Chapter 19
LAUREL
We are very good at putting whole lives into the word later.
Later, we’ll do everything that needs doing.
We’ll apologize, make the phone call, take the chance, say the thing we’ve been rehearsing in our heads for years.
We attach later to everything that feels inconvenient, frightening, expensive, or too important to risk getting wrong, convincing ourselves there will always be another season, another year, another Monday to finally do it.
Grant and I got so good at later that eventually we stopped noticing how much of our life we were letting pass.
I think about that as a Boston laryngologist threads a camera down my nose and tells me to say eee until dignity becomes an abstract concept.
Dr. Levin has silver hair, gentle eyes, and the calm, unhurried manner of a man who has spent decades examining damaged voices and learning exactly when to speak. He studies the monitor as I grip the arms of the examination chair, trying not to read his face for clues.
My right vocal fold closes properly. The left moves more slowly, its middle section thinner, a pale strip of scar tissue interrupting the vibration where healthy tissue should ripple.
Four years ago, I was told the scarring and partial paresis were severe enough that another surgery could leave me worse. I learned to live around that sentence. I built a life around it. I stopped asking what my voice might become and started measuring what it could still do.
Dr. Levin rewinds the imaging twice, and my stomach tightens with every silent replay.
“I think we have something to work with.”
My eyes widen as he explains it without dressing it up as a miracle.
First, a temporary injectable augmentation to see how much improved closure changes my sound and stamina. If that goes well, we can talk about a microlaryngeal procedure to address the scar and improve the weaker side, followed by months of specialized voice therapy.
Months.
No guarantee of my old range, and no promise that I’ll ever tour five nights a week again. He talks about smaller victories instead—recording comfortably, managing a controlled live set, getting through an hour without pain and waking the next morning still able to speak.
“And it might fail,” I say.
“Yes.”
I appreciate him for not sugarcoating anything, even if he’s just doing his job. I flew across the country desperate to hear something hopeful.
“When?”
“We can do the trial injection in five weeks.”
Tears roll down my cheeks, and I’m almost choking on the hope he’s just handed back to me across a desk as I sign the consent form.
Afterward, I sit alone in the hallway with the paperwork folded in my lap and cry so hard a nurse brings me tissues and water, giving me that careful, concerned look healthcare workers have perfected for patients who might have received terrible news—or excellent news badly.
I laugh through the tears because I don’t know what else to do.
After getting myself under control, I call Mama, who cries, says, “Oh, baby. Oh, my baby,” twice, asks seventeen medical questions she couldn’t possibly understand the answers to, and finally announces she’s coming for the procedure whether I invite her or not.
Dean texts me thirty seconds later because news travels through the Bellamy family faster than an emergency alert.
Dean: MONICA SAYS I’M NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE A VOCAL CORD JOKE SO THIS IS ME SHOWING GROWTH. PROUD OF YOU, HELLCAT
I bark a laugh into my hand in the middle of Massachusetts General and have to tell him that using all caps has undone whatever growth Monica thinks she achieved.
On the flight home, somewhere over Pennsylvania, I open the folder Evelyn sent me and remember exactly why I still haven’t moved out of the house.
We keep years of our paper life in that place.
Original lyric notebooks in the climate-controlled storage room.
Old tax files. Touring agreements from before Mercer Records had servers worth hacking.
Two external drives Grant stopped using when everything moved into corporate cloud storage.
Daddy’s probate records because my inheritance funded the first building deposit.
Insurance paperwork from my vocal injury.
Evelyn wanted clean copies made before Grant understood exactly what the forensic team was looking for.
Taking twenty boxes out of the house in one afternoon would raise more questions than it answered, so the plan is to leave the originals where they are, photograph whatever counsel requests, and move the copies into the encrypted case file.
It means I have to keep going back.
It also means Grant has no idea how much of his own history I’m quietly documenting under his roof.
Last night, after my bath, I waited until he was asleep, slipped out of the guest room, photographed everything Evelyn had asked for, uploaded the copies to the encrypted case file, and climbed back into bed before he woke.
This morning, I let him believe the ring on my finger means his apologies are still being graded.
He has become attentive in a way that makes me want to scream into a fucking pillow.
Breakfast was waiting when I woke up, the tea he made was at exactly the right temperature, and the bastard even managed to tell Erin to book a couples therapist I have zero intention of seeing unless Evelyn tells me doing otherwise serves a purpose beyond giving Grant somewhere air-conditioned to explain why fucking Sloane was technically a symptom.
I still don’t know how I made it through the morning in his orbit and sat opposite him in that boardroom without reaching across the table and strangling him.
I listened to lawyers pick apart documents he’d changed during one of the worst periods of my life.
I was lying in a hospital bed, too sick to handle my own affairs, and the man I trusted to handle them for me was quietly putting pieces of my catalogue under his control.
Then he had the audacity to sit there defending it with technicalities, and I just listened.
∞∞∞
Beckett is waiting in Studio B when I get back to Nashville that night, sitting behind the console with his suit jacket folded over the chair and one sleeve of his white shirt rolled farther up than the other. I told him I could meet tomorrow. He said the forensic report changed that.
He waits until I put my bag down before asking, “How bad was the camera?”
“Violating.”
“That good?”
“I’m pretty sure we’re engaged now.”
His mouth twitches with the smallest flash of amusement, but the question he asks next is the one he actually cares about. “What did they say?”
I tell him everything—the weakness, the scar, the trial augmentation, the procedure, and the fact that they can start in three weeks.
“Are you scared?”
The question slips past every answer I’ve rehearsed in my head and ends up somewhere far more vulnerable.
“Shitless.”
“Okay.” He leans back against the console, his eyes staying on mine. “You don’t have to be brave about it, Laurel. You can do it scared.”
My eyes sting, and I’m pretty sure I’ve already used up my daily crying allowance. I blink hard, taking in the studio instead: warm wood panels and the same ridiculous red couch that has probably seen more exhausted musicians than the hotel down the street.
“You brought me here for an accounting report?”
“No.” Beckett opens the folder in front of him and slides a document across the console. “I brought you here because Evelyn thought you should hear this before it lands in an email Grant can subpoena and pretend it surprised him.”
An eighteen-million-dollar revolving credit facility, with Mercer Publishing as the borrower. I read the collateral description twice: domestic publishing receivables, administration income, named catalogues.
My name appears on page seventeen.
“What the hell is this?”
Beckett’s expression has lost every trace of humor. “The loan Mercer used for the publishing acquisitions.”
“Yes, I get that.” My finger hits the page. “But why am I in it?”
“The borrowing base included projected income from the seventy-three compositions Grant’s amended schedule claimed Mercer administered.”
The studio feels airless.
“He used my catalogue as collateral.”
“He pledged Mercer’s claimed administration rights and the revenue attached to them.”
“That sounds like a lawyer trying to keep me from throwing a chair.”
“It is accurate.”
“Did I approve that too?”
“Evelyn found no separate consent.”
I huff out a bitter laugh. “So while I was learning how to speak again, this motherfucker put songs I wrote before I knew him into a loan package.”
A muscle ticks in Beckett’s jaw, his gray eyes hardening. “Yes.”
Eighteen fucking million dollars.
Grant used that credit line to acquire two publishing catalogues that made Mercer Records exponentially more valuable. My twenty-one percent benefited on paper. Grant’s forty-two percent benefited twice as much, and his control grew with every acquisition.
The company he keeps calling ours borrowed against rights he may never have had, using my music to build an empire big enough for him to eventually tell me I wasn’t an artist anymore.
I put the document down very carefully because throwing it would accomplish fuck-all.
“What happens if the administration agreement is invalid?”
Beckett answers without hesitation. “Mercer could lose that portion of its borrowing base. The lender may demand replacement collateral, repayment, a waiver, or revised covenants. It depends on how ugly the title problem gets.”
“And if Grant knew the schedule was unauthorized when the loan closed?”
“That question is why Harlan called an emergency board session for Friday.”
For several minutes, the only sound in the room is the low hum of the console and my own breathing. Then I start laughing again and pace into the tracking room.
“Grant has been telling everyone I’m trying to destroy Mercer Records because I’m angry he made a mistake. Meanwhile, he built part of the fucking company by pledging income from songs he had no right to administer.”
Beckett follows me as far as the doorway and stops there. “You have leverage now.”
“I had leverage yesterday.”
“You have cause now.”
His words sit differently in my head. Yesterday, I had leverage because Grant had lied to me. Today, I have a trail that could threaten his position.
The employee trust. Twelve percent. The block Beckett told me would never vote against Grant because his wife was furious he put his dick somewhere stupid.
Breach of fiduciary duty, misuse of corporate funds, questionable chain of title, and potentially false representations to a lender are something else entirely.
“Harlan thinks the employee-trust trustees will support suspending him?”
“The trustees have more than sixty-three employees watching what happens next. Protecting Grant’s position gets a lot harder when his decisions start putting their jobs at risk.”
“And the outside investors?”
“Two are already questioning Grant’s position as CEO.”
My pulse begins to thud. “I don’t want him removed Friday.
That’s too easy. If the board suspends him now, he becomes a victim in his own head—lawyers did it, Harlan turned on him, Vale engineered it, his furious wife poisoned the company because he cheated.
He’ll fight everything because fighting means he still gets to tell himself I stole Mercer from him.
I want him sitting in that chair when the evidence comes out.
I want him voting, explaining, defending every payment and every signature.
I want the people who trusted him to hear him say the bullshit out loud. ”
“You want the board to give him enough rope.”
“I want him to bring his own.”
His gaze rakes over me in a way that makes the studio feel hotter than it should. I’m beginning to understand what it means when Beckett goes quiet around me.
A vibration from his phone breaks the tension.
He checks the screen, one dark brow lifting.
“There’s a complication.” He turns the phone to me.
Sloane Avery is live on Instagram from the back seat of a car, face bare, eyes red, nearly two hundred thousand people watching.
The Live is titled Sloane Avery breaks silence on Mercer Records drama.
I take the phone, and everything inside me cools. She’s finally showing me what she really wanted all along, and it seems ignoring her attempts to hand me evidence of the shit Grant does has finally pushed her into doing it herself.
“…and I’m tired of being made into the only villain here.
Laurel knew I was recording that song. She introduced it to me that night, y’all.
She knew exactly what I was performing, and she never told me there was a problem.
Not once. Now folks want to act like I walked into that studio in the dead of night and stole something out from under her nose.
Y’all can believe whatever story makes you feel better, but that ain’t what happened. ”
“My comms team can—”
“No.”
Sloane continues, talking about the rehearsal versions she heard and how the dispute didn’t surface until after the “personal issues” between Grant and me, careful never to say affair while making damn sure anyone watching understands exactly what she means.
“personal issues” girl just say affair
wait GRANT CHEATED???
Laurel knew about the song??
THIS IS MESSY AS FUCK
not her dropping tea from the backseat
So Grant was cheating and now there’s a stolen song???
I need Laurel to go live immediately
somebody check on that woman because WHAT
I knew something was off with Mercer Records
Wait... Sloane and Grant????
OH THIS MAN IS COOKED
Can we please talk about the SONG because I am lost
The comments keep climbing faster than I can read them, each new one feeding the next, and Sloane keeps talking.
“I’m not gonna let one woman’s marriage falling apart destroy my career.”
I hand the phone back to Beckett, who studies me with a look that's equal parts curiosity and caution. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing tonight. She wants me angry in public. Grant wants me emotional in private. Everyone seems very invested in watching me react.”
Sloane wants a public fight? Fine.
I smile at Beckett, and whatever he sees in my face makes his own mouth curve slowly. “Don’t release anything yet,” I say. “Let her finish lying first.”