Chapter 28 #2
“And nobody is taking that away from you. You did good things here, Grant. A lot of them. You gave artists meetings no one else would. You kept people paid through shutdown when revenue disappeared. You covered my son’s surgery when insurance stalled.
” Her fingers tighten around the plastic cup.
“And you still used company money to pay Laurel’s former manager to keep opportunities from reaching her. One doesn’t erase the other.”
I hold her stare. “So the employee trust owes me nothing.”
“Exactly.”
What the actual fuck?
“So you’re voting with Laurel.”
“I’m voting for whatever protects the trust.”
“Same fucking thing.”
“No.” Miriam leans back. “You’ve become so fixated on Laurel choosing against you that you can’t imagine anyone reaching the same conclusion without her telling them how.”
My phone vibrates against the table with a text from Charles.
Charles: Funds cleared. Russell transfer ready for acknowledgment.
Forty-eight and a half percent.
Soon I’ll have enough weight to shut all this shit down.
Miriam stands and picks up her bag. “For what it’s worth, I hope you figure yourself out.”
A humorless laugh leaves me. “Everyone’s a therapist now.”
“No.” She slides her sunglasses on. “Some of us just remember you before being the most important man in the room became a requirement.”
∞∞∞
Russell signs before sunset, and his six and a half percent moves into my name on the cap table.
Whatever personal catastrophe made selling at that price attractive is officially no longer my problem; he unloads his stake with the cheerful urgency of a man slipping out of a restaurant five minutes before the health inspector arrives.
For thirteen glorious minutes, I taste victory.
My email refreshes.
Vale House Entertainment secures exclusivity on Heartland Songs — $24.2M
I read it twice. Mercer spent seven fucking months chasing Heartland, and Beckett’s company closes it while I sit here holding nearly half of the company that lost it.
I throw my phone across the room; it lands on the couch.
The bastard survives.
Next morning, I’m standing in the dining room of a house that has become a fucking nightmare since my wife moved out, trying to decide whether bourbon before noon constitutes alcoholism or merely aggressive scheduling when the valuation notice arrives.
Outside forensic counsel has finished the preliminary restatement.
Once they strip out the disputed Bellamy administration revenue and fix two publishing streams Mercer had been booking where they shouldn’t have been, normalized EBITDA drops—the earnings number lenders and valuation firms actually give a shit about when deciding what this company is worth.
Mercer is still valuable. Still profitable. Great.
The problem is the rest of the fucking page.
The independent valuation firm cuts Mercer’s indicated equity range by twenty-seven percent.
The accounting correction alone wouldn’t have done it; pile on lender uncertainty, governance risk, pending litigation, and what the analysts politely call key-person disruption, and the whole fucking company starts looking riskier on paper.
I read the revised midpoint three damn times.
Russell’s six and a half percent—the stake I paid eleven-point-seven million dollars for yesterday—is now worth closer to seven.
Nearly five million dollars gone in twenty-four hours, and I still don’t fucking control the company.
Charles calls less than a minute later. “Your lender already has the valuation. It went over automatically under the maintenance covenant, and they want additional collateral.”
Goddamn it!
“How much, and what happens if I don’t post it?”
“Depends how hard they haircut the Mercer shares. Somewhere between two-point-one and two-point-eight million, cash or acceptable securities. If you don’t cure it, they can raise the rate, demand a partial paydown, restrict additional borrowing, and eventually come after the pledged collateral if you default. ”
“Fine. Sell something.”
Charles goes quiet long enough to piss me off. “Some of the positions you’d have to liquidate may be marital assets.”
“They’re in my name.”
“Tennessee divorce law remains unmoved by the name printed on the brokerage statement. Evelyn Shaw served notice this morning objecting to any extraordinary liquidation of disputed marital property without Laurel’s agreement or court approval.
She can ask the court to preserve the marital estate, force an accounting, and argue that any loss you create after filing belongs entirely to you. ”
I close my eyes. “So I either come up with another three million dollars or ask a divorce judge for permission to sell investments I bought with my own fucking money.”
“We are several million dollars past the point where repeating my money improves your position.”
“And if I use the collateral already pledged?”
“Touring receivables and part of your publishing interest remain exposed.”
The call ends a few minutes later, and the house feels even larger than it did before.
Beyond the glass, the pool throws sunlight back at rooms Laurel no longer lives in.
I bought this place because she wanted sunlight; yesterday I bought Russell because I wanted control.
Now the lender wants another couple million dollars, my touring income is already tied to the purchase, and selling the wrong investments could put me in front of a divorce judge explaining why I endangered marital assets to protect shares Laurel never asked me to buy.
Every direction I turn seems to lead back to something I chose.
For weeks, I’ve been looking for the person doing this to me; the list of candidates is getting embarrassingly short.
Harlan calls an emergency shareholder session that evening. I join by video because owning forty-eight and a half percent of Mercer Records still doesn’t buy me a chair in the room where everyone gets to discuss whether I remain a threat to it.
Laurel is there with Miriam, the remaining outside investors, Harlan, independent counsel, and Elena Ward, Mercer’s new interim chief executive, who spent eleven years running North Coast Nashville and once told me at an awards dinner that my problem was confusing charisma with governance.
I thought she was flirting; my dick was prepared to testify under oath.
Laurel nearly inhaled champagne when I told her.
Turns out Elena simply thought I was an asshole.
She presents a ninety-day stabilization plan: resolve First Tennessee’s collateral issue, remove disputed Bellamy works from borrowing calculations, suspend nonessential acquisitions, reassure artists spooked by the audit, separate artist relations from executive ownership, and establish a rights-review committee with independent songwriters represented on it.
It is disciplined, practical, annoyingly good, and I hate every fucking word.
Harlan calls for shareholder support. Laurel’s twenty-one percent votes yes; the employee trust’s twelve follows, then the remaining outside holders with eighteen and a half.
Fuck. Fifty-one and a half.
I spent eleven-point-seven million dollars getting within touching distance of control, and they don’t need a single fucking vote from me.
My forty-eight and a half votes no.
The plan passes anyway.
For several seconds after the vote, I just sit there staring at the screen. There’s no hidden maneuver to uncover, no secret block of shares waiting to ambush me, no brilliant fucking trap I somehow missed. Laurel never needed Russell’s stake; she only needed to keep hers.
I spent millions to own more of Mercer than I ever have, and the company can still tell me to go fuck myself the second the rest of them agree I’m the problem.
My phone buzzes with a message from a number I don’t recognize.
Sloane: Funny watching you lose everything over a wife you thought would never leave.
I block the number, but an email arrives before I can put the phone down.
Evelyn Shaw: Divorce Discovery — Supplemental Financial Production.
Updated financial schedules. Full documentation for the Russell acquisition. Financing terms. Pledged assets. Post-filing transfers.
I read the list twice and understand exactly what Evelyn is doing.
She wants every piece of paper showing what I borrowed, what I put up to secure it, what I moved after Laurel filed, and which assets I may have exposed chasing shares I decided I needed.
If the purchase goes bad, Laurel’s lawyers are already positioning themselves to argue the loss belongs to me.
A laugh gets out of me somewhere around pledged assets. By the end, it sounds fucked enough that I stop.
Laurel never had to trick me into anything. She stepped aside, and I built the evidence against myself.