Page 14 of For Wrath and Redemption
I am grateful that they picked me up, but I don’t need another fucking lecture right now. I’m a conflicted mess of emotions as it is, but Sav doesn’t back down. She never does. She just smiles sweetly and bats her eyelashes.
“Stop acting like a petulant child and maybe I won’t have to scold you.”
I scowl and open my mouth to snap something back at her, but Hammond clears his throat, drawing my attention to him.
To him and the woman standing beside him.
My hackles rise. She doesn’t look like another cop, but I can tell right away I’m not going to like why she’s here. By showing up unannounced at my hotel room at four in the morning, she already has the upper hand, and I can’t let her keep it. I’m outnumbered as it is.
Slowly, I drop my eyes down her body. I don’t hide it. I check her out brazenly, but I keep my face blank. Making her uncomfortable is my goal. I linger on her breasts and subtle curves. I track her long legs from the hem of her pencil skirt to the heel on her understated designer pumps. When I leisurely arrive back at her face, I settle my attention on her lips before my gaze finally collides with hers.
She doesn’t so much as flinch.
She narrows her eyes, lifts her chin slightly, and arches a delicate, perfectly-shaped eyebrow. Not intimidated. Not impressed. In fact, her perfect posture, fit figure, and disapproving expression piss me off and get my dick hard.
This woman is going to give me trouble.
“Well,” I say smoothly, letting my voice maintain an edge of irritation. “Who do I have the pleasure of welcoming into my room this morning?”
The woman gives me a tight, forced smile before confirming my assumption.
“My name is Claire Davis.” She drops her eyes down my body in an assessing manner before bringing them back to my face in a way that suggests she’s found me wanting. It fuels my irritation, but when the next sentence leaves her mouth, I damn near crack a molar. “I’ll be your PR managerfor the foreseeable future.”
When my eyes widen, hers flash with a challenge, and I grit my teeth. I was right. She’s trouble. With a capital fucking T.
I turn my glare toward Savannah, then to Hammond. “Answers. Now.”
Hammond sighs. “I might have been your first call from jail, but the cops called your father. Then healsocalled me.”
I clamp my eyes shut. I should have known. The cops wouldn’t have let me out without speaking to him first. It was his mausoleum I broke into, after all. But Conrad Henderson doesn’t do things out of the kindness of his heart. If he’s not pressing charges, there are definitely strings attached.
I take a deep breath, then open my eyes and look at Hammond. I intentionally ignore the woman in the corner. “And?”
“And, as you can imagine, he’s not happy about the hoops he’s currently jumping through to keep this out of the morning headlines?—”
I scoff, cutting him off, but he raises an irritated eyebrow and continues.
“—and neither am I. You’re still tied to the label until the European shows are finished, and if you remember correctly, there’s a morality clause in our termination contract.”
“Fuck.” I drag a hand down my face, then reach into my pocket for another cigarette. “I forgot about the fucking morality clause.”
Sav lets out a dry, tired laugh. “That actually makes me feel better.”
I glance at her and raise my eyebrows in question. “You thought I would do this intentionally?” My exasperation increases when Sav gives me a shrug but says nothing. “I wouldn’t, Savannah.”
She looks away, dismissing me, and the fact that she doesn’t believe me just proves the extent of the damage I’ve done. I light a new cigarette and take a long drag, closing my eyes from the disapproving faces and letting the toxins sit in my lungs before blowing it out slowly. This room is non-smoking. I’ve opened the balcony doors, but I’ll still be paying a hefty bill to take care of cleaning and deodorizing after I check out.
Hammond speaks again.
“Headlines about you getting arrested for drunkenly breaking into your family mausoleum and desecrating the gravesite would put us in violation of the morality clause.”
I nod and grit my teeth again, grinding them together and breathing through the guilt. I keep my eyes shut and focus just on the sound of his voice, the smoke in my lungs, and the feel of the nicotine coursing through my bloodstream. The help the liquor and the pills provided is disappearing by the minute.
No one is as disappointed by my actions as I am. Violating the morality clause would mean everything Hammond negotiated for leaving our label “amicably” after the tour would be void. The label would drop us, and we’d be forfeiting our cuts from the tour.
And while that sucks, it’s not the worst part.
The worst part is that if we’re dropped, we would be forced to abide by a non-compete. We couldn’t put out another album as The Hometown Heartless for five more years. Not independently, and not with Rock Loveless Records, the label Sav is starting.
