Chapter 21
GRANT
At nine, Mercer Records looks like a courthouse with better artwork and a worse fucking mood: outside counsel has taken over half the fourth floor, finance is scrambling to rebuild the borrowing-base numbers, Tessa has locked herself inside Studio C with two crisis consultants, and Sloane’s livestream has blown past six million views because this country will drop whatever it’s doing to watch a woman’s life catch fire.
Her little performance has done exactly what she wanted and then some.
Billboard, Rolling Stone Country, three Nashville stations, and every gossip account with a Canva subscription have grabbed the same story: Laurel knew about Magnolia Rain, approved Sloane performing it, then challenged the rights after finding out about the “personal misconduct” between Sloane and me.
Nobody has put affair in a headline yet.
They don’t have to. My photograph outside the Conrad is everywhere, grainy as shit and ugly enough to make me look guilty before anyone bothers asking what actually happened, with Sloane’s picture from eleven minutes earlier sitting right beside it.
The internet has filled in the blanks with the confidence of people who will never have to answer a subpoena.
Tessa slides a draft statement across my desk. “We need to put daylight between the company and her claims.”
Mercer Records acknowledges concerns regarding the provenance and clearance of Magnolia Rain. Mercer provided Sloane Avery’s team with materials believed to be cleared at the time. Independent review ongoing.
Blah, blah, corporate fucking anesthesia.
“You’re giving Sloane cover.”
“I’m giving the company room to respond.”
“She just accused Laurel of sabotaging her career.”
“And if we retaliate against an artist immediately after she alleges misconduct involving the label president she was sleeping with, every employment lawyer in Tennessee gets an erection.”
I cock an eyebrow. Tessa doesn’t blink. Forty-eight, divorced twice, dressed in black like she’s mourning the stupidity of rich men, and completely immune to my bullshit. She’s been telling famous men things they don’t want to hear since I was opening county fairs.
“So what do you suggest?”
“Keep your mouth shut. The company corrects the factual record on the song without touching the affair. Laurel’s attorney handles Laurel. Sloane’s attorney handles Sloane. You keep your dick, your phone, and your ego out of all three processes.”
One of the junior consultants coughs into her fist.
Camille.
I’ve met her twice before this week. Late twenties, dark hair, sharp green eyes the same shade as Sloane’s, and lips that have my brain immediately wondering what they’d feel like around my cock. She catches me looking and lowers her eyes too late.
The movement alone makes my dick jerk to life. I shift in my seat, grateful the angle keeps my reaction hidden from her.
Seven miserable days without sex. My wife slept in the guest room again last night because she told me she found a nit in her hair and didn’t want me anywhere near her until she could check for lice; I’d happily kept my distance.
Sloane is threatening litigation. I’m in the middle of the largest crisis of my professional life, and some prehistoric idiot inside my nervous system still has time to register that a sexy woman wants me.
Looking isn’t fucking.
I drag my attention back to Tessa. “Release it.”
“As written?”
“Change ‘believed to be cleared’ to ‘represented internally as cleared.’”
Her eyes narrow. “That shifts responsibility.”
“It states a fact.”
“Toward whom?”
I don’t answer. Tessa reads me perfectly anyway.
“You want Daniel and Sloane standing closer to the blast radius.”
“I want the company protected.”
“Of course you do.”
Twenty minutes later, the statement goes live.
Forty minutes after that, Bellemore Beauty terminates Sloane’s contract outright. Crown Ridge confirms she has been removed from the fall tour pending review. At lunch, her radio add date is gone.
She thought she could threaten me with things I never expected her to have and get away with it. She miscalculated.
Sloane calls twelve times, and I answer the thirteenth because I’m tired of listening to my phone vibrate on the desk like an insect trapped beneath glass.
“What?”
She’s crying hard enough that the first few words blur together.
“You fucking did this.”
“If you’re calling about Bellemore, I don’t run Bellemore.”
“Your statement told everyone I knew the song wasn’t cleared.”
“Our statement says it was represented internally as cleared.”
“Everyone knows what that means.”
“Then maybe going live and lying about my wife wasn’t your sharpest career move.”
I’d always known Sloane was a tad dense. Her talent had gotten her farther in life than common sense ever could.
The second I saw that livestream, fury so blinding coursed through my veins that I wanted to break the fucking iPad in half.
But then I saw the comments accusing me of trying to manipulate public opinion, using Mercer’s statement to control the story and make myself look better, and the sheer stupidity of it cooled that temper.
If she wanted to drag my name into the middle of this and make a spectacle of my life, I was going to make sure she regretted every second of it. I’d destroy her career so completely she’d be lucky if anyone remembered she’d ever had one.
A warning note threads through her grating voice. “I didn’t lie.”
“Laurel didn’t know what you were singing.”
“She knew I had the song.”
“She knew you had a song.”
“Same difference.”
“It won’t be once the timestamps come out.”
The silence that follows tells me she didn’t know about the timestamps.
Good.
“What timestamps?”
“You went live without talking to your lawyer, didn’t you?”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s becoming less persuasive. Stop trying to rewrite conversations because you fucked yourself.”
“I recorded them. Our conversations.”
I stand, the office shrinking around me to a single point of focus. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“How many?”
Sloane laughs, ragged and mean. “Enough.”
“Send your lawyer’s information to Mercer counsel. Do not contact Laurel.”
“Or what?”
“Or I bury you so deep in litigation you’ll be singing at birthday parties by Christmas.”
The second it leaves my mouth, I know it’s the kind of sentence men get deposed over.
“There he is,” she whispers. “That’s the Grant I know.”
“You don’t know shit about me.”
“I know you fucked me Wednesday afternoon on your anniversary, went home begging your wife the next morning, and spent the rest of the day trying to make my career the price of her forgiveness.”
“Your career is suffering because you stole a song and lied publicly about the woman who wrote it.”
“You gave me the fucking song.”
“And you knew where it came from.”
Her breathing changes. “You told me Laurel was finished. You told me she didn’t care. You told me I wouldn’t get caught in the fucking blowout.”
“I was wrong.”
“No.” Her voice flattens. “You were scared. That’s why you hate Beckett Vale. That’s why you kept her catalogue. That’s why you paid Daniel. Every time Laurel gets close to becoming something that doesn’t orbit you, you break the fucking telescope.”
“Stay away from my wife.”
“Or you’ll what? Freeze another album?”
She hangs up.
Thirty seconds later, Tessa walks into my office without knocking, phone in hand, and plays me a fourteen-second clip Sloane has just posted to her stories.
Grant: I’m not blowing up the company to protect you.
Sloane: Then I won’t protect you.
Tessa closes her eyes. “I’m going to kill both of you.”
“Get in line.”
∞∞∞
Friday’s board meeting starts with twelve people and a small army of lawyers.
Harlan sits at the head. Laurel sits three seats down from me, with Evelyn on one side and the employee-trust trustee on the other.
Beckett isn’t technically entitled to attend, which should improve my mood, except he’s waiting in the adjacent conference room because Vale House’s catalogue offer is one of the transactions under discussion, and the bastard remains within convenient walking distance of my wife.
The lender has submitted a reservation-of-rights letter.
Outside counsel has verified that the Schedule A containing Laurel’s seventy-three songs was modified after her signature, though they haven’t concluded whether the modification was legally authorized under the agreement.
Daniel Price has retained counsel and stopped answering Mercer’s calls.
Not that I was expecting much from the sleazebag. He always had a talent for disappearing the second shit got difficult.
Finance has identified four years of revenue derived from Laurel’s pre-marriage catalogue that flowed through Mercer Publishing.
No one is accusing me of stealing it because the administration revenue was accounted for and Laurel received her contractual distributions.
Even knowing that shit doesn’t loosen the panic choking me right now, or the number of cold fingers wrapped around my throat.
Harlan finishes reading counsel’s recommendation: temporary suspension of my authority over Mercer Publishing, independent approval required for any transaction above fifty thousand dollars, removal from the audit process, and appointment of an interim executive committee until the findings are complete.
“Discussion?”
My attorney starts first. Fifteen minutes of governance, proportionality, irreparable reputational harm, no finding of wrongdoing. Useful sentences. Expensive fucking sentences.
Harlan asks Laurel if she wishes to speak as a director and affected rights holder, and every eye in the room moves to her, including mine.
Laurel folds her hands on the table. Wedding ring visible.
“I oppose the suspension.”
For a second, I think I heard wrong. Harlan does too.
“You oppose it?”
“Yes.”
My attorney turns toward her. I don’t move.