Chapter 24
GRANT
“Your dick doesn’t have a mind of its own.”
It’s seven forty in the morning, and Tessa is standing in my office with two phones, three newspapers spread across my conference table, and the expression of a woman reconsidering every professional decision that led her here.
“It doesn’t get lonely. It doesn’t get jealous.
It doesn’t make emergency decisions because Beckett Vale has been helping your wife.
You do. So unless you’re about to tell me Camille kidnapped you at gunpoint and forced you into an elevator, stop describing that night to legal as something that ‘happened.’”
I stare at her. “Are you finished?”
“I’ve been doing crisis management since you were singing for beer tickets. I’m nowhere near fucking finished.”
She throws a phone onto my desk. A grainy photograph fills the screen: Camille crossing the Four Seasons lobby shortly after seven that morning, yesterday’s clothes under a long coat, sunglasses on indoors like God personally designed a uniform for regrettable sex.
The second photograph is me leaving through the private entrance forty-three minutes later.
Nothing proves we were together, but everything proves it to anyone with working eyes. The headline underneath is worse.
Grant Mercer linked to second woman days after Sloane Avery affair exposed.
“Who sold it?” I ask.
“Hotel guest. Fifty-four-year-old dentist from Franklin who recognized you at the bar and apparently funds his vacations through celebrity-tip lines.”
“Buy the rights.”
“It’s already licensed.”
“Then bury the distribution.”
“With what leverage? You’re not the fucking CIA.” Tessa takes her phone back. “Sloane reposted it twelve minutes ago.”
Of course she did.
Her caption is one sentence:
And I was supposed to believe I was the problem.
The comments are a slaughterhouse. Plenty of people still hate her, but the center of gravity has shifted because the internet loves nothing more than discovering a villain has found a larger villain standing behind her. Laurel’s name is trending again. So is mine.
He cheated again?
This man is sick.
Laurel girl, run.
Someone has already cut together the Conrad pictures, the Camille photographs, and a clip from an old anniversary interview where I told a reporter Laurel was “the one person I never gamble with.” Six million views in two hours.
Tessa keeps talking. Redwood Bourbon has paused my fall campaign.
Southern Crown Apparel wants a meeting. The network producing my December special is “monitoring developments,” which means some executive is currently deciding how many affairs a country singer can have before Christmas advertising becomes awkward.
I should care about all of it. Instead, I’m staring at the text Laurel sent last night after I told her I wanted to speak to her.
Laurel: Friday. In front of the board.
She knew about Camille before I got home, moved out hours later, and didn’t even fucking budge when I asked her not to leave.
It’s been two days since she finally walked out of that house, and I’ve never felt this helpless or miserable, texting her a thousand times to tell her how sorry I am, begging her to come to the couples therapy session I had Erin book for the end of the month, calling until the calls stop going through.
Yesterday, she finally picked up, listened to me for all of three seconds, then hung up because my breathing was annoying her.
Then she sent a text.
That shit scares me more than anything Tessa has said.
“Where is Laurel?” I ask, the fact that I don’t even know where my own wife moved to hitting me with a strange, unwelcome sense of how completely she’s shut me out.
Tessa actually closes her eyes. “You have a board meeting on Friday that may remove you as CEO, your credit facility is frozen, one mistress is trying to burn your reputation down for warmth, another woman’s employer has retained counsel because you slept with a consultant assigned to your crisis account, and you are asking me where your wife is. ”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out.”
Her face goes flat. “No.”
“Tessa.”
“I work in public relations, Grant. I am not stalking your wife because another man has her back and you suddenly discovered jealousy has cardio benefits.” She walks to the door. “Harlan will be waiting. And for once in your life, keep your dick out of the meeting.”
∞∞∞
The boardroom feels different when everyone has already read the evidence.
Last Friday, there were questions. Today, there are folders with tabs.
Harlan sits at the head of the table with a legal pad squared precisely to the edge, which means he’s furious because the old bastard only becomes geometrically organized when someone has offended him.
Laurel is four seats away, wearing charcoal pants and a dark green blouse, her hair pulled back, her wedding ring gone.
Evelyn sits beside her. Erin is against the wall with the corporate secretary because outside counsel asked her to testify about archive permissions, document requests, and the night I told her to monitor everything Laurel accessed without letting Laurel know.
I regret that conversation for approximately the nine hundredth time.
The employee trust is represented by Miriam Cole, our head of artist services, who has worked here for nine years and once cried in my office because I paid for her son’s surgery when insurance fucked around. She won’t look at me.
Two outside-investor representatives sit opposite Laurel. One of them, Russell Vance, has known me since we recorded my first demo in a room above a tire shop. He won’t look at me either.
That’s how you know the money is getting skittish. People will forgive adultery a hell of a lot faster than they’ll forgive a man who puts the company at risk.
Harlan opens the meeting without ceremony. Outside counsel begins with Daniel Price. His lawyer has produced emails, invoices, calendar records, and a written cooperation statement in exchange for the board agreeing not to pursue civil claims against him until the investigation is complete.
“Motherfucker,” I yell before my attorney can stop me.
Harlan’s eyes lift. “Mr. Price appears to share your opinion of him.”
The first email goes onto the screen.
My message, 2022:
Daniel: Vale House sent a proposal to Laurel, publishing only with no recording or touring attached. She may actually go for this one.
Grant: Don’t let that shit get to her. Make sure Laurel doesn’t see another Vale proposal until we’ve stabilized the album. I’ll handle her.
Another, two days later:
Daniel: They’re asking to speak with her directly. Beckett’s people are persistent as hell.
Grant: If Beckett gets directly to her, we have a problem. Redirect everything through management.
My attorney starts talking about context. No one listens.
Counsel moves forward seventeen days.
Daniel: A couple of other proposals have come in for Laurel. Want me to field those too?
Grant: Yes. Tell them she isn’t taking meetings. Mercer needs her catalogue in-house. Put the consulting invoice through touring, same as last time.
My attorney stops talking.
Fuck!
Laurel doesn’t react, not even a flicker. She’s already seen all of it.
Harlan moves to the amended Schedule A, document metadata confirming the seventy-three-song list was uploaded three hours after Laurel’s signature was executed, followed by my electronic approval.
Counsel explains the legal question carefully: the agreement contained language permitting administrative updates, but expanding the schedule to include forty-five additional works, nineteen of them predating the marriage, without separate written acknowledgment may exceed that authority.
My attorney argues the company accounted for all income, paid Laurel her contractual writer share, and never seized ownership.
Correct, every damn word, but it sounds increasingly irrelevant.
The lender letter appears.
First Tennessee has frozen further draws and requires replacement collateral or partial paydown if disputed catalogue income is removed from the borrowing base. The Heartland Songs acquisition we’ve negotiated for seven months cannot close next week without that facility.
Russell mutters, “Jesus Christ.”
I look at Laurel again. She’s writing something in the margin of a page, calm as shit. She’s managed to turn my company into a room where I’m the only person sweating.
The six-hundred-and-twelve-thousand-dollar bonus is what kills me. I know it the moment the compensation chart appears because complicated wrongdoing gives people something to debate, but money moving into one man’s pocket has a clarity even idiots appreciate.
Mercer’s executive incentive pool that year was tied to consolidated publishing EBITDA.
The disputed catalogue accounted for a fraction of the overall performance, but it contributed, and the threshold was narrow enough that removing those revenues may have pushed the company below the top bonus tier.
Outside counsel refuses to state that as a conclusion until finance reruns the historical numbers.
Harlan doesn’t need the conclusion.
“Did you know Laurel’s catalogue was included in the publishing revenue calculation when you accepted this bonus?” he asks.
“I knew Mercer administered the catalogue.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Christ. Everyone has learned her fucking line.
“Yes.”
Miriam finally looks at me. Disappointment from employees is worse than investors because investors always knew you were capable of eating them if the valuation was right; employees tend to believe the Christmas speeches.
Harlan continues. “Did you disclose to the compensation committee that you had personally approved the amended schedule adding those works?”
“The schedule was part of ordinary publishing administration.”
“Again. Did you disclose it?”
“No.”
“Did you disclose that Price Strategic Consulting, whose invoices you approved from company funds, had been instructed by you to divert external offers made to your wife?”
My attorney says, “We object to the characterization.”