Damn Jude and Dante and Delilah—all of whom claimed to love Devil’s Music but none of whom recognized that their love was only destructive obsession. It had claimed Jude’s life and might’ve done the same to his children’s had outsiders not swooped in to edge them out.
To Dante, Chelsea was an opportunistic power whore. To Delilah, she was a betrayer. Both of them were prospering elsewhere, and neither of them could see past their own hurt feelings to recognize that she hadn’t saved just Devil’s Music. She’d saved them, too.
That was the other thing about being COO. It could often be a fucking misperceived, thankless, isolating job. Whoever said life was lonely at the top must’ve seen her coming. Top-level living was dressed in superficial pleasures and luxuries—because hell, yes, money could buy her happiness if she was willing to modify her definition of happiness—but at its core it was empty.
The taxi driver’s guttural bark hacked away at her musings—or daily regrets, as she’d come to think of any thoughts that starred a Bishop—and she blinked at him. “Huh?”
“Sit here as long as you want, beautiful,” he hollered over the congested roar of the car’s air-conditioning. “Just keep in mind the meter’s still runnin’.”
“Oh—sorry.” She rummaged for cash. “I was thinking.”
“Yeah.” His dark eyes found hers through the rearview mirror. “A girl who runs out of the Loews Hotel at this hour carrying her shoes in her hands has probably got a hell of a lot to think about.”
I’m paying you to drive, not to judge. Chelsea said nothing, though. She paid him, nodded courteously, slipped on her crystal-embellished leather pumps, and strode to the security gate with her chin raised.
No matter how low her self-esteem sank, she’d keep her head held high. Because if she didn’t, she might go digging into her purse for the rubber band she’d meant to throw out but somehow never had.
“Good morning, ma’am.” The attendant’s gaze stumbled over her appearance. He was new, graveyard shift, not quite broken in to how things worked in the land of Devil’s Music. Executives descending on the estate at all hours of the day and night was an ordinary occurrence. The company had been in a state of damage control for over two years, since gangsta rap artist Lo Grizz—less well known as Davis Tomalson of Nebraska—had slapped it with a lawsuit for intellectual property theft among a plethora of other bullshit legal claims.
Chelsea and current CEO Emma Toledo had responded with a countersuit of corporate espionage and libel and had prepared themselves for years of litigation, yet faith in Devil’s Music started to crumble immediately. Forced to the settlement table, they’d misjudged the ramifications of a peaceful resolution. Lo Grizz walked away with a fat-ass check, rights to a collaboration album, and victory. Devil’s Music was left drowning in the public perception that the settlement was an admission of guilt. The company’s marquee talent threatened legal action in order to be released from their contracts, but after the first artist had straightaway inked a deal with Shatter in Los Angeles, Emma refused to release anyone else. Now Devil’s Music wore a gaping wound that Chelsea wasn’t sure she, Emma, and Emma’s husband, Joshua Drake, could stitch together before the company bled out.
“Your, uh…ma’am, pardon me for noticing, but your dress isn’t zipped all the way,” the gate attendant said, color soaring in his cheeks as he gestured to the back of his collar.
“Noted,” she said, “thank you.”
Head held high, she silently repeated, feeling him watch her with confusion as she strode through the gates with her dress half open and power in her step.
At this hour the estate was practically vacant, and she found the main house sedate until she took the elevator to the executive floor and bristled at sharp voices spiraling from the CEO’s suite.
For the briefest of moments Chelsea considered escaping to the building’s panic room. A man’s obscenities and a woman’s threats grew louder, flooding the rooms and probably carrying from one wing of the mansion to the other. It struck Chelsea as a competition—who could utter the vilest words?
Not this shit again.
“Morning, y’all,” she interrupted, with deliberately extra-false perk in her voice as she slapped her palm to the door in lieu of knocking. She hadn’t rolled out of a stranger’s extremely comfortable bed to referee a shouting match between two miserable married people. She’d grown up caught in the middle of her parents’ disputes, and wouldn’t revert to a little girl curled up on the stairs snapping her wrist with a rubber band. “I’ll happily get the company car service to drive me home if you’d rather continue yelling God knows what at each other.”
Emma stepped away from Joshua, casually sliding her fingers behind her glasses to swipe at tears.
Jesus. Chelsea couldn’t stand to see Emma cry. She hated to see Joshua glare as if he was pissed off enough to crack the world right open. Perhaps that was because, despite the corporate hell Devil’s Music was being dragged through, it was a very rare occasion when Emma was reduced to tears and Joshua to unadulterated rage.
“Are we going to conduct a meeting or not?” Chelsea said, entering the office. This cheery, luxurious place wasn’t meant to host vulgar anger between people who three years ago had stood in a church and vowed to cherish, protect, and love each other. Her parents’ marriage had melted under less pressure than this, and Chelsea had to wonder what Joshua and Emma were fighting for. “If you turn against each other, we’re all screwed. You do realize that, right?”
“We’ll take care of you,” Joshua said to her, though his concentration rested on his wife. His button-down shirt was open at the collar and the sleeves had been shoved up to his elbows. The phone clipped to his black pants vibrated in its holster, but he ignored it. Arms crossed, with a hip on Emma’s desk, he appeared to be relaxed, but no one in the room was delusional enough to believe he was. The man stayed on constant guard, and could snap out of a dead sleep to neutralize a threat.
“No matter what happens, you’ll be all right, Chelsea,” Emma assured, her blue eyes clear but her lashes dark and saturated with tears.
“Famous last words. My folks said that a lot, before the court stamped their papers and they stopped fighting about how much they despised each other and started fighting about who’d get stuck with me. Difference here is I’m thirty-two and don’t need a keeper.” She glanced from one friend to the other. She’d supported their marriage and would support their divorce, too, if that ended the battles and tears. “Three years is too late to return that espresso machine I bought as your wedding present, but the company might allow in-store credit. Be sure to let me know when y’all file.”
“No one’s filing.” Emma returned to Joshua, wrapping an arm around his neck.
“What’re you doing, Emma?”
“Being your wife. That’s who I am—your business partner and your wife.” She kissed him. “Tell her, Joshua. Nothing’s going to change.”
“This is what you want?” He gave her an intimate squeeze, and there stood pristine Emma Toledo with a sexy man’s tattooed hand gripping her pencil-skirted ass. “Sure about that?”
“I’m sure.” A little coaxing on her part, then something seemed to give way between them and he pulled her closer.
Joshua nodded, and in his eyes was a flicker of defeat, but he returned his wife’s kiss with the kind of heat that destroyed people in its path, and Chelsea had to step back and mumble a complaint about the thermostat to justify fanning herself.
“Nothing’s going to change with Emma and me,” he confirmed.
“Good to know.” It wasn’t. Nothing would change, meaning the arguing, tears, and anger would continue to fester.
“Um, Chelsea,” Emma said, pointing and spinning the focus to her, “you were wearing that dress at Halo last night.”
“I had a late night and it’s hardly after five now. If I’d known I was going to walk in on a fight I would’ve taken the time to freshen up before coming here.”
“You smell like sex,” Joshua pointed out. The man had a brilliant mind, but diplomacy wasn’t his forte.
“Precisely why I’m going to shower.” This floor was equipped with a finely appointed bedroom suite that included a drawing room, a private laundry, and a spa-inspired bathroom. Though they owned a Midtown recording studio, most functions were done in-house, and oftentimes it meant that one of the C-level officers had to spend the night on-site.
“What’s his name?”
“Club Promoter. He flies out tomorrow and I don’t have plans to see him again. Recreationally, I mean.”
“All I asked for was his name.”
“Miguel Ortega. Know him?”
Joshua shook his head. “I’ll have him checked out.”
“I’m capable of managing that myself.”
“You don’t have my resources. There’s only so much a Google search and a background check will turn up.”
“I meant I’d have HR take a look.”
“Nobody here has the resources I do. Thank God you don’t.”
“If this has anything to do with dark web shit, I don’t want to hear about it. I won’t be your accessory.”
Joshua gave her a patient look. “We became one another’s accessory when we cut Delilah out. Each of us is a part of what the other does. And as a reminder, Chelsea, that includes what you do recreationally.”
“Okay, that sounds awfully judgmental.”
“No one here’s got room to judge.” He stood and nipped Emma’s earlobe. “Ain’t that right, wife?”
Emma averted her gaze. “Sleep with as many guys as you want, Chelsea, but be selective. That’s all he means to say. This company’s under attack. That’s what we need to talk about this morning.”
“Maybe I’ll go soak in a bubble bath and wait for y’all to work out whatever the hell I walked in on.”
“It’s just a disagreement between two married people. Since you’re apparently sticking to your resolution to one-night-stand your way through life, I don’t expect you to understand.”
First fight each other, then take it out on the person caught in the middle. Chelsea knew this pattern well. “Both of you can kiss my ass.”
Emma whispered a swear word. “What I said…That was so damn uncalled for. I apologize.”
Exiting the situation, Chelsea said, “So I’m going to grab that shower. Since I’m still addled from being jackhammered last night, I’d appreciate some coffee in the conference room. Cream, two sugars.”
She whirled and strode away at top speed.
There were too many halls and parlors in this house—too much history here. How small Atlanta…this world…was. How connected the past and present were. A Coin ancestor had worked the sugar cane fields that centuries ago had thrived on this land—once seven hundred acres of private property, now whittled down to half of that. It was documented that his master’s wife had secretly helped him learn to read and write using a gospel hymnbook. He’d written unfinished original lyrics in the book, but they hadn’t seen the light of a Georgia day until after he’d been trampled to death in the field and she’d sneaked them from the slave cabin and donated the book to a church that had fallen as a casualty of warfare in 1864.
Becca Coin, Chelsea’s great-grandmother, had earned wages sewing and cooking for the family that lived on the Herst Plantation until a fire had charred part of the Greek Revival main house and claimed eight lives—including Becca’s.
Bad things happen in that house. It’s the devil himself at work, Chelsea’s grandparents, then her parents, had cautioned off and on through her life. Funny that she’d end up hitting the peak of success working inside the very structure where her ancestors had suffered.
She didn’t believe these walls were cursed, but she did believe in retribution. She’d put up with unmasked misogyny during her tenure with South Sounds and never would’ve seen upward mobility in her career if it hadn’t been for Devil’s Music…if it hadn’t been for Delilah.
Chelsea shut herself in the Garden Suite, a nickname for the accommodations that offered a front-facing veranda in addition to side and rear views of a garden Eden itself would envy. She slept here more often than she cared to admit—actually preferring the presence of housekeeping staff who stayed in a guest property, and the twenty-four-hour security group that had been put in place at the front gate after Delilah had crashed Emma and Joshua’s anniversary party two years ago.
Not a day passed that Chelsea didn’t think about Delilah. Not one fucking night passed that she didn’t dream about Dante.
She struggled to keep her head held high now. Tension clutched her tight as she grabbed a T-shirt and jeans from the wardrobe where she kept a random array of clothes. Rotating her shoulders did nothing to alleviate the pinch. The building provided a steam room and the company had on-call masseuses and chiropractors, but Chelsea knew no one’s touch would remedy her stress.
Sex with a stranger had been a temporary fix, just something to help her sleep. A dose of zolpidem would’ve done the same, and she wouldn’t be sprinting naked to the bathroom now to hot-shower off dried sweat and other bodily fluids she didn’t feel like recalling in too much detail right now.
Steam billowed from the rain showerheads, and she stepped in. The water sank into her, from her long ebony hair to her gel-pedicured feet. She shampooed, soaped, scrubbed—but she was hurting, enduring every painful moment until she could shut off the spray and pad to the drawing room where she’d left her purse.
Dripping and leaving a trail of wet footprints, she swooped down on a neoclassical chair, upending the purse and shaking until everything tumbled onto her lap.
Finally the rubber band sprang free. It was all she wanted. Eyes closed, she put it on her wrist. She shook as she pulled the band taut, then released it.
Snap!
Better. The pain shocked her eyes open, but she could breathe easier now. Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap!
—
Chelsea’s hair might be damp, and the crystals on her pumps might clash with the denim of her jeans, but she had on a killer shade of lipstick and wore confidence as if it had been invented for her.
“And we’re ready to begin?” she said, striding into the sumptuous second-floor English-influenced parlor that served as the conference room. Her heels punished the polished floor until they encountered the lush imported Persian rug. The decor, from the heavy tapestries and antique secretary to the leather chairs that guarded the imposing table, was a mishmash of styles from various destinations and historical periods. One lap around this room was a world tour through the ages.
Joshua and Emma sat together at the head of the table, their heads close as they viewed a laptop screen. “Your coffee’s cold,” Emma said, glancing up.
“Not a worry. In fact, I’ll ice it up.” Chelsea picked up the mug from the silver tray and went to the bar to scoop out a few cubes. When she noticed both of them staring at her, she said, “What? Iced coffee’s nothing new.”
“It’s all the…zest…about you,” Emma said. “No ordinary shower one-eighties a woman’s mood.”
Joshua abandoned his chair and came around to join Chelsea at the cart. Slowly he said, “It’s not the shower that changed your mood, is it?”
“Let’s concentrate on the reason our attorneys called us and why we’re all here at this unholy hour, okay?” She started for the table, but he took her hand, raising it to call Emma’s attention to the rubber band Chelsea couldn’t manage to remove. It comforted her, gave her the emotional tools to confront whatever fresh hell awaited her. “Joshua, stop.”
“You stop. Stop hurting yourself.”
“Good God, Chelsea, no,” Emma said with sympathy. “You were doing so well before the lawsuit.”
No, I wasn’t. Y’all were too wrapped up in yourselves to notice.
The band stopped her from mutilating herself with hairpins and a lighter. Didn’t they know that? Shouldn’t her closest friends know that she was held togethe
r by a piece of elastic around her wrist?
“Business,” she reminded them, pulling loose of his grasp without spilling a drop of her drink. She sat on a leather chair and propped her feet on another. “On to that.”
Joshua resumed his seat beside Emma. “From a business standpoint, we’re fucked.”
Moniqua Prenz, a young talent from Chicago’s South Side, who’d learned the lyrics to Tupac’s every track before she learned the alphabet, who possessed the fearless charisma of Missy Elliott at the height of her career and the sex appeal Rihanna had exuded when she debuted, had lawyered up with the same firm that represented Lo Grizz. According to Chelsea’s attorney, whose call had jolted her awake from a sex-sleep, Moniqua was reaching deep. Ninety-five million dollars deep.
“My guy got word that she intends to sue, but I don’t know on what grounds. Do y’all?”
“Yeah, we do,” Emma said. “Intellectual rape.”
“Excuse me?”
Joshua nodded. “She’s saying her most recent collab was originally meant to be solo tracks, but we picked her brain and distributed her work to other artists without her permission.”
“Which is a lie,” Emma seethed. “She pushed for that collab. She’d accused us of benching her.”
Moniqua Prenz’s vocals had declined in the aftermath of complications from a cosmetic surgery procedure. She’d been undergoing voice coaching and otolaryngology treatment, but she’d shared her concern about losing her place of importance in Devil’s Music’s lineup—although that’d been before news erupted that Shatter Records had debuted an artist at number three on the Billboard charts in the United States and number one across numerous UK charts.
“My assistant was made aware of a social media campaign”—Emma turned the laptop so Chelsea could view the screen—“created by Moniqua Prenz’s supporters. The ‘artist abuse’ hashtag is trending on Twitter. Our sponsors are catching shit for this.”
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