Chapter 1

At 9:02 a.m., my husband fired me from the record label I built.

At 9:06, he moved his mistress into my studio.

At 9:09, his business manager canceled my family's health insurance.

At 9:14, security walked me out past forty people who owed him nothing and me everything.

At 9:41, the children's hospital called: my seven-year-old daughter's surgery — twelve days away, the one that would let her hear my voice for the first time in her life — was no longer covered.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I didn't call him.

Because none of them knew the one thing that mattered.

I wrote every song Beau Rhodes has ever sung. And I own every single one.

I stood in the gravel lot behind the Calloway Room with a cardboard box in my arms — one photo of Junie, one dead pothos, a coffee mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST SONGWRITER — and listened to a woman from Rivergate Children's explain, very gently, that our authorization had been withdrawn.

"Mrs. Rhodes, your coverage terminated this morning at 9:09. Without insurance, bilateral implantation plus the activation program is three hundred ten thousand dollars. We'd need payment before we can hold the date."

Twelve days. We'd waited fourteen months for that date.

Junie was born profoundly deaf. She has never heard rain. She has never heard her grandmother laugh. She has never heard one note of the music that built the house she sleeps in, and I have spent seven years writing love songs for a country that hums them in traffic while my daughter watches my mouth move.

Dr. Osei said that with the implants, by spring, Junie might hear a song.

"I'll wire it today," I said. "Full amount."

A pause. "Ma'am — three hundred ten thousand dollars?"

"By noon."

I hung up and wired it from an account my husband had never seen, attached to a name he'd never bothered to look up, and then I sat in my nine-year-old Tahoe and stared at my phone until the screen went black.

Then I opened Instagram.

Because at 9:52, Kacey Lane had already posted.

Twenty-six. Glossy. Gorgeous. Standing in front of a black Bronco with a red bow on the hood, one hand on the grille, the other resting — deliberately — on the small curve of her stomach.

Caption: "When a man actually shows up for you 🖤 New truck, new studio, new everything."

New studio.

I zoomed in on the background and I knew that room. I knew the water stain on the ceiling shaped like Tennessee. That was Booth B. That was my father's studio, the room where he taught me to hear the space between notes, the room where I wrote "Carolina Rain" at 3 a.m. with a newborn on my chest.

That truck cost about ninety-four thousand dollars. Label money.

My money, if we're being technical. And I am always being technical.

Beau Rhodes didn't fire me because I'd stopped delivering. I delivered eleven number ones.

He fired me because the shareholder vote was Friday, and he needed me gone before it. He canceled the insurance because a woman with a deaf child and a surgical deadline doesn't have the strength to fight a proxy war. He wanted me drowning in hospital paperwork. Terrified. Begging.

He thought that was smart.

At 11:40, he texted me.

"Baby, today was brutal, I know. The board forced my hand, it's a restructure. Nothing personal, it's just business. We'll get Junie on my plan, don't spiral. Love you."

Nothing personal.

I looked at that for a long time. Then I typed: "Okay. I understand. It's just business."

Three dots. Then: "God, you're incredible. Most women would've made a scene."

I put the phone down and smiled for the first time all morning, and if he had seen that smile he would have gotten on a plane.

Here's what my charming, Stetson-wearing, Opry-blessed husband had somehow forgotten in fourteen months of buying jewelry with the label card:

The building Tin Roof Records operates out of — the honky-tonk, the studio, the offices upstairs? My father's. Held in the Calloway Family Trust. My name on every page. I am their landlord.

The songs? Thirty-one of his thirty-four releases are credited to a writer named Blackbird. Nashville has spent nine years guessing who Blackbird is. The copyrights are held personally by me, licensed to the label for one dollar a year, terminable on thirty days' notice for cause. I am their entire catalog.

And two years ago, when our founding investor got divorced and needed cash fast, I quietly bought his whole stake through a holding company called Blackbird Holdings.

Beau Rhodes doesn't have a wife.

He has a landlord, a publisher, and a majority shareholder.

And on Friday, all three of us were walking into his boardroom.