I didn’t give Jose a chance to respond. I climbed out of his car and shut the door. I flipped him the bird and walked up the sidewalk.

Damn, that felt good.

The sound of Jose’s squealing tires as he pulled away was the best thing I had heard so far today.

One down, one to go.

I had to wait for a while once I found my way to the label’s reception room. The other guys weren’t there yet and the longer I sat by myself, the more I started to question the sanity of my decision.

I had just fired Jose. I had just flushed my great opportunity down the f**king toilet.

I was throwing everything into the ring for guys who may not want me in the band anymore.

Whatever the risk, I couldn’t have done it any other way.

Finally Jordan, Mitch, and Garrett showed up. They saw me in the corner and came over to join me.

“Where’s Jose?” Mitch asked.

“Gone,” I said shortly.

“Gone? What do you mean he’s gone? He’s supposed to be here!” Jordan demanded, sounding a little panicky.

“I fired him. We don’t need him here, guys. We’ve got this. And we definitely don’t need someone like Jose running the show. That guy’s a snake.”

“You made that kind of decision without talking to us about it first?” Jordan demanded and I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t start this shit now, Piper. Do you trust some guy who has spent the last few months trying to break up the band to look after our best interests?” I snarled.

“You can’t make decisions like that for the band, Cole. This is the f**king problem!” Jordan’s voice rose and Garrett shushed him.

“He handed me a new contract on the ride over here. A contract for exclusive representation by him. Excluding the three of you! He was planning on to drop you on your ass, man. So I dropped him on his first,” I shot back, glaring at him.

Jordan didn’t say anything. His shoulders slumped and he sat back in his chair.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” I challenged.

“He was cutting us loose?” Jordan asked, his voice surprisingly weak.

I sat down beside him. “Yeah, man. He was. He thought he had a better chance of making his big cut if I went off on my own. I told you he’d been after me to sign a contract with Deep Hill Records. I guess he went behind our back and started talking smack to the people here at Pirate. So I’m not sure exactly what they’re expecting when we walk in there. It sounded like Jose filled their heads with a bunch of bullshit.”

Jordan let out a heavy sigh and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. Finally he looked at me with a pained expression.

“I think I owe you an apology,” Jordan said.

Mitch and Garrett stared at our drummer in surprise.

“An apology? Is the world ending?” I crossed my arms over my chest defensively.

“I’ve been a dick. And I haven’t given you the benefit of the doubt. You’re a pain in the ass. But I get that’s who you are. I should have trusted you to have our back.”

Despite the barbs thrown in, it was the one thing I had really needed to hear from him.

“Thanks, man,” I said.

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but we need to go in that room as a team. We need to take this on together. Because at the end of the day, this is our band. Our music,” Garrett spoke up.

We all nodded.

It wasn’t much longer before we were called back into a small conference room. We sat down around a table that took up most of the space. There were a couple of guys that I recognized from when we had signed our initial contract.

Danvers, the CEO, and Tate, the Vice-President of Operations. There was also a man and a woman that I didn’t recognize who had a pile of papers in front of them.

“Hi guys. I wish I could say it was good to see you, but given the circumstances, I can’t really say that,” Danvers began, narrowing his eyes as he looked at each of us. We didn’t bow our heads like naughty little school children. We kept our chins up and our backs straight.

“This is Fiona and Chet with legal. They’re going to talk through the finer points of your contract. Because apparently we have pretty big problem here guys,” Tate said, leaning forward and folding his hands together.

“Where’s Jose?” Danvers asked.

“We fired him,” I reported.

Danvers and Tate raised their eyebrows.

“Really. Well, that changes things significantly,” Danvers stated.

“I know he’s been talking in your ear about shit that’s definitely not true,” I chimed in, seeing this as my chance to set things straight.

Danvers leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his protruding belly. “Go, on,” he prompted.

“I’m not planning to jump ship for another label. I’m not looking to leave these guys and go out on my own. I’m here until the bitter end. And Jose didn’t like that. So now he’s gone. And here we are. And we hope like hell you don’t drop us. Because we made some mistakes. We messed up big time. But we can also learn. We have a better handle now on how to navigate through some of this crazy shit. And I think, if you give us a chance, we can prove you were right to sign us in the first place,” I finished, taking a deep breath.

Danvers and Tate shared a look. I wish I knew what they were thinking.

Jordan leaned forward and clasped his hand on my shoulder. “Nicely said, man.”