Chapter 48 #2
He pledges proceeds from the remaining consigned cars, assigns a portion of future touring distributions above protected operating thresholds and, most significantly, agrees to sell a minority interest in part of his personal songwriter catalogue to fund the initial settlement payment and reduce the bridge balance.
The sale doesn’t include his entire catalogue. He still owns valuable rights, still earns money and will remain wealthy on paper, but a music fund will now own part of the royalties Grant spent years treating like permanent inheritance.
“He’s selling his songs.” My voice comes out quieter than I intend.
Across the kitchen, Beckett’s attention shifts from me to the rain streaking the windows. Evelyn hears whatever sits inside those four words.
“A portion of his writer interest,” she says. “Not yours. Not the corrected Bellamy works. His.”
Satisfaction collides with grief, a combination I’ve become familiar with.
Grant turned my songs into assets the moment money demanded it.
Now his own songs are being reduced to numbers for exactly the same reason.
I didn’t arrange that symmetry, but I’d be lying through my teeth if I said there wasn’t something exquisite about it.
“When does the board vote?”
“This afternoon. Harlan has the independent recommendation, Elena supports it and outside counsel recommends settlement over derivative litigation. Your vote is required because you remain a director and shareholder.”
Beckett sets a plate beside me without interrupting the call, the eggs still soft, potatoes crisp at the edges and toast rescued at exactly the right second despite the fact that I’ve spent the last several minutes wrecking both his breakfast plans and his concentration.
I peer at him. He gives me a smug little tilt of his mouth.
I silently mouth, Show-off.
He mouths back, Eat.
Evelyn keeps going through releases, indemnification provisions and the exact claims Mercer reserves if Grant defaults. I pull up my notes app and start typing; I’ve learned not to let legal details wash over me anymore.
∞∞∞
The board approves the settlement seven to two, with Grant recusing himself because the conflict is so obvious even he has stopped wasting everyone’s time pretending otherwise.
Harlan reads the resolution into the record, Elena confirms the bank will receive the final remediation package, and Miriam asks three questions about employee protections and another about how Mercer plans to communicate the changes to its writers, because Miriam remains the only person in the room with a reliable interest in whether ordinary people survive our rich-person catastrophe. When my turn comes, I vote yes.
Grant appears by video long enough to confirm through counsel that he understands and accepts the settlement.
His camera is on this time. The fall tour is underway, so he’s calling from a hotel suite somewhere on the road, hair longer than usual, black T-shirt instead of a jacket, a glass of water beside him that he never touches.
When Harlan asks whether he has anything further to add, Grant looks directly into the camera. For a moment, I expect the old instinct to win—the correction, the explanation, the final argument delivered as though saying something last makes it truer.
“No.”
It may be the first board meeting I can remember where Grant Mercer does not need the final word.
The call disconnects, and Harlan leans back in his chair.
No one celebrates. Elena moves straight into the next agenda item—artist-development staffing—because corporations have no room for emotional climax, which is probably one of the reasons they manage to survive people like us.
Forty minutes later, I close my laptop and only then notice my hands are shaking.
Nora texts before I even get out of my chair.
Nora: Is he off the board?
Laurel: Yes.
Nora: Holy shit. They actually did it. I owe Harlan an edible arrangement.
A laugh escapes me, small and helpless. Mama sends only a heart. Dean sends, Can I buy one of his cars cheap? and Monica follows so quickly I can practically hear her yelling across whatever room they’re in. No.
Celia sends nothing.
I stare at her name for a moment, and the silence feels right.
Grant is her son first; the man who hurt me, the disgraced executive, the six-point-eight-million-dollar settlement and the empty board seat all come after that.
She doesn’t owe me celebration while she watches him sell pieces of what he built to pay for the damage he caused.
Some consequences can be deserved and still hurt the people standing nearby.
Sloane’s ending arrives with far less ceremony, mostly because by now she exists at the edge of my life.
Evelyn forwards the disposition because my protective order is involved: Sloane resolves the violation charge without a trial under an agreement that leaves the final protective order in force, places her on supervised probation, requires strict compliance with the no-contact provisions and makes another violation considerably more serious.
She pays the fines and legal costs and, for once, seems to understand that staying away from me is the cheapest option available to her.
Nora decides against pursuing a separate civil claim over the writing-room incident after her lawyer points out that litigation would buy them years of continued contact neither woman wants.
“I've got songs to write,” Nora told me. “I refuse to spend my thirties proving a woman stood in a hallway when there’s literally video of the hallway.”
Fair. Her management arbitration hurts Sloane more financially anyway. She owes a negotiated amount for commissions and expenses connected to contracts her former team secured before termination, and although the figure alone will not destroy her, it lands at exactly the wrong time.
The large house she bought at the height of Grant’s promises becomes impossible to justify once the advances dry up, sponsors disappear and touring money stops coming in; meanwhile, the trades spend weeks wondering whether she’s planning some scrappy independent comeback.
Maybe she is. I realize I don’t care, and that surprises me more than any judgment, fine or professional humiliation could.
For a long time, I imagined revenge as Sloane waking up every morning miserable because I was happy, as though my life would only count as recovered if hers remained wrecked beside it.
Now I mostly hope she becomes boring enough that reporters stop attaching my name to hers.
Her name disappears from my phone. After months of compliance and no further incidents, security reduces my detail, and the black Range Rover stops haunting Green Hills.
One evening, I’m scrolling through social media when a photograph of Sloane leaving a grocery store in sweatpants appears beneath some headline about life after scandal.
My thumb keeps moving. I don’t open it, don’t zoom in on her face or wonder if she looks miserable, regrets any of it or thinks life has punished her properly. I just keep scrolling.
The woman who slept with my ex-husband, sang my song, lied about me and spent months forcing herself into my life is no longer mine to think about. There’s nothing left but good silence.