Page 53 of Trouble Walked In

Check email. Nate sent contract. He’ll bring final to mtg.

Did you check your f-ing email?

Where the hell are you?

One final note from Morgan was sent this morning while he was in the shower.

Jacob’s set. Mtg tmrw 2 pm. Your place. Sign him before you sell out.

Renic winced at that. He’d asked her to draw up initial paperwork to sign Jacob to Self Evident records, and then been distracted in the parking lot and forgotten all about it. She’d clearly not only done what he asked but arranged to get them signed as well. She’d gone above and beyond without any further guidance from him, and now she was rightfully pissed he hadn’t responded.

He quickly tapped out a response.Sry. Phone died. Checking now.

The contract Nate sent contained a lot of legalese that Renic’s own lawyers would need to go over, but Morgan had highlighted the basics for him on a summary sheet. He scanned the bulleted list, which included Morgan’s thoughts in the margins.

Most of it was as bad as he’d expected. They wanted fifty-one percent of Self Evident Records, beside which Morgan had scrawled,Fuck that.

Renic snorted at her comment, then sobered. They wanted complete control of his company. It would be three giant steps backward, taking him from business owner to employee with one stroke of a pen.

No way he’d agree to that, and Nate had to have known what his response would be. This was a Texas Two-Step, with his business as the dance floor.

The next item stated their desire to retain Renic and his entire team to create a new artist and repertoire department. It named Renic as the director and included all of his key people, but left off his lawyer and the interns. They listedsalaries alongside each name, after which Morgan had written her opinions. The note next to her own salary was,In their dreams.

The last section outlined precisely how they would handle the rights, which was the most significant sticking point. It boiled down to they wanted full rights to the studio sessions and the lyrics, along with the masters. They wanted the standard traditional deal with all new talent going forward.

It would mean every new artist would lose control of their work the second it was recorded. Dream Works, and by extension Omega Music Group, could do whatever they wanted with them, including nothing, if they didn't think manufacturing and marketing for that particular artist were worth the investment.

That standard deal left the artist with next to nothing if it all went south. It was wrong to give so little to the artist who gave so much to the success of the business. Without them, there was no product to sell. It was the reason he’d left Dream Works to begin with.

Next to this section Morgan had written,Is this what you really want?

“Hell no,” Renic said out loud. “That’s not happening.”

He trusted his ability to forge a strong relationship with his talent. His relationship with Della in particular had made the start of Self Evident Records a lot easier than it otherwise would have been. His company was just two years old when Della had approached him about going solo, and their mutual agreement had been a boon for both of them.

She was excited by his new approach to rights management. She loved that ownership of the lyrics would remain with Mattie, who wrote all of the songs for The Bellamy Sisters. She thought it was an excellent idea that she retained authority over what happened to the master recordings, andthat she was given a buyout clause so that she could produce them herself if the label chose to let them languish.

They were in it fifty-fifty, which meant they both had a vested interest in their mutual success. Della had seized the chance to have more autonomy over her own work product, and he had capitalized on having such a well-known artist in his stable.

Their partnership had proven highly profitable for both of them so far, and it felt like a better way to do business. There was no way he'd go back to doing things the old way, but if he couldn’t convince Della to go back on tour by the time Nate arrived on Sunday, he would be forced to negotiate. Odds were he wouldn’t be thrilled with the outcome.

Bringing Nate here didn’t just put pressure on Della. It put a ticking clock over his own head. Nate would be here on Sunday. He had three days before he’d be forced to play his final card. Tight, but doable. He’d done more with less before.

He sent back to Morgan,Contract is shit. I’ll send my take tonight.

Making the paperwork take as long as possible was an excellent way to stall for time.

It’s donkey ball sized turds.

He smiled at that.Agreed. Thanks for Jacob. U R a goddess. I don’t deserve you.

A few seconds later, Morgan responded,Damn right. Bring wine when you come back.

He laughed.Done.He followed that with a big grinning emoji.

Morgan sent back,How goes w/ Lizzie?

The way Lizzie had looked as she climaxed flashed through his mind and made him wish she were in his bed right now.Better. Think we connected.

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