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23
PIPER
Ibarely heard the threats Aunt Emmie threw at Petrova as I watched Cannon disappear down the hall. The old man was making excuses, but he should have known better than to try to pull a fast one over on Emmie. She saw through a lie faster than the Flash could flip a light switch.
“By the time I’m done with you, the world will consider you and everyone associated with Petrova worse than Weinstein,” Emmie told him, her voice arctic cold. “Keep lying to me, and I’ll take a wrecking ball to your kingdom.”
I turned away from the door at the sound of Petrova’s curse. “What do you want me to do? I’ve fired him already.”
“You should have fucking fired him the first time an artist had an altercation with him. Instead, you put my niece and every other female client I represent in danger. Look at her neck!” she shouted, slapping her hands on the conference table again. “Look at it. He could have damaged her vocal cords, for all I know. All this could have been avoided if you hadn’t swept the last time under the rug.”
In my lifetime, I’d seen Emmie angry plenty of times, but right now, she was more pissed than I’d ever witnessed before. Her green eyes were a darker shade, her nostrils flaring so much the diamond stud in her nose lifted and fell with each inhale. Her chest heaved from how hard she was breathing. But it was the sheer hate on her beautiful face that told me she had reached a level of rage that was hotter than the surface of the sun.
“My clients are no longer part of Petrova Records,” she informed him, the ice in her voice belying the heat in her gaze. “My lawyers are already taking care of the contracts. By this time tomorrow, half your artists will be signed to a different label.”
“You can’t do that!” Petrova shouted. “It will ruin me.”
She straightened and gave him a smile that was so evil, even Marcus and Rodger shivered. “You call it ruin—I call it justice.” She touched her hand to the small of my back. “I should have listened to Kin all those years ago when she said you made her feel uncomfortable. So, I guess I only have myself to blame for this bullshit now. But I’ll be sure to rectify it.”
We walked to the door, but she paused before we could walk through it and turned back to face the deathly pale billionaire. “Oh, and just a heads-up. I have really amazing lawyers. You should be advised that any music Petrova has a license to that belongs to my clients will revert back to the artist and/or the songwriter. Your royalties to any of those songs end today.”
I kept my mouth shut until we were out of the building and in the back of Emmie’s SUV. “Can you really do that?” I asked. “All your clients who are signed to him, all those music rights…”
She patted my hand. “Don’t worry about all that, sweetheart. That is my job. But yes, actually, I can and already am breaking the contracts of every client signed with Petrova Records.”
“What will they do?” I whispered, worried about some of my friends and even family members who had contracts with the industry’s biggest record label.
“Shane and I have been working on something behind the scenes. For years, he got his feet wet by doing the demos for all my new clients so I could pass them along to potential labels I hoped to get my clients signed to. He’s learned the ropes from the bottom up. Recently, he and I bought a few more floors of my office building, and we’ve been turning them into recording studios. ASM Records is about to get an influx of new artists.” She gave me a wink. “ASM is way catchier than Armstrong Stevenson Music, don’t you think? Are you ready to be one of the first to sign with us?”
“Where’s the pen?” I told her, trying to laugh. But the sound was pathetic and only made my throat hurt that much more.
Seeing me flinch, Emmie dropped her eyes to my neck, and she instructed Rodger to hurry up so we could get to the hospital faster. The entire time I was being examined and had to endure the ER doctor’s tests, I should have been worried about what the results would be. But instead of fearing that my vocal cords could be irreversibly damaged, I was more concerned about what was happening to Cannon.
Aunt Dallas was with me the whole time, so I knew I was getting the best care. She wouldn’t allow them to do anything to me she didn’t think was necessary, and she would insist on any test she thought they should explore. That only gave me more time to worry about her son, in a jail cell, potentially with murderers and rapists.
His mom didn’t seem nearly as concerned about him as I was.
“Axton and Emmie are both at the police station,” she tried to reassure me. “And I’ve seen Peter Kratt in action. He got Jagger off with just community service, and he broke a guy’s orbital bones.”
“But that guy had pictures of naked, underage girls,” I muttered, each word feeling as if it lit my throat on fire. “The prosecutor basically thought Jags did the world a favor and took it easy on him.”
“True,” she agreed. “But in my eyes, Cannon did the world a favor too. According to the limited information Braxton and Barrick were able to dig up on short notice for Emmie, the first incident with this guy, he only slapped the girl and was verbally abusive to her. This time…” Her blue eyes, so like her son’s, darkened with anger. “The marks on your neck are physical proof of what he did to you, but there could be invisible scars. You said he tried to get you on your knees, Piper. Are you sure you don’t want to talk to someone about this?”
I couldn’t help shuddering at the memory, but I shook my head. “All I want is to see Cannon.”
“You and my son have been in the gossip mags a lot recently. What’s going on with the two of you?”
The answer seemed more complicated than it really was, especially when his mother was the one asking the question. “Did you know he won all the bids for my auctioned dates for Feed the Music?”
“What?” she gasped. “Damn it. Has he been giving you trouble, Piper? Tell me the truth. If he’s turned back into the asshole he used to be, I swear to you, I will set that boy straight once and for all.”
Knowing she was speaking the truth, I smiled and shook my head. “No, no. It’s nothing like that, Aunt D. I swear. He’s been really…sweet?” It came out as a question because I couldn’t think of a better word. “Cannon says he wants us to try.”
She pulled her brows together, making her look more like Shaw than ever. “Try what? Dating?”
I shrugged. “Well, yeah.”
“Do you really want to give him a chance?” she asked, her curiosity genuine. “Don’t get me wrong, I love my son. I would kill for him and Shaw. But I’m not blind to what an asshole he can be. All that bullshit he put you through when you two were younger…” Sadness and guilt filled her face. “Fuck, maybe if I’d followed through with all those threats to send him to military school sooner for his treatment of you, he never would have hurt Vi.”
I stiffened. “Vi?”
Dallas jerked as if snapping out of her own head. Seeing the confusion on my face, she forced a smile. “Never mind. That’s not important now. What I want to know is if you want to give Cannon a chance.”
Storing the Violet topic away for later to ask Cannon about, I considered her question for a moment before finally nodding. “I care about him, Aunt D. Even when we were kids and all I wanted to do was kick him in the balls, part of me was enthralled by him. Those dimples…” I released a dreamy sigh at the memory of his dimples, making her grin and causing hers to pop.
“If both of you are happy, then I’m happy for you,” she said, taking hold of my hand and giving it a loving squeeze. “But I should warn you that Liam and Gabriella might not be as on board with your relationship as I am.”
“I know.” I grimaced. “But at least they’re both in Australia and I don’t have to deal with them for a few more weeks.”
She made a noise that caused me to sit up straighter.
“Liam’s on his way back to the States,” she told me with a sympathetic smile. “Emmie texted Gabriella before she called me. Your dad grabbed the first available flight to the current stop on your tour.”
“Damn it,” I groaned.
A tap on the door was followed by the doctor walking in. “All the X-rays and scans show no lasting damage. There’s just a lot of swelling, but that should go down over the next week or so. During that time, the less you use your voice, the better.”
I glared at the man. “I don’t think a doctor’s note is going to be acceptable to the fans who already paid for tickets to see me in concert, Doc.”
“Let’s put it this way, Miss Bryant. You either rest your voice for the next ten days, or you risk damaging your vocal cords permanently from the continued swelling.” He scribbled something on his tablet. “I’m going to give you a prescription for anti-inflammatories. Take it easy and follow up with your regular doctor if your discomfort doesn’t lessen or gets worse.”
“Great. Can I go now?” I bit out.
“The nurse will be in with your discharge papers momentarily.”
It was another twenty minutes before we left the emergency department. Marcus, one of Emmie’s guards, was waiting for us outside the exam room door and led us out to Dallas’s car. They both wanted me to go home and rest, but there was no way that would happen. Not when Cannon was still in jail.
Marcus didn’t drive us to the police station, however, but to the courthouse. Cannon was already being arraigned, which surprised me. From all the true crime podcasts I’d listened to with Hymn and Shaw, I’d been under the impression that it took a while before everything was processed.
Someone held the door open for us, and Marcus urged us onto a bench at the back of the courtroom. The place was so crowded, there was barely anywhere to sit. I spotted Emmie with Rodger and Axton. They were seated right behind the defendant’s table, the three of them whispering to one another. My gaze barely skimmed over them before seeking out Cannon. He stood off to the side with a bunch of other people in cuffs, men and women alike, security guards or bailiffs keeping them separated as much as possible in the cramped courtroom.
The judge was just finishing up with someone else who was being led out a side door, and the clerk called Cannon’s name and stated what the charges were. As he was guided forward by the bailiff, my eyes ate up the sight of Cannon. He was still dressed in the jeans and T-shirt he’d had on when he was arrested. His hands were still cuffed behind his back, but he wore a pissed-off look as he glared at all the paps with their cameras pointed straight at him.
“How do you plead, Mr. Cage?”
A dozen cameras flashed, and the judge called for order, threatening to clear the courtroom if there was any further disturbance.
“Mr. Cage?” the judge said again when Cannon remained tight-lipped.
“My client pleads not guilty, Your Honor.” A man in a suit I hadn’t noticed stepped up to the table beside Cannon.
“Thoughts on bail, Ms. Hamilton?” the judge asked, shifting his focus to the well-dressed woman at the table to Cannon’s right. Her blond hair was in a chic bob, and I clocked her at being in her early forties, but she could have easily been older. She had an aura about her that said she didn’t take bullshit well, and the look she shot at Cannon was full of disgust, making my stomach cramp.
But when she spoke, she surprised me when she answered with, “The people don’t oppose Mr. Cage being ROR, Your Honor.”
I swallowed my gasp and met Dallas’s eyes. “Kratt is exceptional at his job,” she whispered with a smirk.
“This seems to be your lucky day, Mr. Cage,” the judge snarked. “The defendant is released on his own recognizance.”
The cameras started flashing so frantically it was like a strobe light going off in the room. Then one of the vultures spotted me, and I couldn’t duck my head fast enough to hide the bruises on my neck. From there, it all went downhill in the blink of an eye.
With the entire room having heard that Cannon was being charged with assault, then the sight of my neck, and given our history that wasn’t exactly a national secret, one thing led to another, and suddenly the world thought Cannon had attacked me.
