6. Chase
Chase had attended his share of contract negotiations, but none had gotten off to such a rocky start.
It all began when Scott Lee met them, unannounced, in the lobby of the Tribute Records skyscraper bright and early on Saturday morning.
Most of the office staff worked weekdays, which meant Zak’s emphatic, “Oh fuck you,” echoed throughout the first floor.
There was no quelling that storm, only riding it out. A fact Scott seemed innately aware of despite not knowing the first thing about his daughter. Too bad he hadn’t yet learned to get out of her way.
“Why are you here?” she demanded.
“I work here.”
“I fucking know that already.” Her laugh bordered on deranged. “I meant what are you doing here right now?”
“I’m here for exactly the same reason I was at the film studio. To keep you from signing a contract that’ll ruin your fucking life.”
Scott met her fury with a calm, immovable power of his own. Though many of their features were dissimilar, one massive commonality stood out to Chase. Not the color of their eyes, but the ferocity blazing in them.
Zak squared her slighter shoulders to Scott’s broad ones like she was about to challenge him to settle things outside. Fortunately, she went with another verbal lashing instead. “You can shove your opinions up your deadbeat ass. I’ve been shooting down shitty offers ever since we got back, and I have no problem doing it again without your help.”
A gust of freezing winter air came in through the glass doors as they opened.
The click of heels on tile drew Scott’s attention, then the whole band’s, to the direction of a woman who looked like an encyclopedic picture of the word “corporate.” Her glossy, strawberry-blonde hair was swept up into a clip. Beneath a trench coat, she wore a matching navy pantsuit that was perfectly pressed and free of lint, hair, discoloration, or any other sign that she was the kind of person who made mistakes, ate meals, or had a life outside of the office.
“I know you want nothing to do with me. That’s why Lisa’s here,” Scott said. He passed a slight glance, a question, to Chase. Something that read very much like, You didn’t tell her?
Lisa extended a cold, vicelike handshake to everyone, but not a smile. “We sure are off to a start. Black jeans aren’t the same thing as trousers. You guys have no idea what business casual is, do you?”
“Sounds like an oxymoron,” Alex said.
“Moronic, for sure,” Dallas agreed.
Chase stayed quiet because he was wearing slacks with a button-down and tie. Looking like the dweeb among rebels, as per usual.
Zak rebuffed Lisa’s handshake. “Are you a friend of his?” She nodded to Scott.
“I’m a lawyer,” Lisa answered in her thick Bronx accent before giving a curt laugh. Like the idea of friendship itself was beneath her. “I’m not anybody’s friend.”
“A lover?”
“I don’t do men.” She also didn’t move her face when she spoke. “And I especially don’t do rock stars. But they make great clients. Plenty of cash and always in trouble.”
“Fair enough. I still didn’t hire a lawyer, though.”
“Nobody ever does until they’ve already fucked things up.”
Chase bit the inside of his cheek. It was like watching Zak talk to her equally blunt clone. He might have been more on guard, had he not sensed her willingness to trust the other woman growing with every statement that distanced Lisa from Scott.
Which he really, really hoped was the case. Because Scott wasn’t the only one responsible for Lisa’s presence. And the phone call Chase had placed the evening before their flight was about to blow up in his face like a Zak-magnitude atom bomb if she couldn’t understand the reason for what he’d done beyond his method of doing it.
Chase intervened. It was time to come clean. At least, as good a time as any. “Can we have a moment to discuss this?” he asked. “Privately?”
Lisa checked her watch and turned to Scott. “I bill by the hour.”
“Not my problem,” Zak said over her shoulder as she followed Chase to the empty mailroom.
Edge, Alex, and Dallas weren’t far behind, which was comforting in a sense. Maybe one of them would find it in their heart to hold her back if she tried to kill him.
The door shut behind them. Chase backed up against the center row of cabinets as he tried to think of the exact words to say and what order to say them in.
“Please don’t hate me—”An excellent start. Pitiful and a premature admission of wrongdoing. “—but I talked to your father yesterday. I’m the one who asked him to recommend a lawyer.”
Edge cupped a hand over the side of his face. “Oh no.”
“Oh fuck,” Dallas drawled.
Chase thought he caught Alex cringing out of the corner of his eye as well, but was too busy paying attention to Zak as she stared.
And stared.
“You what?” she asked softly.
“It had nothing to do with Scott personally, it’s just—I’ve been here before,” Chase said. “I entered the league at the end of a strike, and then, a few years later, came the lockout. I’ve seen players get screwed by management like you wouldn’t believe. You gave them everything. Your name, for jerseys. Your face, for trading cards.
“That was on the NHL’s eighth-in-earnings team. Tribute is owned by the top-grossing media conglomerate in the world. We need a good lawyer, Zak, but we only had a day’s notice to be here, and half of that was spent driving back to LA. I didn’t have time to do all the research and vetting, but I did know one person who could recommend a lawyer specializing in music contracts.”
“My father. The man who sabotaged the last contract.”
As she fell back against the door, Chase realized he had spent too much energy imagining a scenario where she was furious, and not enough on the worse alternative.
She looked devastated. And as much as his brain wanted to trick him into believing the gloomy haze in her eyes was all about her torn relationship with Scott, it also had to do with himself. He’d betrayed her trust, even if he did it in an effort to help.
“I know he hurt you,” Chase said. “He’s a dirtbag. And I felt like a dirtbag for reaching out to him, but this is his world, and he knows it well. I never would’ve made that call if this wasn’t important. I just wanted to do what’s best for the band.”
“At what point, exactly, did that turn into him showing up here? Him payingfor our representation?”
“I didn’t know he was going to be here,” Chase swore. “I didn’t ask him to be here, and you know I would never ask him to pay. I’m not going to let him pay. I can afford to take care of this for us, and I want to. Especially if I’m going to stand up there profiting off an album I didn’t write.”
She didn’t accept his answer, or even acknowledge it. She simply asked, “If he hadn’t been here, would you have told me?”
“Always. I will always tell you the truth.” He stepped forward. She looked like she wished she could take a step back. “I didn’t know how you would react, and I wanted to give you a chance to meet her first. And if you don’t trust Lisa, we don’t have to go with her. Nothing is set in stone. We can make up some excuse and postpone the meeting while we find someone else.”
Zak’s jaw clenched. “It’s not Lisa I’m having trouble trusting right now.”
He had wondered if he was doing the wrong thing by not telling her before he dialed the office. There was a high risk Zak would’ve shot down his plan immediately, and there was the other risk that he would avoid leaning on the band”s best—and only—resource to appease her.
The very things that drew him to Zak, her independence and her drive, were also her greatest weaknesses. She saw her past not as a series of trials and accomplishments, but as a manual full of pitfalls that, if she could simply avoid them, would be the path to perfection. And the first item on that list of pitfalls was accepting help. From anyone.
But her self-reliance also made her self-aware. The final risk was that she would’ve understood, but he didn’t give her the chance. He had robbed her of being a part of a decision that wasn’t only professional to her, but highly personal.
He had made the wrong choice.
She threw her hands up in surrender. “Vote on it, then. We need legal advice. Thanks for bringing that to our attention, Chase,” she said coldly. “What do you all want to do about it? Because obviously I’m irrational. I can’t remove him from the picture.”
“You’re not irrational, Zak,” Chase said, but she kept looking at Edge. Waiting for him to say something instead.
Edge glanced at Chase apologetically before he answered her. “And because you’re not irrational, you know Scott might have been telling the truth about losing you the competition to help you. You don’t want to believe he cares about you because that’s more complicated than believing he doesn’t. But people are complicated, and that’s what this is. Complicated. Because I think your father really is on your side, and I don’t think he’d pick anyone but the best to represent you. So I say we hire Lisa.”
Zak turned to Alex with concerted stoicism.
“If my dad showed up tomorrow telling me he’d found a lawyer for me, I would tell him to fuck off too,” Alex said. “I know what it’s like to be betrayed by your parents, and I don’t think you have to remove your own emotions from the situation. If you’re not comfortable with Lisa, I’m on your side. We can find someone else.”
“You care what I think?” Dallas said when she waited for his response, too. “I think all lawyers are the fucking same, and if Moneybags is going to pay her enough to have our back, she’ll have our back. I say we hire her. We’re here, she’s here, and she’s got two millionaires willing to foot the bill for her fees.”
“Okay.” She nodded to Chase. “Majority ruled. We hire Lisa. Let’s go.”
Chase hated that everything was still unsettled between the two of them, but he couldn’t force Zak to forgive him. He didn’t even have time to give her his best grovel when there was a boardroom of people waiting for them upstairs. Plus, an intimidating woman—already talking to another prospective client on her cell phone—waiting for them on the bright orange sectional in the lobby.
Zak sat opposite her father, and Chase took the empty seat next to her. Which she ignored, as she told Scott, “You’re not needed here. Our band will cover Lisa’s legal fees.”
“It’s the least I could do—” Scott started, but Zak cut him off.
“No. The least you could do is get the fuck out of my sight. I am done dealing with you.”
Scott deflated. “Not if you sign on that line, you’re not.”
Unfazed by the animosity brewing around her, Lisa produced a representation agreement from her leather briefcase and laid it on the table, pointing at where to initial and sign.
“There are four other people in my band you can talk to. Take it up with them. Not me.” Zak surveyed the paper as Lisa placed a pen in her hand. She signed haphazardly and stood. “I need a minute alone. I’ll see you all upstairs.”
Chase needed to sign next, but the sound of Zak”s stilettos striking the floor made it difficult to concentrate on dry legal jargon. The cold air from outside swept over the back of his neck and rustled the pages of the agreement as he read.
When he looked up, Scott Lee’s gaze met his own in a mixture of familiarity and foreignness.
Chase had seen Zak’s father on album covers, billboards, and screens more times than he could count. The man’s flashy guitars and confident interviews had always made him seem larger than life. A screaming personality even among other celebrities of his caliber.
Yet now, Chase could barely recognize the star that had graced magazine covers when he was a young teen, hailed as the successor to the likes of Lennon and Jagger. He saw age so far beyond a man in his early forties on Scott’s face. It had nothing to do with the smoker’s wrinkles around his mouth or the prominent creases like railroad tracks between his brows. The hints of gray in his light brown hair.
It was in his tired eyes. The limp from an old injury, healed incorrectly, that marred his gait. Probably invisible to everyone else, but not to someone like Chase, who noticed the symmetry of others’ footsteps.
It turned his blood to lava to think that anyone would choose to hurt Zak the way her father did. Yet still, he pitied the man. Scott’s daughter was the most special person Chase had ever had the privilege of knowing. And her own parents had thrown away the chance of knowing her.
“Thank you for reaching out.” Scott lingered at the table.
The other man’s gratitude made Chase feel like a traitor all over again. “I didn’t do it for you.”
“I know,” Scott said. “That’s why I’m thanking you.”
The first hour went by in a blur of expensive Scotch, forced congeniality, and a round of too-tight handshakes with the director of talent acquisition, the vice president, and the general manager of Tribute Records, Trevor Simon.
Lisa then guided them all through a firm, but cordial, conversation about what Saint of Spades was looking to get out of the contract and what the label had to offer. Though neither Lisa nor Trevor detailed their shared history, disdain tainted Trevor’s mask of professionalism every time Lisa opened her mouth.
The GM seemed somewhere in his mid-thirties. Young, for his position, with a head of salt-and-pepper hair that spoke to the stress he had endured to climb the ladder. He was around Chase’s height, fit, and meticulously groomed, with the smile of a door-to-door salesman and the eyes of a predator.
When their meeting broke for a lunch break, Chase had no doubt they would return from the recess to a bloodbath. The start date of the tour loomed over everyone. Tribute was under pressure to get their agreement in ink, while the band was under an equal and opposite pressure to lock in the most lucrative opportunity for their debut.
Entertainment moved fast, and Saint of Spades’ worth diminished the longer it took them to release an album.
“Now, you’re not going to get screwed. I won’t let that happen.” Lisa’s assurance outside the conference room felt a lot more like being bull-wrestled. “But keep in mind, they’re going to start with their lowest offer to see what you’re willing to accept. They want to get a reaction out of you—they would rather deal with an experienced, unsigned band than somebody like me who knows what they’re doing—but do your best to remain neutral. And remember: I do the talking in there. Got it?”
Chase heard everyone agree, but he doubted how well that would go over in practice.
And he was right to. Because the moment they took their places around the table and turned to page one of the bound contract drafts they’d each been given a copy of, Zak’s face turned into a neon, blinking WHAT THE FUCK sign.
“Take a look and let us know what you think,” Trevor directed, as though he were asking them to decide between chocolate and vanilla ice cream, instead of whether to sign a legally binding document that blatantly disregarded everything they had bartered for earlier this morning.
A sub-ten-percent royalty offer, calling for commercially acceptable masters and assigning lifetime recording rights to the label. Plus, they tacked on ownership of the band branding and their likenesses for merchandising, and a collaborators clause that would subject all recordings to review and revision by an internally pre-approved team.
Chase didn’t understand every line of overwritten bullshit within those pages, but he knew it translated to: We’ll own your music on every platform… after we decide what music you’re allowed to record, that is. We’ll own your names. We’ll own your faces. But don’t worry. We’ll pay you one-point-five percent a piece for your trouble.
Lisa folded her hands on the table once she finished her initial review of the document. “If taking on my clients poses such a substantial risk to your company that you’re only willing to pay them seven-point-five percent of their earnings, then explain to me why you’re demanding they relinquish all rights to their master recordings, as well as the right to re-record?”
“It’s unheard of for an undiscovered band to own their work outright,” Trevor scoffed. “The biggest factor in determining a band’s success isn’t the music. Terrible music gets produced every day, and it tops the charts all the time. Marketing is where stars are made, and it’s expensive as hell.” He flipped to page four. “And as you’ve noticed, we did take your requested changes to the royalty percentages under advisement.”
Not really. Their take-home amount was the same, even if the unequal split had been corrected.
The initial verbal proposal had Chase at three percent, Zak at one and a half, and everyone else at one. He didn’t care how many times Trevor tried to justify the pay discrepancy by reminding him lead singers were the primary revenue generators. There was no way that could be true when Chase hadn’t generated any of the songs to begin with.
“You’ve made no such changes,” Lisa contested. “Altering distribution does nothing to adjust for the fact that seven-point-five percent is criminally low. That needs to come up. My clients already agreed to cut their advances by two-thirds in exchange for a higher share of the profits. Eighteen percent on album sales is more than fair for a group that’s garnered this much audience buy-in.”
Lisa slid their version of the contract across the smooth laminate, the protective plastic binding screeching along the way. “Three-point-six percent each for the mechanical royalties. Ten percent each for the performance royalties, after you remove the collaborators clause and adjust the copyright ownership, per my clients’ request.”
The corners of Trevor’s eyes crinkled. He reclined in his black leather executive chair until its base creaked.
“Is something funny, Mr. Simon?”
“Is it not? I was under the impression you were kidding, Ms. Galt.”
“You and I have conducted plenty of these meetings.” This was the first time any of them had seen Lisa crack her perfectly neutral fa?ade. Her smile was more unsettling than her game face. “When have you ever known me to make a joke?”
“Frankly, your terms are outrageous.”
Now, he was no longer speaking to Lisa. A firing squad of a stare shot down the five of them on the other side of the rectangular conference table. “I hoped we would be able to make something happen here, but this relationship has to benefit both of us. Otherwise, we’ll hand Joe Schmo a hundred-dollar bill at each stop of the tour. Shit, most bands would do it for the visibility alone.”
“We havethe visibility already,” Chase said, hoping he wasn’t going to screw everything up, but negotiating for them felt like one of the only meaningful ways he could contribute to the band at this point. “Amped was our foot in the door. People know who we are. They just need an album to buy now. And if you don’t want to profit from the expansive fanbase we’ve built up before even releasing a single track, then it’s your loss. This isn’t the first time we’ve sat across the table from a guy like you.”
“You typically provide much better counsel than this,” Trevor addressed Lisa again. “You didn’t tell them? That’s not how things are done. It’s unreasonable to expect any company to gamble on an album that no one is going to buy.”
“You said it yourself, album sales are all about marketing. So market it.” Lisa jutted her chin out. “If you don’t feel confident in the team here at Tribute to push the debut album of one of the hottest new rock bands in the country, then I fail to see what value you would bring to the table in any contract.”
“Don’t take my words out of context,” Trevor snapped.
The more emotional he got, the more Chase’s hopes mounted. The label wanted to make this contract happen, perhaps more desperately than the band did. This was all pomp and circumstance, contrived to disguise the most likely scenario. No matter what album Saint of Spades put out, it was going to sell. Fast.
“You want a contract where Saint of Spades gets to do whatever the hell they want—put out garbage, without any input from industry professionals—and get paid for it.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I want.” Lisa leaned over the table, full weight on the V of her forearms. “And you’ll do it because you want their music. They didn’t have professional collaborators or sound mixers when they appeared on your parent company’s show, and they got more asses in seats than any other band on that stage. Including your newest talent.”
“Not without scandal.”
“Scandal sells, and you know it.”
A muscle twitched at Trevor’s temple.
“And you know what sells better than that? Chase Payton, disabled hockey star making a comeback. Rival rock bands, returning to the same stage. Metal’s newest princess, Izzy Sartori, and alternative’s hottest lady lead guitarist, Zak Parker,” Lisa said. “I’m not even a publicist and I know that’s a goldmine, so don’t waste my time shooting out any more iron prices.”
Not one person on their side of the table moved a muscle, but Chase caught Zak out of the corner of his eye, bristling at the idea of pitching their band to the world based on melodrama instead of music.
In all likelihood, their lawyer was right, but Zak was the one who had shown him that music spoke for itself. It told its own stories, drew its own conclusions, and exposed every gray pixel of space so often neglected in a world of black and white. Good and bad.
And that was precisely why, when Trevor said, “We’ll accept your terms with two adjustments. Tribute retains master ownership and exclusive recording rights for a thirty-five-year period. And the addition of a public image clause. If Tribute is expected to stay out of the creative process, then I’m going to have to ask that the band stays out of the promotional process. Those decisions need to remain in our control if we want this to be a profitable relationship.”
They agreed.