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And when I finally got back to sleep, I dreamt of being safe.
CHAPTER 6
CALLUM
The first thing I did when Quinn sent me her contract the following morning was look for the loopholes. Every contract had them. It was just a question of how desperate you were to get out of it. For example, would she be willing–and able–to pay the early exit fee that was deliberately designed to trap an up-and-coming artist? Was there a morality clause she could intentionally violate? Not that that would be my official recommendation.
I saw right away that she didn’t have a clause stipulating that if the person who signed her at the label were to leave, she would be free. That wasn’t a big loss though. Jason Cain himself had signed her, and he wasn’t going anywhere. The important thing was that there wasn’t a clause stating that her records had to be commercially acceptable. Jason had indeed fucked up when he had this contract drawn up, because that omission meant that if worse came to worse, Quinn could record a few shitty songs and tell Jason that her work here was done.
Satisfied, I stretched my arms out and knotted my hands behind my head, feeling the pops in my spine as it went from concave to convex.
A voice came from my doorway then. “You look like you just made me some money.”
I looked up to see my former father-in-law, Marshall Harding, smiling at me from just inside my door. He owned the office building and had been my boss for the last ten years, but he was still waiting politely to be invited in. He was wearing one of his customary bespoke suits from Savile Row in London. He had ten that he had dry cleaned every other Sunday. Like clockwork, he flew back to London once a year for a new one and donated the oldest.
I gestured for him to come in and close the door behind him. Marshall raised his neatly groomed gray eyebrows and did so. I knew him so well by now that I could practically read his thoughts. He had just been stopping by to say hi, and here I was with a secret.
“Is it a whole lot of money, son?” he asked with feigned glee as he pulled up a chair. Marshall now had more money than he could spend in his lifetime.
I shook my head. “It’s no money at all. This is about revenge.”
“Go on.” He rubbed his hands together, and this time the glee wasn’t an act. Marshall loved a good professional vendetta. I couldn’t help but notice he was still wearing his gold wedding band even though my mother-in-law had died two years ago. Officially, the cause was cancer. A return of the lymphoma she’d faced in her early forties. I privately thought it was Emma’s death that became malignant. The funny thing about him stillwearing his was that he had just recently encouraged me to take mine off.
You’re still alive, son. Act like it.
I made a mental note to ask him about it later. Right now, I wanted to focus on Quinn.
“Do you know who Jason Cain is?” It was a rhetorical question. Every lawyer in the entertainment law industry knew Jason Cain for one reason or another, and most of them were bad. People put up with him because he had a small stable of sizable talent, but no one trusted him. Not even a little.
“I know Jason Cain,” Marshall confirmed. I studied him closely, wondering exactly what he knew, but he had a flawless poker face. His smile remained pleasantly gleeful, his eyes bright.
“He’s the manager of a friend of mine.”
“Renee’s best friend, Quinn Collins.”
“That’s right. She doesn’t want him to be her manager anymore, but she owes his label a third album.”
Marshall nodded. It was a familiar problem. “She’s been with him since the beginning of her career, hasn’t she?”
“Yeah, but now they have a different idea of where that career should go.” I steepled my fingers, wondering how much I should tell him. “He’s crossed some lines, sir.”
Marshall dropped his congenial smile. “Callum, what is it going to take to get you to stop calling me sir?”
A lobotomy.I’d been calling him sir since Emma brought me home for the first time. I remember being blown away by the fact they dressed up for dinner in their elegant Waterford Villagemansion that sat on the premium lot overlooking the lake, with nearly a full acre surrounding their four-thousand-square-foot mansion. Marshall, naturally, had been in one of his Savile Row suits. Her mother had worn diamonds. They were indelibly printed in my mind asma’amandsir, and it didn’t matter how much time went by.
Marshall rolled his shoulders back as if the term had settled on them like a weight he could slough off. Then he gave me a flinty look. “I’ve heard that Jason Cain crosses a lot of lines with a lot of people.”
“I’ve heard that, too.”
“Has Quinn Collins retained you in any official capacity?”
“No–” I swallowed thesir. “She hasn’t yet.”
“That might be for the best.”
“Why is that?”
“I know you, son. You’re going to take this one personally. It’ll be easier on me if anything you do on Ms. Collins’ behalf isn’t a direct reflection on the firm.”
