Chapter 28
GRANT
“If you sign this, you’re borrowing eight-point-four million dollars to buy six and a half percent of a company that removed you as chief executive six days ago.
” Charles slides the term sheet back across the conference table as if proximity might improve my comprehension.
“I need you to understand the sentence before you put your name underneath it.”
The private banker beside him shifts in his chair and develops a sudden, consuming interest in the view beyond the windows.
Coward.
I pick up the pages. Eleven-point-seven million for Russell Vance’s stake.
Three-point-three out of my own cash, another eight-point-four borrowed against touring receivables, a chunk of my publishing income, and marketable securities Charles has already spent twenty minutes bitching about me pledging at the worst possible time.
Money exists to be fucking used.
The house stays out of it. Laurel’s name is on the deed, the divorce is already filed, and even private lenders develop survival instincts when collateral comes attached to a pissed-off wife and two divorce attorneys.
“I understand numbers.”
“Your recent history suggests understanding something and behaving accordingly are separate skills.”
I lift my eyes to him. “You’re my lawyer.”
“Which is why I’m saying this now instead of sending flowers when it goes to shit.” He taps the purchase agreement. “Russell is getting a hundred and forty-six percent of the last preferred valuation. You’re paying a control premium for shares that do not give you control.”
“Forty-eight and a half percent.”
“Is less than fifty.”
“Thank you, Sesame Street.”
“You’re welcome.” Charles settles back in his chair. “The employee trust owns twelve. Laurel owns twenty-one. Outside investors retain eighteen and a half after Russell exits. If they vote together, they have fifty-one and a half.”
“They won’t.”
“Why?”
“Because half of them have known me for twenty years.”
“Half of them voted to remove you.”
“Temporarily.”
“Grant.”
“I built the fucking place.”
“Ownership is not a personality trait.”
My jaw tightens as I drop my attention to the terms again.
Laurel waived her right. The employee trust passed.
So did the remaining shareholders. No counterbid, no objection, not one fucking attempt to make this difficult.
They just stepped aside and let me have Russell’s shares, and for some reason, their lack of resistance pisses me off more than a fight would have.
Laurel knows I want these shares. She knows exactly what I have to leverage to get them, and she still waived.
Why the fuck isn’t she trying to stop me?
“What are you thinking?” Charles asks.
“She wants me to do this.”
He goes quiet for a beat. “Laurel.”
“Who else?”
“Perhaps she has decided grown men are responsible for their own investment decisions.”
“You don’t know her.”
“Neither do you lately.”
I turn my head slowly enough for the banker to rediscover the skyline. Charles, being Charles, remains unimpressed.
He slides a second sheet toward me. “The lender has a maintenance covenant. If the appraised value of your pledged securities and Mercer stake falls past the threshold, they can demand additional collateral.”
“Mercer isn’t going to collapse.”
“Probably not.”
I stare at him. “Probably?”
“The company is undergoing a chain-of-title audit. The bank has frozen availability under the revolver. Heartland walked. Its president is suspended. Two sponsors have paused business with its biggest artist. Its founder is divorcing the second-largest individual shareholder.” His mouth flattens.
“I’m not convinced this is the ideal moment for optimism to become a medical condition. ”
I pick up the pen. “Russell signs today?”
“The second the funds clear.”
“Then send the money.”
Charles swears.
I sign anyway.
∞∞∞
Sloane makes another post as the wire is processing.
Tessa calls before I finish reading the transfer instructions and says, “Do not open Instagram,” which is an idiotic thing to tell any human being with thumbs, so I open Instagram.
Sloane isn’t crying this time. Guess tears finally stopped doing numbers. She’s parked against a beige wall in an oversized sweatshirt, hair yanked back, face bare, every expensive inch of the production carefully arranged to suggest she rolled out of bed furious and hit record.
“You want the truth? Fine.”
My own voice answers her.
Fuck!
I remember the conversation almost immediately: the hotel suite, room service, Sloane scrolling through pictures of Laurel after I’d refused to buy her the same fucking jewelry Laurel had been photographed wearing.
By then it was a habit—Laurel wore something, Sloane wanted it; Laurel went somewhere, Sloane wanted to go; all of it part of some bizarre competition my wife didn’t even know she was in.
Vale had just beaten Mercer to a deal, and Sloane knew exactly where my temper lived. She kept needling me about Beckett until I gave her exactly the shit she was fishing for; now she cuts past the rest and goes straight to the part worth fucking up my day with.
Grant: I think she knew exactly how much attention to give him without ever doing enough for anybody to call her on it.
The clip ends, and my stomach turns. Without the hotel room around it, without whiskey or a fresh loss to Vale or any of the other bullshit I used to justify running my mouth, the sentence sounds exactly like what it is: something a husband should never have said about his wife, especially to the woman he was fucking.
Tessa walks into the conference room later, moving with the impressive velocity of a woman who has aged six years managing my shit and intends to hold me personally responsible for every one of them.
“I told you not to open it.”
“Shit, does it matter? I already know what I said.”
“Do you? Because America is currently conducting a seminar.”
She drops her tablet in front of me. Women are dissecting the arrogance required for a husband to tell his mistress what his wife enjoys. Men are calling me a cuck, because the internet has approximately four insults and recycles them aggressively.
A stitch puts Sloane’s recording beside pictures of Laurel leaving Mercer with Beckett. Another account has dug up the Austin footage from seven years ago—Laurel at the restaurant, me beside her, Beckett across the table.
Nothing happened in that footage, and a photograph of two people leaving the same building proves exactly fuck-all. Not like the internet gives a shit. Give strangers a few images, an old video, and a theory, and suddenly they’re fucking Woodward and Bernstein.
“She’s trying to make Laurel look complicit.”
“She’s trying to spread the shit around until hers stops looking exceptional.”
“Same thing.”
“No. One is strategy. The other is your obsession.”
I glare at her.
Tessa folds her arms. “Sloane’s distributor terminated her this morning. Her advance is in recoupment accounting, the remaining masters are frozen pending the rights review, Bellemore sent a demand under the morality clause, and Crown Ridge has already announced her replacement.”
“Good.”
I expect to enjoy saying it more than I do. Weeks ago, watching Sloane’s career go up in flames was fucking satisfying. Now she’s sitting in that room releasing recordings one at a time, dragging Laurel through public shit she didn’t create, and I’m too fucking tired to find any of it entertaining.
“So she has nothing left to lose.”
“Wrong. People always find more shit to lose.” Tessa takes the tablet back. “Her house, her money, her credibility in court, tour insurance, whatever professional relationships she hasn’t torched yet—and a significant amount of cash if Laurel ever gets tired of being polite and sues her ass.”
“Laurel won’t sue her.”
Tessa goes still for half a second. “You’re still making predictions about Laurel?”
I say nothing.
“Remarkable.”
∞∞∞
Miriam agrees to meet, so we end up in a coffee shop off Music Row with three songwriters arguing over a chorus near the window and enough midday traffic outside to keep the place loud.
Nobody pays me much attention until I take off my sunglasses; two phones appear with all the discretion of rifles at a parade.
The August heat has turned the windows hazy, but Miriam’s iced coffee is still sweating harder than she is. She keeps both hands around the cup, shoulders square, expression giving me absolutely nothing.
“This isn’t appropriate.”
I shrug. “It’s coffee.”
“You’re a major shareholder asking the trustee of the employee block to meet with you days before another share purchase closes.”
“Russell’s sale doesn’t give me control.”
“Then why am I here?”
I lean forward. “Because the employees built Mercer with me.”
“With Laurel too.”
“I never said otherwise.”
“You used to.”
I narrow my eyes. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
“When reporters came through, it was my label. When publishing won something, my writers. Laurel brought in the first six songwriters we signed, and back then you called it our team. Once she stopped showing up to meetings, somehow everything became yours.”
“You sound like her.”
“She hired me.”
“You all keep saying that shit like it makes you her fucking employee.”
Miriam’s expression cools. “I answer to more than sixty-three employees, Grant. I’m their fucking employee.”
I sit back. “I’m buying Russell’s stake. When it closes, I’ll own forty-eight and a half percent.”
“I can add.”
“The company needs stability.”
“You mean you need the votes.”
“I mean Mercer can’t spend the next three months fighting over every fucking decision.”
“Then stop giving the board so many reasons to fight you.”
Heat works up the back of my neck. “I kept this place alive through a distribution collapse and fucking COVID.”