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But it had.
I’d learned enough lessons about making rash decisions or allowing my emotions drive my actions. Plenty of nights in county lock up and forced anger management classes was enough of a wakeup call.
It had been years since a headline with a display of violence of any kind was attached to my name. Yet another reason I was fucking pissed.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Sheets’s accusations had the old articles resurfacing so my name was everywhere but not in reference to my platinum selling recordings.
Even if Cadence chose not to read the articles out there, if she spent enough time around me a reporter would no doubt catch her off guard shoving a camera and microphone in her face to question her parenting choices by allowing me in her and Gracie’s lives. What sane woman would allow a man with my past to be connected to her and her kid.
Last night, she shut down all possibilities of us being anything other than temporarily but I was bound and determined to prove to her this could work. I wouldn’t push but that didn’t mean I would fold either.
Then there was the most recent issue.
Dresden Malloy.
He’d reached out to Drew demanding a conversation with Cadence. Now that our lives were connected, I was the only possibility he had of that happening without waiting for an opportunity to ambush her and Gracie.
Five fucking years. That was how long it had been since he’d seen or talked to her. Cadence left and never looked back. From what he’d told Drew, he’d been searching for her for years and came up empty.
Then came the threats. He held contracts that stated she’d bailed on her contractual obligations. Drew was sending over what Dresden sent for me to look at. He’d already read them. According to Drew they seemed pretty solid based on the fact that Cadence had signed them.
I made my way to the office, pulled up the email on my desktop, and clicked the link so that I could print the six attached pages. Over the years I’d learned how to review my own contracts.
I still had a team of lawyers that worked in unison with Drew to ensure all terms were legal, fair, and as promised but Drew had also made sure I was educated on evaluating the terms of anything I was expected to put my name on. Reviewing these now had me more than pissed that Dresden had fucked Cadence.Royally.
I scanned each page, reviewing the terms and fully understood why Drew was saying that Dresden was threatening to sue if she refused to agree to fulfill the terms. The thought of him having any connection to Cadence at all infuriated me which had me getting Drew back on the line.
“I take it you read them.”
“He sent you this?”
“Along with some threats, yes.”
“Fuck. And you think he’ll follow through?”
“You think he won’t? You know him about as well as I do.”
I did. He’d approached me after I completed my first contract, slick talking, making promises the he could never follow through on. It didn’t matter because I didn’t trust anyone but Drew and my label had been good to me.
My second contract was already in the negotiation stages and they’d promised me complete creative control with the projects I agreed to and one hundred percent ownership of my masters.
That was six years ago and I owed them one more album. Had things been different I wouldn’t have agreed to six that second time out the gate but I had no idea at things would shift so drastically.
Streaming forced labels into a corner that they couldn’t seem to navigate out of. Artists could produce indie and reach the masses without the help of labels or the money they were willing to put behind artists. I had learned enough over the years to be completely in charge of my career and that was what I wanted.
Back then, Dresden had promised me the same but after one meeting with him and Drew I realized his goal was to lock me down to Global Records with no hope of ever breaking free.
The terms looked pretty but reading between the lines I realized I would have been stuck. Dresden was used to throwing money at artists who would in turn sign whatever he put in front of them.
I knew better. Drew knew better. When I stopped taking his calls, he tried to get back at me in other ways by leaking stories that I was secretly planning to bail on Privilege.
I wasn’t sure of the end game but Drew mentioned Dresden was hoping to destroy my current relationship to the point where I would need another home. He underestimated just how much Privilege valued me at the time.
Even if only because of the money I’d made them. Either way, we weren’t enemies, but we weren’t allies either. I hadn’t mentioned that part to Cadence yet because I wasn’t sure if or how things between he and I might play a role in what she was dealing with. Now the conversation needed to be had.
“She needs a lawyer,” I mumbled, leaning back in my chair, lifting my face to the ceiling.
“I assumed that would be the approach you would take. I’ve already sent the contracts to your team to look over. Said they’d get back to me on whether or not he’d take her on.”
