Chapter 24 #3
Laurel’s face hardens. “Watch your mouth, Grant.”
“No. You want honesty? Fine. He’s wanted to fuck you since Austin. I knew it. He knew it. Half the room knew it. Now he gets to stand around looking noble because he managed to keep his cock in his pants for two fucking weeks.”
Beckett closes the space between us, but Laurel steps in the middle—not to protect me. I clock that shit immediately.
She puts one hand against Beckett’s chest without looking at him, and he stops—completely. “Don’t.”
And six-foot-something Beckett Vale, who has bought companies out from under men for less disrespect than I just gave him, stays exactly where she put him.
Laurel looks at me. “You really think that is what makes him different from you?”
“He wants you.”
“Maybe.” My jaw locks. “The difference is that he has never treated wanting me as a possession.”
I have no answer.
Her hand drops from Beckett’s chest. His eyes stay on her, not me, and that shit hurts in a new way.
“And since we’re being honest,” Laurel says, “I filed for divorce this morning.”
Everything around me goes quiet, even with traffic moving along Broadway two blocks away.
“What?”
“Evelyn filed it before the board meeting.”
“You fucking used me. You told me you still loved me and wanted to reconcile.”
She shrugs. “I stayed long enough to retrieve my records. Then you made the decision even faster when you went ahead and slept with Camille.”
“Laurel, what rec—”
“You asked me what I wanted from you. I told you nothing.” She puts her sunglasses back on. “Believe me this time.”
She walks to the passenger side of Beckett’s SUV, and I look at him because the hatred boiling in my veins needs somewhere to go.
“You touch her before this divorce is final, and I swear to God—”
Beckett shuts the rear door and crowds in on me, and for the first time since I’ve known him, something genuinely vicious enters his face without a veil.
I glare up at him as he hovers over me, sweat licking down my spine.
“You want to threaten me?” His voice is quiet, eyes a storm of fury. “Try. Fucking. Harder.”
I swallow as he gets into the driver’s seat, swiping the sweat rolling into the collar of my shirt. My phone vibrates, flashing my lawyer’s name, and the call douses whatever heat Beckett left burning through me.
“Grant, don’t go home yet.”
“Why?”
“Process server is waiting at the house.”
I close my eyes. “I know about the divorce.”
“That isn’t all.”
Papers rustle.
“Outside counsel completed the preliminary compensation recalculation. Without the disputed Bellamy catalogue revenues, Mercer Publishing would have missed the top incentive threshold that year.”
My stomach drops.
“By how much?”
He tells me, less than two hundred thousand dollars in qualifying revenue. Close enough to be cruel.
“The board is demanding immediate repayment of the incremental bonus pending final review.”
“How much?”
“Four hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars, plus interest. There may be additional tax adjustments.”
Nearly half a million.
Money isn’t the problem. I have more.
The problem is that Laurel’s songs did exactly what she said they did: put money in my pocket while I told myself I was protecting our future.
“There’s more,” Charles says.
Of course there fucking is.
“First Tennessee is requiring three-point-four million dollars in replacement collateral within ten business days if the disputed catalogue is removed from the borrowing base. Without executive authority, you cannot direct Mercer to provide it. The board decides.”
I look toward the street where Beckett’s SUV disappeared.
My phone vibrates with a news alert.
Sloane Avery has uploaded another video. This one is crying, furious, promising “receipts on everyone.”
Five minutes later, her distribution partner issues a notice placing her contract under formal review for material reputational harm and unauthorized disclosure of confidential label communications.
She wanted revenge and has started eating herself alive to get it.
I should enjoy that. I don’t.
I understand her too well now.
We both keep striking matches inside rooms we’re still standing in.
For fourteen years, I thought Laurel’s loyalty was one of the fixed laws of my life. Gravity. Taxes. My wife coming home.
I never considered that loyalty could expire.
I never considered that a person could love you long after she stopped being willing to survive you.
By noon, Mercer Records no longer answers to me.
Four hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars is being clawed out of an old bonus, the bank wants three-point-four million in clean collateral, the acquisition that was supposed to define our next decade is walking toward a competitor, Sloane is detonating what remains of her own career, Camille has retained counsel, my divorce petition is waiting at the house, and Beckett Vale is driving my wife away from me.
For the first time in my life, I have no fucking idea what to fix first, and the worst part is that Laurel barely had to destroy anything.
She just stopped protecting me from the things I destroyed myself.