Chapter 37
Xander
The next week, when we arrived in Jalisco for the weekend, Penelope was content with working on one of the massive sunporches
of the Spanish Revival–style compound that sat in the middle of nearly one hundred acres of agave fields in Jalisco.
She planned to do some work there while I went to talk details with Alejandro about the sale.
I put a hand up along my brow, squinting in the bright sun even though I was wearing sunglasses. Instead of talking in Alejandro’s
office, he preferred to walk the fields.
“CEO of Hightower Energy,” Alejandro mused as I followed him down one of the perfectly lined rows of agave.
“You can’t rename it, sorry,” I joked.
He chuckled. “All of this to secure my portfolio?”
Past the neatly manicured desert-style garden and pool were rows and rows of agave plants. Alejandro was a man of many interests, one of them being distilling. His first venture had been turning his family’s small batch distillery into one of the largest tequila producers in the world. This was what had made his family wealthy, giving him the money to finance his other visions. Next, he decided to use some of that land for massive wind farms that were capable of providing energy for nearly a quarter of the country’s requirements.
“You happen to have a good hand,” I told him. “Why not play it?”
“Seems a little too good, doesn’t it?” he asked speculatively.
“Or serendipitous?” I offered. “Turn the largest energy producer and carbon emitter—a global nuisance—into a completely clean
energy company.”
He sighed and knelt down next to one of the plants. “I never cared for the distillery. It was my father’s. He made me promise
not to let it out of the family’s hands. The fields, the lands, all of it.”
“The distillery and all of the other ventures owned by your family will stay that way,” I reminded him. “I’m only interested
in your developments in clean energy.”
He ran his hand down his jaw. “But why me?”
Alejandro knew his technology would change the world. But he was also skeptical. He knew how precious the tech he had was
and wanted to make sure he didn’t lose control over it.
“You need capital to make your tech scalable. We want to fund it and we want you to run the project. It’s that simple.” I
raked a hand through my hair. “You’ll head Hightower and do everything you’ve been doing at a much larger scale.”
SunCorp, Herrera’s clean energy venture, was small, so he was right in being suspicious: he’d go from running a small but
mighty energy company to literally being the most powerful man in that sector.
He nodded in the direction of the distilleries. “We both know I wouldn’t have brought you all the way here if I wasn’t seriously
considering it, but I’m curious why you came all the way here just to settle my concerns.”
“Because this is just as important to me as it is to you,” I assured him. “You have all the leverage here. You can refuse at any time.”
But he wouldn’t. No matter how noble, every leader of a company was persuaded by power. It was simply a matter of how much.
And this deal gave him all that he could ever ask for.
Only a fool would say no.