Chapter 17
GRANT
The fastest way to learn what a man believes belongs to him is to watch his face when somebody else puts a price on it. Nineteen point eight million dollars is my number.
I’ve been staring at Vale House Entertainment’s offer since I got it, reading the same paragraph until the language should’ve worn a hole through the screen, while my wife sits six feet away eating toast like Beckett Vale didn’t just put enough money on her catalogue to buy a fucking island with change left over for landscaping.
Laurel came downstairs wearing my ring. That should’ve helped.
It did for about thirty seconds. Then Harlan forwarded the offer, and every decent thought in my head got trampled by the image of Beckett sitting behind his obnoxiously large desk, deciding what my wife’s songs were worth.
Laurel’s songs. I know that. Fuck, I know that.
The distinction has become everyone’s favorite weapon this week.
“You’re going to burn a hole through the laptop.”
My attention snaps to her. Her hair is twisted on top of her head, one of her old SCAD shirts hanging off one shoulder, bare legs tucked beneath her on the breakfast stool.
The sight hits me with such ordinary familiarity that my brain rejects the fact that she’s spent the last six days being a pain in the ass.
“Nineteen point eight million.”
“I can read.”
“He’s overvaluing it.”
“Maybe.” Laurel takes another bite. “Or maybe you’ve spent so long undervaluing it that a fair number looks obscene to you.”
“Jesus Christ.” I shut the laptop. “He wants leverage. You.”
Her chewing stops, and she sets the toast down with deliberate care, giving me a look that could sand paint off a wall. “Can we make it through breakfast without discussing whether another man wants to fuck me?”
“You think I’m imagining it?”
“I think discussing Beckett Vale’s hypothetical dick is a weird use of everybody’s morning.”
Under any other circumstances, I’d laugh. Today, I want to throw the toaster through a window.
Laurel drinks her tea and watches me over the rim, and some part of me feels relieved because she’s here. In our kitchen. Wearing my ring. Sleeping upstairs, even if it’s behind a locked guest-room door after complaining last night that the cologne I wore had her sneezing.
There were years when I could read Laurel before she spoke. Now every expression feels like a language I used to know, and I fucking hate that I can’t understand her anymore.
“Harlan wants Vale at the diligence meeting,” I tell her.
“I know.”
“You’re comfortable with that?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” She puts down her mug. “That meeting starts in forty minutes. If you’re planning to spend it measuring your dick against Beckett’s, save us all the trouble and wear sweatpants.”
She walks away before I can answer, leaving me staring after her in disbelief. Last night she was a complete basket case, and now she’s storming upstairs like some frat kid who just got told the party’s over.
I’m tempted to call after her, but the thought that follows hits hard, and I stay in my chair.
Laurel wanted children. She was twenty-nine when she told me she wanted to start trying after Christmas.
I told her after the tour. The tour became Europe.
Europe became the label launch. After this year, baby.
After things settle. Then she got hurt, and hospitals replaced the conversation until neither of us knew how to restart it.
We kept handing the future another twelve months until twelve months turned into years. Laurel once joked that our hypothetical children were going to graduate college before we got around to conceiving them. I laughed. Told her we had time.
I’ve told that woman we had time about a lot of things.
Once all of this shit settles, I’m getting her pregnant.
∞∞∞
Beckett Vale strides into my boardroom carrying nothing but a black leather folder and the confidence of a man who has never once worried he might be asked to leave.
The hatred I feel for him on sight burns hotter, which is reassuring because at least one thing about the last seven years remains consistent.
He’s taller than I remember. A lot taller.
I’m six-one, and he makes me look fucking average.
Broad shoulders, narrow waist, long legs, dark hair pushed back from his forehead, and a face that pisses me off before he’s even opened his mouth.
His gray eyes scan the room, cool and steady, and for one deeply irritating beat, I understand exactly why women look twice when Beckett Vale walks into a room.
I fucking hate that.
Evelyn Shaw sits beside Laurel. Beckett takes the chair on my wife’s other side like he belongs there. He sets the folder on the table and looks through the documents.
“Ms. Bellamy,” Beckett says when Harlan formally introduces everyone.
Bellamy.
My jaw goes rigid. Laurel’s eyes flick to me, and I know she caught it.
She gives Beckett a small nod. “Mr. Vale.”
He doesn’t smile, and neither does she. Nothing happens, which is the fucking problem.
Either Laurel is fucking the asshole, or there’s something else going on that I haven’t figured out yet. I can’t make the two of them fit into any explanation that doesn’t piss me off.
I know manufactured chemistry. I’ve sold that shit for twenty years. Two artists spend a press cycle trading insults and suddenly fourteen-year-olds are convinced they’re soulmates because some genius edited three seconds of eye contact over a Hozier song.
This isn’t that. He’s too fucking attuned to her.
When Evelyn asks about the assumptions behind the valuation, he lets his CFO handle the numbers until Laurel asks about administration revenue, and Beckett answers without looking down because he knows the fucking number.
He knows her international performance revenue.
Knows which three songs from before our marriage are pulling the most from sync.
Knows the 2017 deep cut Laurel wrote alone has tripled in streams since some actress used it in a series last spring.
How the hell do I not know that? I own a company administering half the rights. I know the quarterly totals, the percentages, the splits, the projections. I know the damn business inside out.
Beckett knows the song.
Halfway through the meeting, Laurel’s voice roughens, and knowing what happens when her throat starts getting tired, my hand moves for the water without me thinking. Beckett has already pushed the room-temperature bottle beside her and keeps listening to Harlan.
Laurel’s eyes rove between the bottle and him, a smile touching her lips that makes me see red.
∞∞∞
The first real problem is buried in Exhibit C.
One of Beckett’s attorneys asks Mercer to substantiate its claim to exclusive administration over seventy-three Laurel Bellamy compositions, including nineteen written before our marriage. Erin pulls the agreement onto the screen, and I know the document before the title finishes loading.
Amended and Restated Catalogue Administration Agreement — 2020.
My stomach drops.
Laurel leans closer to the screen. “What is that?”
The signature page appears, her name, her handwriting, her date.
“Laurel, is that your signature?” Evelyn asks.
Laurel stares at it for several breaths, and mine stalls in my chest. “Yes.”
My shoulders sag with relief, my thumb rubbing over my lower lip to keep myself from fidgeting.
“I signed that in the hospital. After my second procedure.” Her eyes leave the screen and find mine. Shit! “You brought a stack of documents because you were flying to Los Angeles the next morning.”
I remember it maybe a little too well: Laurel in that hospital bed with tape across the back of her hand, annoyed because the morphine made her nauseous. Me sitting beside her with fourteen signature tabs sticking out of a folder because the closing for the publishing facility had moved up.
“You told me they were routine renewals, Grant.”
Harlan’s eyes come to me. “They were.”
Evelyn scrolls through the document. “Where is Schedule A?”
Mercer’s attorney clears his throat. “It was attached to the executed agreement.”
“When?” Evelyn asks.
Nobody likes that question.
Erin pulls up the document history, and the original draft appears beside the version Mercer submitted as executed.
Schedule A in the version Laurel signed contains twenty-eight jointly administered works. The version Mercer submitted as executed contains seventy-three.
I feel the blood drain from my face.
Laurel’s pre-marriage catalogue has been added. Her solo demos. Songs she wrote before she ever met me. Songs her father used to make her play at family parties while I sat beside him drinking beer.
Laurel pivots in her chair, her expression unreadable. “Did you add my catalogue after I signed?”
“I didn’t personally attach anything.”
Wrong answer. I know it the instant Harlan’s face changes.
Evelyn looks back at the document history. “Who authorized the revised schedule?”
The authorization field appears beneath the revised schedule.
Approval: Grant Mercer.
Fuck.
“Administration isn’t ownership,” I attempt.
Laurel doesn’t blink. “Was that the question you were asked?”
“It gave Mercer the right to administer the works, collect revenue, negotiate placements—”
“I know what administration means.” Her voice is so quiet it makes my skin crawl. “Did you approve adding songs I had never agreed to include?”
“Daniel said they were already being handled through our existing structure.”
“Daniel.” She almost laughs. “Of course.”
“You benefited from the revenue.”
“It was my fucking revenue. I. Earned. It.”
Harlan cuts in. “We’re here to establish what happened, not litigate your marriage.”
Laurel doesn’t look away from me, and an unfamiliar feeling settles in my chest, something I can’t place. I remember that week in the hospital, when she woke up crying because she could barely make a sound. I spooned ice chips into her mouth and told her I’d take care of everything.
I did.