My rage blooms into something even sharper. “You’ve got to be joking. You wrote the songs. He took credit for them. And he left you nothing?”

Whitney nods slowly. “I spent ten years of my life busting my ass on his career, making him look like the rock star he claimed to be . . . and I walked away with nothing. But at least I got to walk away.”

My brain is spinning with how to fix this for her. How she could get back her hard work. “I’d have to talk to my legal team, but you should be able to file a copyright suit against the estate and the creditors. Prove that you were the writer and didn’t consent to the assignment of the future royalties.”

“Sure, if I had a mountain of money I was sitting on.” She slaps the papers down on the desk. “But that’s not the case, and right now, all I want to do is move on.”

The thought of her walking away from a decade of number-one songs and platinum albums kills me.

“But you can’t let this go. I’ll fund it.”

Whitney whips around to face me. “No way in hell. First, I’m not a charity case. I wasn’t before, and I’m not now either. Second, how do you think the press and Ricky’s fans would react if I destroyed his legacy by telling them the truth—that he didn’t write any of the shit they thought he did? I’ve already been through hell with them. I’m not doing it again.”

I press my fingers to my temples. “I want to help. We can figure this out.”

“I’m not asking for your help. I’m telling you that some things just aren’t worth the cost you have to pay to get there. It’s not worth it right now.”

“So you’re just going to walk away without a fight? Give up a decade of your life with nothing to show for it?”

Her plan is absolutely insane to me. It would be like me turning my back on the last ten years at Riscoff Holdings.

Whitney straightens. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“You can’t.”

Twenty

Whitney

That man did not just tell me I couldn’t do something.

Oh, wait . . . yes, he did.

Because Lincoln Riscoff is the heir to an empire and thinks he knows everything about everything.

But he doesn’t. He hasn’t lived my life. He doesn’t know what kind of hell would rain down if I made the claims he’s suggesting.

That confidence I felt building earlier took a small hit when I admitted that Ricky had been cheating on me the entire time we were together, but it comes back as Lincoln challenges me. Mostly because this conversation sparks an idea that hasn’t occurred to me until just now.

I cross my arms over my chest and smile. “Actually, Lincoln, I can do whatever I want, and you don’t get a say.”

He opens his mouth, but I’m not done. I nod at the stack of papers on the desk.