Page 26 of Mending Hearts

“I didn’t ask you here to fight.” Kenny held up his hands. “We need to hammer out some dates to get this next album laid down.” He toggled the mouse on his desk and brought up a calendar on his computer, turning the monitor toward us.

“We’re not working with you.” Laura let go of my hand and opened her oversized purse. Out came an envelope, and she tossed it across the desk.

“It’s cute you think you have a choice.” He smirked while he fingered the opening of the long manila envelope. “Fucking women.” He slid out the stapled pages and scanned them, his smirk fading. Each page caused his smirk to slip into a frown. “You couldn’t have obtained any of this legally.”

“Fucking women, right?” Laura laughed. “Turns out if you burn enough of us, we band together and start an inferno of our own.” She shifted closer to his desk as though letting him in on a secret. “Five years ago, I didn’t know how to handle you. What could we do? Who’d believe us? A mother-daughter duo from a trailer park in butt-fuck nowhere. I had no connections. No money, except what the label had given us as an advance.” She eyed him. “Now, you’re the one on your knees suckingmydick.”

“This information would ruin Mia, too.” He’d gone pale under his spray tan. “The public isn’t that forgiving.”

“Oh, Kenny. I’ve learned a thing or two in five years.” Laura smirked and leaned back in her chair. “You think I can’t spin what’s in there? Idon’t play cards until I’m sure they’re winners. One of the benefits of that dog-eat-dog upbringing. I learned when to go for the jugular. Right now, I’ve got my teeth around yours. It’s up to you if I bite down or release…for now.”

“How am I supposed to explain this to the label?” Kenny eased the papers back into the envelope.

“That’s not my problem.”

I sat beside her in stunned silence. I’d seen Laura in action before, but it had usually been against me, not fighting for me. My world was tipping, and I was careening toward the edge, in danger of toppling over. What had gotten into my mother?

“I do this, and none of this information goes public,” Kenny said.

“Agreed.” Laura rose and offered her hand across the desk. “It’s been a pleasure.” Kenny made no move to take her hand. “I’m sure that’s the first time you’ve heard those words out of a woman’s mouth. That feeling welling up in your chest? It’s called shock.”

That was definitely what was welling up in my chest while I followed her out of Kenny’s office. Once we were on the street, Pasha on one side, Laura on the other, a realization hit like a punch to the chest.

“Mom?”

Laura’s heels clicked along the concrete sidewalk toward the waiting car. “What’s wrong?”

“It wasn’t just me?” My steps faltered. “He did those things to other women? Not just me?”

“Of course.” With a sigh, Laura glanced my way and pushed her sunglasses onto her head. “Men like him never do it just once. He wasn’t going to have the opportunity to do it to you twice. Not when I knew.”

I grabbed my hair in my fist, letting it trail over one shoulder, and I absorbed her words. “Is he still doing it?”

“The last singer I tracked down was from three years ago. Men like him don’t stop, Mia. They just get better at hiding it.”

Others were at risk. Some fifteen-year-old girl could be bent over his desk tomorrow, his lips making shushing noises in her ear as he pushed up her skirt, his hand clamped over her mouth. “We have to do something.”

“No.”

“Mom,” I pleaded.

“The only person I need to protect is you. You’re it.” Laura yanked open the back door to their waiting car. “Coming forward would ruin your career.”

“What he’s doing is wrong.” I couldn’t make my brain formulate the words I wanted to say, the ones I thought might convince her to do something more.

“Someday, someone will do something.” Laura wouldn’t meet my gaze. “It doesn’t have to be us. You’re safe now.”

I didn’t know exactly what Laura had revealed to Kenny. Safe wasn’t what I’d call giving him the information in the envelope.

“What if he calls your bluff? What if he tries to get ahead of this and releases whatever was in there?”

“You don’t need to worry.” Laura patted her hand. “The damage to him is too widespread.”

I rubbed my face and ran my hands through my hair. How many? How old? How often? I knew what had happened to me, how it stuck, how it coated any interactions that came afterward.

“You’re famous,” Laura said.

Wasn’t that why we should do something? How many of those other girls accomplished my level of fame? How many of them paid the price he demanded and bankrupted themselves?

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