"Click, click!"
Half an hour later, Anne Pombo appeared in a room on the second floor of an extremely gorgeous restaurant in St. Louis.
There was a table of expensive and sumptuous dishes in front of her, but she basically didn't move. Instead, she was very interested in the plate of light yellow human-shaped biscuits. She took one piece after another with her hand and brought it to her mouth to bite it, making a crisp sound.
That is gingerbread, made with ghee, sugar, ginger powder, cinnamon powder, clove powder, honey, eggs, refined flour, etc. The necessary raw material ginger powder is not produced locally in St. Louis and needs to be transported from distant places. The price is extremely expensive, so it cannot be tasted by ordinary people or small nobles.
Anne kept eating gingerbread with an expressionless face. Not far from her, Richard stood silently. Standing on the other side was Brando, his head lowered, his expression depressed, his brows furrowed, racking his brains to think about how to restore his image in the eyes of Miss Anne.
At this time, the door to the room was suddenly pushed open without warning, and a figure walked in and shouted: "Annie!"
"Who!" Brando jumped up in excitement and quickly stopped him. He was worried that he couldn't find a chance to show off, so he made a full gesture at this time.
Looking at a young man wearing gorgeous purple clothes who walked in from the door, Brando showed a vigilant gaze and asked like he was examining a prisoner: "Who are you? What do you want to see Miss Anne?"
"Me?" The man in purple who walked in smiled and raised his lips, "I am Annie's friend! As for you, you are his new guard..."
After looking Brando up and down, the man in purple's eyes flashed with green light: "Well, you are a third-level wizard apprentice. His strength is not bad, but you are still close to stopping me. At least wait until you become a first-level wizard."
Brando's expression froze, and he sensed the mana fluctuation deliberately exposed by the man in purple, and his eyes shrank.
At this time, the man in purple smiled, looked at Brando very gentlemanly and asked: "Now, can you get out of my way?"
"I..." Brando turned to look at Anne.
Anne made a waving gesture.
Brando understood and looked at the man in purple again. The next moment he shouted with great momentum: "Get out of the way!"
As he said that, he turned around suddenly and walked to stand next to Annie with great dignity.
This made the man in purple couldn't help but be stunned, but he was just stunned for a moment. He quickly reacted, ignored Brando, looked at Anne and said hello: "Annie, I just passed by here and saw your family's carriage parked outside. , I thought you were here, so I came here to meet you."
"Is that so?" After hearing this, Annie's face didn't show much warmth, not even the kindness of a friend, and her voice said without much fluctuation, "Now that we have met, you can leave and go do your work. Let’s do it.”
"No." The man in purple smiled, "I have something else I want to tell you."
"You are the real reason why you came to see me, right?" Annie rolled her eyelids and asked.
After being exposed, the man in purple smiled awkwardly: "Okay, I knew I couldn't hide it from you. After all, your intelligence is obvious to all..."
"What's going on?" Annie interrupted the man in purple and asked directly without being too lazy.
"That's it." The man in purple sat down, rubbed his hands and said, "You should know that this year's taxes will be paid soon. My family agreed with your family last year that it was 30%. But within this year, my family will The profit situation of the company is not good, and several bad things happened, and the entire family's warehouse was almost burned down. You must have heard about it. So, I thought, could the tax be reduced by 20%? how?"
"You shouldn't talk to me about this, I don't care about family matters." Annie glanced at the man in purple and said.
"Yes, yes, I know you don't care, but I also know that you are capable of taking care of it. So, can you help me?" The man in purple said with a smile.
"Even if I can help, I won't help you." Anne said, "The agreement of 30% is already low enough. 20% is absolutely impossible and cannot break the bottom line of the Pangbo family."
"Ha, actually, as far as I know, this is not the bottom line, is it, Anne?" The man in purple winked at Anne and said, "I heard that the agreement between you and the Dumen family is 20% of the tax."
Anne raised her eyebrows and looked at the man in purple: "Are you well informed, Claire? The things we agreed with the Dumen family are strictly confidential. I'm curious where you heard about it."
"Ha, I have some channels of my own for this. Just say that, right?" said the man in purple.
Anne's expression became serious, she looked directly at the man in purple and said: "Yes, the agreement between my family and the Dumen family is indeed 20% of the tax, but there are conditions. The first one is that the time is only three years. The second one is that It was the Dumen family that handed over all their iron mines to us. Claire, can your Snow family do it?"
"Well... if we can really get 20% of the tax, we can indeed do it. The iron mines and other things, just the ones by the Green River, can be handed over to you like the Dumen family." The man in purple said.
Anne sneered after hearing this: "Oh, then I really want to say that your family is generous enough! The Dumen family gave us a total of twelve iron mines, and your Snow family, the iron mines on the banks of the Green River , there are only two of them in total, and the larger one is about to be lit.
If your family really wants to lower taxes to 20%, well, exchange your family's seven copper mines and one silver mine for it, not just 20%, but 10% will do! "
"This -" The man in purple named Claire's expression froze slightly, and he looked at Anne slightly unhappy and said, "Annie, this is a bit exaggerated. Our family only relies on these few mines. Your family, how do we survive?"
"You have a lot to rely on. As far as I know, your family has acquired a total of twenty-seven large and small estates and eight villages in the past few years, sold dozens of shops in St. Louis City, and monopolized more than half of the spices. Business." Annie said solemnly.
As he spoke, he picked up a piece of gingerbread on the plate and said: "Let's talk about this gingerbread. The ginger powder in it must pass through the hands of your family before it can come to St. Louis. The price is exaggeratedly high. Based on this alone, Is it enough for your family to survive
Claire, don’t pretend to be poor for me. Your family has developed very well in recent years, and has greatly surpassed our Pangbo family in some places. Therefore, the 30% tax cannot be reduced any further and will be increased to 40% next year. "
Claire's expression changed and her eyes darkened: "Annie, I thought we were friends, but what you did made me a little sad."