmont."
Thomas reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a rolled-up set of legal blueprints.
"My family didn't build Mercer Steel to sell it to corporate raiders like Victor Sterling," Thomas declared. "We built it because we care about manufacturing things that last. And seeing you standing here with a hammer, helping Lara Collins’s family... tells me everything I need to know about what kind of man you actually are."
Thomas tossed the papers onto the porch table.
"The Mercer acquisition is yours, Adrian," Thomas said with a grin. "On one condition."
Adrian raised an eyebrow. "What condition?"
May you like
Thomas pointed at the three little girls on the porch.
"You let my boys drive this tractor down Maple Street and give those three little girls a ride around the park."
