AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jason’s dark eyebrows rose. “You say you’re her lawyer, counselor?”
I stared at him, unwilling to confirm or deny. I didn’t want to give this asshole a speck of useful information.
“You sound more like a jealous boyfriend than a lawyer.” Jason rubbed his chin and stepped to the side, looking me up and down. “Yeah. You’ve got that white-bred look my girl likes. I bet you drive a Honda Odyssey.”
“She’s not your girl.” I ignored the rest. It didn’t matter what Quinn liked or what I drove. “And she’s not doing your private parties. Not after what happened at the last one.” I wanted the implied threat to close around him like a bear trap, the barbs to vivisect his intestines, but he didn’t even blink.
“Nothing happened at the last one.”
The unspokenthat you can provehung in the air. Taunting me.
My hands curled into fists, my heartbeat ticking up as the anger burrowed deep into my chest. “Something happened, and it’s never going to happen again.”
Jason grinned, a quick flash of white teeth in the dim room. “You’re not here as her lawyer, counselor. So I have to take that as a threat.”
My blood was pumping, fast and angry through my body. There was an ugly haze over my vision. I hadn’t been in a fight since I was fifteen, but every muscle in my body ached to throw this punch like it had been waiting twenty years. “Take it however you want to, but Quinn isn’t going to make you a dime ever again. I’ve spotted at least two ways she can get out of her contract with Cain Records, and I’ll find more.”
Jason didn’t like that. For the first time, his cool facade slipped. “Tell that bitch that there’s only one way out of this contract.”
He leaned so close to my ear that there wasn’t a recording device in the world that could pick up the words that hissed through his gleaming white teeth.
“And that’s in a body bag.”
CHAPTER 7
QUINN
My closest friend in the city was a nail technician named Nancy who didn’t like to talk about herself or where she came from. I liked her because she was blunt and liked to cook more than she liked to go to bars. I’d get homemade food and a painfully honest assessment of my latest track.
“So average. God, what has Jason Cain done to you?” She’d lift up the flap of my coat. “Would the real Quinn Collinspleasecome out?” It was offensive, but I was never offended. I was grateful that there was still someone in my life who would tell me when something was shit. My inner compass had gotten shaky there at the end. Did Ireallyhate that song, or was I just being stubborn, like Jason said?
When she called me the next morning, I put her on speakerphone so Renee could hear, too. They’d met a few times, and Nancy loved her. They were both made of the same steel wool. But when I told Nancy where I was and who was in the room with me, her voice dropped low as she muttered, “Hey, can you take me off speakerphone?”
I met Renee’s eyes over the table. She had been lifting a bite of pancakes to her lips, but now her arm was frozen, her lips parted, eyes widening.
“Please?” Nancy said, and I heard the strain in her voice this time.
I took her off speakerphone and brought the phone to my ear. “Hey, you’re off. What’s up?”
She exhaled. “You know how I do Mariah Davis’s nails?”
“Sure, I guess I knew that.” Mariah Davis was another singer on Jason’s label. I’d never clicked with her. She seemed too happy to go along with Jason’s direction with no sense of her own.
Another exhale. I could practically smell the smoke on her breath, even with all the miles between us. “Well that dumb bitch was talking on the phone the whole time I was working, and she must think the help is deaf and dumb, because Quinn, I heard some shit.”
Once again, my appetite deserted me. “What kind of shit?” I stood up and paced into the living room. Renee picked up her plate and followed me, leaning in close to hear what she could.
“Apparently your boy is in deep, deep,deepdebt. Like, to the wrong people.”
I backed away from Renee, not because I didn’t want her to hear, but because the smell of the pancakes and syrup on her plate was making my stomach flip.
Renee had caught the words though, and she made a fist pump motion with her arm, like this was a good thing. I shook my head at her. It wasn’t a good thing. It wasn’t a good thing at all.
“That’s why he’s pushing me to do these private performances,” I said to both of them. “It’s tax-free money when they pay cash.”
“And why he’s so pressed about your third album,” Nancy agreed. “He needs you to make him Taylor Swift money.”
I might have laughed if the nausea wasn’t closing up my windpipe. “That’s not going to happen.”
