After drying off, he tossed his towel aside and stared at his naked self in the mirror over the vanity. He was considered sexy by every measure, top to bottom, with women supposedly falling at his feet as he picked them up and tossed them in his bed.
But that was another lie the media perpetuated about music moguls like him. He was no male whore. He had zero respect for men who didn’t know how to keep it in their pants and had to have it no matter where it came from. And since he didn’t go out like that, he wasn’t about to settle for anybody who did.
He didn’t want a whore. He wanted a wife. And for him it wasn’t about looks and a great figure or none of that shit. He wanted a good woman of character. Pure and simple. But he wasn’t about to get one that was slinging it all around town as if she couldn’t control her urges either. But in his line of work a good woman like the one he wanted was hard, if not damn near impossible, to find.
Work. That was all he did all the time. He had in his arsenal of recording artists rockers and rappers and old school R&B belchers galore. All A-listers. Most at the top of their game. He had as many tats as they had. He had the smooth hairstyle they had too. He had their vibe, their language, their likes and dislikes down to a science.
But it was all about the business for him because he was nothing like those entitled pricks who ran through their fortunes like it was paper money and all they had to do was make another record and print out more money. And for them to toss around how long they’d been with Eagle and how many hits they had inthe past as if that information held any business value for today got under his skin. What did those motherfuckers think he was running? A record label or a charity?
Besides, it was never about what they did for him yesterday. All that shit from yesterday didn’t sell no streams today. Tomorrow didn’t sell any either. What could they do for himtodaywas all he wanted to know. And if the answer was minimal to nothing, then they were axed. Pure and simple. How long they’d been with him and all they did in some yesteryear didn’t mean shit to him because it couldn’t. If it was bad for business, it was bad for him. He was a Webster. It was engrained in him from babyhood that at the end of the day, everything else be damned. Except for family. Except for business.
But he felt like he was in a rut and going nowhere fast. His best friend nearly died a month ago after some fools had a shootout on a busy city street and Shelton was caught in the crossfire. He’d already lost four of his A-list artists to competing labels after he refused their outrageous demands. And negotiations were just getting underway. He stood to lose a lot more.
And on top of all of that, there was that wedding madness back in Brackenridge where his father’s bastard daughter was getting married and he was expected to participate in the ceremony as if that shit didn’t hurt. When it still, all those years later, hurt like hell.
He needed a vacation. But he’d been saying that for twenty years and never took one yet. But he’d never felt so damn tired of it all before either.
After peeing for what felt like forever, he washed his hands, brushed his teeth, and began trimming his mustache with its accompanying thin, pencil beard as he listened to moreof his messages. Although they were all more of the same, one came up, from Kemberly, that caught his attention.
Kem was a newer recording artist, although she’d been in the game for over a decade. But she had a two-year deal with Eagle that was up for renewal. He found her interesting after his guys signed her up because she seemed so softspoken and kindhearted when he first met her. Like a woman who didn’t need to be in the limelight and the center of attention all the time. He even considered asking her out a time or two. He even wondered if she was wife material.
But he sat and watched. And just like with every woman he’d ever shown any interest in whatsoever, the red flags began to pop up. The arrogance began to surface. The self-centeredness. The meanness to her support staff as if they were her slaves. And that sense of entitlement that he could never abide was something that she could never come back from in his eyes. She was not the one. And that was that.
But her voice mail message, like her, was fire: “You asshole!” she yelled into that phone. “How dare you do this to me, Hawk? I was making more money with Def before I switched to your sorry-ass label. But you offer me a contract like this? What the hell? I deserve Rhianna money. Hell, I deserve Beyonce money! You and that contract can kiss my ass, Hawthorne Webster. You and that contract can kiss my black ass!”
Hawk laughed out loud and shook his head. At least Kem was keeping it real. But a part of him was disappointed, too, that yet another woman he thought was promising was yet another dead end.
And he wasn’t getting any younger. His ass was pushing forty. Was that part of his life, a family of his own he craved, truly going to pass him by? Was his simple desire to have a woman of substance and character too much to ask???
He’d accomplished everything he set out to accomplish when he left Tennessee over twenty years ago. He charted his own course. His old man was the richest man in Tennessee. He was king of that mountain. But Hawk wanted to be his own man and do his own thing and he wanted no parts of his family legacy. And by all accounts he succeeded. But the one thing he thought would be the easiest to accomplish, getting married and having a family of his own, alluded him still.
But fuck it.
He had work to do.
He finished shaving, left the bathroom, got dressed, hopped into his Corvette, and then sped all the way to his massive twenty-seven-story office building whereEAGLE RECORDSwas embossed across the front like an actual bald eagle.
Many thought it ironic that he would name his company after an eagle when his nickname was Hawk. But he knew exactly what he was doing. They both were birds of prey. But the full-grown eagle was larger than the full-grown hawk. Business always came first in his eyes. It was always the larger issue, even above his own wants and needs. Which was the Webster way.
But as he drove into his parking lot the way he did every single morning when he was in L.A., he was beginning to wonder if it was really the best way.
He got out of his car, went into his building, and began his day as if the Webster way of work and more work was the only way out for him. He didn’t expect it to be that way. But that was the way it was.
CHAPTER THREE
Always a man in a hurry, William Webster quickly climbed the winding staircase of his sprawling mansion and walked swiftly across the third-floor landing. Priding himself on the fact that he was in better shape than most thirty-year-olds, he was determined to never slow down.
But his fast progression came to a sudden halt when he arrived at the open double doors of his bedroom and saw his wife of forty years sitting at her dressing table getting ready for yet another dinner party in their exclusive social circle.
He leaned against the doorjamb, folded his arms, and stared.
Resheda “Reecie” Danfield-Webster, he thought. He could still recall the first time he laid eyes on her. He’d never seen anyone more beautiful. She was a bartender at his uncle’s nightclub at the time, although she wasn’t very good at it as she continually got people’s drinks wrong, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She was tall and slender and had a style about her that was far more elegant than any of the rich girls he was dating. And her black skin was as smooth as satin even from where he sat on the other side of the club. They both were eighteen at the time. Babies really. But by the time they were nineteen, his father had died and he was the heir-apparent to the Webster Maple Syrup fortune. He grew up fast. And four months later they were married.
He knew it was going to be an issue in Brackenridge when they returned from their honeymoon. His father had been - and now he was - the richest man in Tennessee. For him to marry ablack woman during that time was scandalous. He was he prize of the town. The blue-bloods loved him. One of their daughters were expected to win him. How did this black girl, from the other side of the tracks, beat out all of them?
And when every one of their six children popped out looking more black than white too, it only bred more scandal. All directed at his wife. His uncle, who was his father’s brother, even went so far as to hire a private investigator to secretly collect DNA samples of him and each one of his children to disprove his paternity. Not because his uncle was a racist, his uncle insisted, but he did it because he didn’t want the family fortune to end up in thewronghands.
But to his uncle’s chagrin, and to the chagrin of all of those on that bandwagon, paternity, in every single case, wasn’t disproven, but was proven. William Webster was the father of all six children. And was a proud father, too, because he loved their mother so completely.
