Chapter 42 #2
I remembered her perfectly. More importantly, I remembered her daughter before she moved into the estate.
I'd met Ava once before, at some tedious society function, a tiny thing with her mother's dark hair and her father's stubborn chin.
She'd been three years old, tottering around the garden, and something about the way she moved, the way she held herself, had caught my attention.
Omega potential. I could smell it on her, faint but unmistakable, the precursor pheromones that would bloom into full presentation in another decade or so.
Most people couldn't detect it that early, but I'd made a study of such things.
Alpha sons and no Omega to bind them together, I'd been searching for years for the right one.
Here was Elena, gift-wrapping her daughter and delivering her to my doorstep.
"Of course I'll help," I told her, letting warmth flood my voice, letting her hear the friend she remembered from childhood, the boy who'd once shared his lunch with her when her sister had stolen hers. "Bring Ava. Come stay at the estate. We'll figure everything out together."
She wept with gratitude, sobbing her thanks into the phone until I thought she might choke on them.
I smiled and began to plan. The first few years were simple enough.
Elena was so grateful for the rescue that she didn't question anything, the comfortable guest house on the estate grounds, the job I created for her in my household administration, the way my sons always seemed to be around when Ava was playing in the gardens.
She was a good mother, I'll give her that.
Attentive, loving, fiercely protective of her daughter.
She worked hard to provide stability, to shield Ava from the chaos of their previous life.
She never complained, never asked for more than I offered, never seemed to notice the way the walls were closing in around her.
By the time Ava was ten, Elena had become comfortable.
Complacent. She'd built a life on my estate, made friends among the staff, carved out a small space that felt like hers.
She'd stopped looking over her shoulder, stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop.
That was her mistake.
Ava presented at fifteen, and everything changed.
I'd known it was coming, of course. Had been tracking her development for years, noting the subtle shifts in her scent, the changes in her behavior, the way my sons' attention sharpened whenever she was near.
When she finally presented, blooming into full Omega maturity in a rush of pheromones and biological destiny, I felt the satisfaction of a decade-long investment finally paying off.
My sons were captivated. All four of them, drawn to her like moths to flame, their Alpha instincts recognizing what I'd seen years ago: this was their Omega. The missing piece that would bind them together into an unbreakable pack.
Elena saw it too. And she was not pleased. She came to me that night, after Ava's presentation, her face pale and her hands shaking. She'd finally understood, I think. Finally realized that the comfortable life I'd given her came with a price she'd never agreed to pay.
"You can't have her," she said, her voice trembling but firm, her small hands clenched into fists at her sides. She stood in the doorway of my study, refusing to come any closer, as if proximity to me might contaminate her. "She's my daughter. She's not, she's not some broodmare for your sons."
"She's an Omega," I replied calmly, not bothering to rise from my chair, letting her see how little her defiance concerned me. "And she's been living on my estate, surrounded by my sons, for five years. The bond has already begun forming, Elena. It's too late to stop it."
"Watch me," she said, her chin lifting, a flash of steel in her eyes that I'd never seen before. The beta who'd been so grateful, so compliant, so easy to manage, she was gone. In her place stood a mother who'd finally realized the wolf had been in the henhouse all along.
She tried, I'll give her credit. Tried to take Ava and leave, tried to find somewhere else to go, tried to warn her daughter about the cage that had been built around her so carefully she'd never noticed the bars. Elena was a beta with no resources, no family, no allies. And I was David Harper.
I didn't kill her then. I should have, perhaps, but I was patient. I could afford to wait. Elena's attempts to leave were easily thwarted…where would she go? Who would take her in? She had nothing, was nothing, except what I allowed her to be.
So I let her stay. Let her watch as my sons circled her daughter, as the bond deepened despite her protests, as Ava grew into the Omega I'd always known she would become. Let her feel the helplessness of a mother who couldn't protect her child.
Then Ava ran.
Three years ago, just after her eighteenth birthday, my little investment slipped through my fingers and disappeared into the world. Gone. Vanished. Three years of nothing, no trail, no sightings, no way to find her despite every resource I threw at the search.
I was... displeased.
Elena, of course, was overjoyed. She tried to hide it, but I saw the relief in her eyes, the way her shoulders loosened for the first time in years. Her daughter had escaped. Her daughter was free. Everything Elena had prayed for had finally come true.
I couldn't allow that. The poisoning started slowly, about a month after Ava disappeared. Small doses, carefully administered by staff who knew better than to question my orders. Arsenic in her tea, just enough to make her tired. To give her headaches. To make her skin pale and her appetite fade.
Elena thought she was getting sick. Stress, the doctors told her, the doctors I paid to lie. Grief over her daughter's disappearance. She needed rest, they said. She needed to take care of herself.
She got worse instead.
Over the following months, I watched her deteriorate with clinical detachment.
The vomiting started around month three.
The hair loss around month five. By month eight, she was bedridden, too weak to do anything but lie in the guest house I'd so generously provided, wondering why her body was betraying her.
Ava had run. Ava had escaped the future I'd planned for her, had rejected my sons, had made a fool of me. Elena had raised her to do it. Had planted the seeds of rebellion, had nurtured that stubborn independence, had failed in the one task I'd given her, keeping my investment safe and compliant.
She had to pay for that. Someone had to pay.
Elena died nine months after Ava ran. The official cause was listed as cancer, aggressive, untreatable, a tragedy. I attended the small funeral, expressed my condolences to the few staff members who'd grown fond of her, and had her ashes scattered in the garden where she used to watch Ava play.
My sons never knew. They thought it was simply bad luck, a cruel twist of fate that had taken the woman who'd been like an aunt to them for so many years.
They grieved, in their way, and then they moved on.
I told them to keep searching for Ava. Told them their Omega was out there somewhere, suffering without them, dying slowly without the bond she needed to survive.
I didn't tell them that I'd already extracted my price for her rebellion from her mother's failing body.
Some things a father keeps to himself.
I knew, of course, that my sons were using Harper family resources to track her.
The private investigators, the surveillance networks, the digital footprint analysis — they thought they were being clever, hiding their obsession from me, but nothing happened with Harper money that I didn't know about.
I allowed it. Encouraged it, even, in my subtle way.
Their desperation to find her only strengthened their bond to each other, united them in common purpose.
And when they finally caught her — and they would catch her, I had no doubt — they would be ready.
In the meantime, I had my own ways of finding people.
It took my team three months to track down Ava's phone number. She'd been careful, I'll give her that — burner phones, cash transactions, no fixed address. But everyone slips eventually. A single credit card charge at a pharmacy in Ohio, and we had her.
I called her myself the day Elena died. Sat in this very study, whiskey in hand, and dialed the number my people had provided.
She answered on the fourth ring, her voice wary and tight. "Hello?"
"Avalon," I said, keeping my tone gentle, sorrowful, the voice of a grieving family friend delivering terrible news. "It's David Harper. I'm so sorry to call you like this, but I thought you should know — your mother passed away this morning."
Silence on the other end. I could hear her breathing, quick and shallow, and could almost see the color draining from her face.
"What?" she finally managed, her voice barely a whisper.
"Cancer," I said, letting the lie roll smoothly off my tongue. "It was aggressive. By the time the doctors caught it, there was nothing they could do. She went peacefully, in her sleep. She wasn't in pain at the end."
More silence. Then, quietly: "You're lying."
"I wish I were." I let a note of genuine sadness creep into my voice — I'd always been good at that, manufacturing emotion on demand. "The funeral is Saturday, if you'd like to come. Pay your respects. I know she would have wanted you there."
"I'm not coming anywhere near you," Ava said, and I heard the steel in her voice, the same steel her mother had shown me the night she'd tried to take her daughter and run. "Don't call me again."
The line went dead.
She didn't come to the funeral. I hadn't expected her to, she was too smart for that, knew it would be a trap. I'd planted the seed of doubt, the knowledge that her mother was gone. Let her carry that grief alone, out there in the world, with no one to comfort her.
She changed her number within the hour. My team confirmed it the next day, the old number was disconnected, and she'd gone even deeper underground. It didn’t take us long to find her new number and address. My boys already making sure her new apartment had cameras and was owned by us.
The fire had burned down to coals again. I didn't bother to feed it this time, just sat in the gathering darkness, thinking about the past. About choices made and prices paid.
Ava was mine. Had been mine since the moment her desperate mother placed her in my hands. And now she was my sons' bound to them by biology and trauma and a decade of careful manipulation.
She'd run, yes. That was unfortunate, a temporary setback, a last gasp of rebellion before acceptance set in.
But she'd come back. They always came back, in the end.
The bond wouldn't let them do anything else.
Elena had learned that lesson the hard way.
Had learned that you didn't raise a daughter to defy David Harper and walk away unscathed.
Nine months of suffering for her failure, nine months of watching her body wither and fail, never knowing that the tea her caretakers brought her so faithfully was the very thing killing her.
I finished my whiskey and set the glass aside, watching the last embers fade to ash.
Ava would be fine. She'd recover from the bond sickness, settle into her new life, give my sons the heirs they needed to continue the Harper legacy.
She'd be happy, even, happiness was easy enough to manufacture when you controlled all the variables.
If she ever tried to run again... well. I'd dealt with obstacles before. Slowly, if necessary. Patiently. I had learned long ago that the most effective punishments were the ones no one ever suspected.
I picked up the phone and dialed Dr. Mercer's number. Best to have him on standby, just in case. Forty-eight hours, I'd told Mason. If the bond sickness hadn't resolved by then, they'd need medical intervention.
The doctor answered on the third ring. "Mr. Harper," he said, his voice smooth and professional even at this hour, the voice of a man who understood that my calls took priority over sleep. "How can I help you?"
"I may have a patient for you soon," I said, my voice pleasant, professional, betraying nothing of the thoughts that had occupied my evening. "An Omega with severe bond sickness. I trust you can be discreet?"
"Always, sir," he said, and I could hear the understanding in his tone. Mercer had worked for me for fifteen years. He knew better than to ask questions.
"Good," I said, allowing myself a small smile in the darkness. "One of my boys will be in touch."
The call ended. I set down the phone and stared into the dying fire, thinking about investments, and returns, and the price of keeping what was mine. Elena had paid that price. Her daughter never would, because Ava would never be foolish enough to run again.
I was certain of it.