Chapter 60: Worst Contract Ever

I ended the call, leaving him staring at a dead line. Within an hour, news broke across the industry feeds: Apex Music Group Collapses Under Debt as Key Investor Withdraws; Ruby Signs Historic Deal with Quin Music Group.

Ruby looked down at her notebook, then up at me, a profound sense of peace settling over her face. The past was burned to the ground.

AMG was finished, Hailey was history, and the stage was entirely hers.

"So," Ruby said softly, picking up her acoustic guitar and striking a brilliant, ringing chord. "Where do we start on album number one?"

We drove over to Quin Music Group’s headquarters the following morning.

On the outside, everything looked pristine—marble floors, floor-to-ceiling glass, and platinum records lining every wall.

They rolled out the red carpet for us, giving Ruby the royal treatment.

While I was ushered into the executive boardroom to talk numbers, one of their top A&R reps took Ruby on a tour of the recording suites, where she actually ran into a massive, global superstar who gave her a huge shoutout for her live broadcast stunt.

Down in the boardroom, the atmosphere was a lot less glamorous.

The executives pushed a thick, leather-bound contract across the polished mahogany table toward me.

"This is the premier package," the chief legal officer said with a glossy, corporate smile. "Full global distribution, thirty-million-dollar marketing push, world tour routing."

I didn’t say a word. I pulled out my pen and spent the next twenty minutes dissecting every single page, line by line.

As I read, my jaw tightened. It was a absolute trap.

They had hidden a predatory 360-degree clause deep in the fine print.

They were asking for 85% of her touring revenue, complete ownership of her name and likeness in perpetuity, a mandatory six-album lock-in with zero creative final cut, and a clause that allowed them to recoup every single dollar of marketing expenses directly out of her personal royalty pool.

It wasn’t a partnership—it was a high-end, gilded cage.

They thought because we were dodging the AMG burning ship, we’d be desperate enough to sign anything with a big logo on it.

I closed the folder with a sharp snap and walked straight out of the boardroom.

I found Ruby in the VIP lounge, holding a signed vinyl from the superstar she’d just met, her eyes bright with excitement. "Ethan! You wouldn’t believe who I just met—"

"Ruby, put the pen down," I said quietly, cutting her off and gesturing for her to follow me out to the private balcony away from the reps.

She looked at me, her smile fading into confusion. "What’s wrong? Isn’t the contract good?"

"It’s modern-day slavery wrapped in expensive paper," I told her directly.

"They’re offering a huge budget, but in exchange, they take your masters forever, force you into a six-album trap, and take nearly all your tour money. They want to own you the exact same way AMG did—they’re just nicer about it."

Ruby didn’t even ask to look at the pages. She looked me straight in the eye, her trust in me absolute and unwavering.

"If you say it’s bad, then it’s bad," she said, her voice dropping into a firm, icy resolve. "I trust you. What do we do?"

"We walk out," I said, a dangerous smirk returning to my face. "They think they hold all the cards because they’re ’Quin.’ They forget who actually has the music."

The executive’s glossy smile vanished instantly. He slammed his hand on the mahogany table, standing up to loom over us as we turned toward the glass doors.

"You’re making a massive mistake, Ethan!" he barked, his calm, corporate persona completely cracking. "Do you have any idea how this industry works? You think you can just launch an independent career from scratch in this market? Do you have a billion-dollar capital reserve sitting in your bank account? The distribution networks? The global radio connections? You’ll drown out there!"

He rounded the table, stepping directly into Ruby’s path with a look of fake, desperate concern.

"Ruby, listen to me," he said, lowering his voice into a soothing, persuasive tone. "Don’t let him ruin your shot before it even starts. He’s playing games with your life. Look at the paper yourself—we are offering to make you a global icon. Choose yourself for once! Don’t let his pride destroy your career."

Ruby didn’t even blink. She didn’t look at the contract, and she didn’t look at him.

Instead, she reached down, wrapped her fingers firmly around my hand, and laced her fingers through mine. She looked the executive straight in the eye with a cold, piercing glare that made the man pause mid-sentence.

"If Ethan says it’s poison, I’m not drinking it," Ruby said, her voice completely calm and laced with absolute certainty. "I don’t need your billion dollars. I have the voice, and I have him."

Without waiting for another word, she pulled my hand and walked straight past him, her heels clicking sharply against the marble floor as we exited the executive suite.

Down in the private garage, the Maybach was waiting with the rear door held open. As we slid into the leather seats, Ruby let out a long breath, but her hand never let go of mine.

"A billion dollars..." she murmured, looking over at me with a dangerous, playful tilt of her head. "So... are we going to build our own label, or what?"

I looked back at her, a slow, ruthless grin spreading across my face.

"Pack your bags for the studio," I said, hitting the partition button to signal the driver. "We’re launching our own machine—and we’re taking Quin’s entire roster with us."

Starting an independent label from scratch sounds glorious until you look at the cold, hard numbers.

I had forty million dollars in liquid capital sitting in my immediate operating account.

The rest of my cash stack—over three hundred million—was currently locked up in escrow, waiting on Zenith tax clearances, cross-border corporate audits, and end-of-month banking releases.

I chuckled to myself as we sank into the Maybach’s leather seats.

Forty million was more than enough to buy a small country, but in the ruthless, bloated monster that was the modern music industry?

It was a tight budget for a global, day-one launch machine.

Building international distribution pipelines, hiring top-tier legal muscle, securing global PR teams, and buying out radio priority across five continents could bleed forty mil dry before the first vinyl even got pressed.