“I don’t need any training.” Alexei drummed his fingers on his desk. “I’ve been procuring shipping contracts for our family for over a decade.”
“Yes, but have you ever procured eleven?” Sacha sent him a wicked grin. “On a single trip?”
How many times was Sacha going to mention those dratted contracts? Alexei leaned forward, grabbed the stack of contracts off his desk, and flipped through them.
Just as Mikhail said, they seemed to be legitimate.
“I suppose sometimes it pays to be a little less businesslike and a little more friendly.” Yuri looked straight at him, that boyish grin he’d never quite outgrown plastered across his face. “You should try it sometime, Alexei. Just like you should try smiling every now and then too. ‘A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.’”
“Sure. I’ll start working on that—as soon as I find a way to carry all the extra cargo we’re now legally obligated to ship for the next two to three years.” He’d been tallying the numbers as he flipped through the contracts. It was a lot of cargo, an awful lot. “Please tell me theEmberfallwill be seaworthy in another month, or two at the latest.”
“Ah, about theEmberfall.” Yuri rubbed the back of his neck, the tips of his ears turning pink.
He’d known something seemed too good to be true. “Why do you sound like you’re about to tell us something we don’t want to hear?”
Sacha smirked. “Probably because he is. Go on, Yuri. Out with it.” He made a rolling motion with his hand.
Yuri cleared his throat and shifted, suddenly rather preoccupied with the tips of his shoes. “Well... theEmberfallwas... uh... not exactly what I was expecting.”
Alexei pressed two fingers to his temple. “Definenot exactlywhat you were expecting.”
Yuri let out a long breath, then plopped himself down in one of the chairs across from the desk. “It was old, Alexei. Really old. I’m guessing maybe from the 1840s, and it was already a rusting pile of scrap metal. Even if it hadn’t been caught in a storm, it would have had holes rusted through the hull by the end of the year. But it hit a rock, and now a gaping hole takes up half the stern. I might not be a naval architect, but given how the deck was sagging above the hole, I’m pretty sure the collisiondamaged the internal structure. And that doesn’t account for any damage that might have happened to the boiler system.”
Alexei leaned forward, a headache starting to form. “You’re telling me wedon’thave a sixth ship for our fleet?”
“I’m telling you that it would take months to repair theEmberfall, and we’d have to pay for it completely on our own. No bank would Finnance such a dilapidated ship. And even if we somehow scrounged up enough money for repairs, the ship will last only for another year or two. Farnsworth claims it will still be on the sea a decade from now, but it won’t. So I made a different investment.”
Sacha chuckled, a great, hearty sound that seemed entirely too jovial for the increased pounding in Alexei’s head. “Now this I have to hear.”
Alexei ignored the throbbing in his head and glared at Yuri. “What. Did. You. Do?”
Yuri grinned. “I bought our family a second shipyard.”
“What?” Something wasn’t making sense. Yuri hadn’t just said what he thought... had he?
Sacha slapped his hands onto the desk. “Oh, that’s grand. Real grand. You went down to San Francisco to get three shipping contracts and a barge, and instead you come back with eleven contracts and an entire shipyard?”
Yuri stiffened. “Don’t make it sound like I’m an idiot. I got the shipyard for less than what Farnsworth was asking for theEmberfall.”
Alexei sucked in a breath through his nose. Calm. He needed to stay calm. “Youboughta shipyard?”
“Well, I haven’tboughtit yet. Technically, I just made the offer.” Yuri adjusted the cuff of his sleeve, as though this was all perfectly reasonable. “But the owner’s in a bind. It’s a small operation, nothing like the Farnsworth Shipyard, but the Hollister family is struggling. Their father died five months ago,and no one in their family knows enough about shipbuilding to keep it running. They were relying on the foreman, but Harold Farnsworth made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, and he was set to leave at the end of the week. We’re getting an excellent deal on the shipyard, I promise, but we’re not stealing it out from under that poor family. The Hollisters will have enough money to live on from the sale, and the best part is, there’s already a ship in the dry dock that the Hollisters owned. It was damaged and undergoing repairs when Mr. Hollister died, and it’s been sitting there unfinished ever since.”
Alexei dragged a hand over his face. “This ship is part of the sale?”
“Yes. And it can probably be repaired in about a month. Then we can use it to fill our extra contracts.”
He had no words. Absolutely no words.
Just how much of a disaster was this shipyard? If it was cheap to buy, then it was probably in the same condition as theEmberfall, meaning it might cost thousands of dollars before they could even begin building ships down there. And how easy would it be to get commissions in a new town where nobody knew him?
“Are you angry?” Yuri asked. “Please don’t be angry. Youdidsend me to San Francisco to get more shipping contracts and find another ship, remember?”
“I told you to buy theEmberfall. Not an entire shipyard.”
“But theEmberfallwas a wreck. And besides, even though the Hollisters’ shipyard is small, San Francisco has access to iron and steel that we don’t have here in Sitka. It’s possible we could one day expand. And honestly, there’s a huge opportunity for a shipyard down there that specializes in wooden ships anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Mikhail asked.
