29. Harper
HARPER
Somehow, when the media decides to make a point out of you, they start out seeming almost kind. With something polished, maybe even factual, that sounded like a journalist who still believed words could be dignified if they were the truth had written it.
The Return of Harper Montgomery: Alexander Montgomery’s Daughter Steps Into the Light
I read it while standing barefoot in my kitchen the morning after the gala, my hair still a mass of curls from the night before, a silk robe tied loosely around me, and a cup of coffee cooling untouched on the counter.
For a moment, I felt nothing. Just a strange, floating sort of distance.
Like the article wasn’t about me. Like Harper Montgomery was someone else entirely.
A woman whose return signalled a shift in one of the most private family empires in the world.
A woman described as poised, elegant, and elusive.
Elusive.
I almost laughed. That was one way to say hidden.
My phone buzzed again, then again, and again.
Notifications stacked faster than I could clear them.
Articles. Tags. Messages from people I hadn’t spoken to in years.
Requests from journalists. Unknown numbers.
Emails forwarded from the foundation's office.
I told myself not to click, but then after taking a sip of my forgotten coffee, I clicked. The second headline was less kind.
Where has Harper Montgomery been? Inside the Mystery of America’s Hidden Heiress.
My stomach tightened because the beginning of the article promised hard facts about where I've been and what I had been doing, but no one had contacted me from this outlet.
The third made my pulse race.
The Tragedy That Shaped the Montgomery Empire
I stopped breathing; the article thumbnail was an old photograph of my mother.
Not the polished one used for foundation materials, or one of the approved images my father allowed in charity retrospectives.
This one was candid, personal. Her sunglasses were pushed into her hair, one hand lifted as if she were trying to shield her face from the camera.
Will was beside her, taller than I remembered, his school blazer rumpled, one arm raised.
My coffee cup slipped from my hand, hit the floor, and shattered. The sound cracked through the kitchen, and I flinched so hard my back hit the counter. For a second, I wasn’t in my townhouse.
I was small. Somewhere public with camera flashes. People shouting my name like I wasn’t just an innocent child. How? How did they get that picture?
Thomas appeared in the doorway. “Miss Montgomery?”
I tried to answer, but nothing came out. His eyes dropped to the broken mug, then to the phone in my hand. His expression changed, and then he was turning, saying, “I’ll get your father.”
I shook my head, or tried to; my voice came out like a croak, “I’m fine.”
The lie sounded obvious, and Thomas did not bother pretending to believe it. He disappeared, and I looked back at the phone. The page had refreshed. More articles, pictures, old headlines, lies, and pain pulled out of the ground and polished for public consumption.
What Really Happened the Day Sophie Montgomery Died?
The Affair Allegations That Rocked the Montgomery Family
From Scandal to Secrecy: Why Alexander Montgomery Hid His Daughter
There it was. The words that could twist a cautious, grief-stricken father into a monster who hid his daughter away. Like I had been locked away in a tower.
My hands started shaking so badly that the screen blurred. Then I saw another name that made my breath catch.
Elliot.
Harper Montgomery and Elliot Vale: Secret Romance or Strategic Alliance?
For a moment, the room went silent in a way that felt unnatural. Then my pulse roared in my ears. I clicked, and there were pictures of us at galas, fundraisers, cocktail mixers, walking into restaurants, his arms cradled around me.
A caption underneath one photo read:
Before the Montgomery reveal, Harper Lane appeared at several public events with Northwell’s Elliot Vale. Sources now speculate Vale may have known her true identity.
Sources. What a joke. I hated that word; sources could be anyone. A waiter, a disgruntled employee, or someone’s bored cousin. Any person with nothing better to do than whisper into a reporter’s ear and call it truth. Another article linked beneath it.
Every woman Elliot Vale has been seen with before Harper Montgomery
My stomach rolled. I knew I shouldn’t. I fucking knew, but I clicked anyway, and there were countless photos of him with women. Blondes, brunettes, models, actresses, socialites, and then her… my eyes narrowed on the images of Elliot with the women from that night, Natalia.
My lungs seized. Because some of her pictures weren’t recent. One was from some charity thing last year. She was smiling up at him like she knew exactly what he looked like when he came apart. I shoved the phone onto the counter as if it had burned me, then grabbed it again.
Comment sections. I never read comments because I knew better. Everyone knew better. I read them anyway.
He definitely knew who she was.
Of course he went after the Montgomery heir.
Upgrade from his usual roster.
She looks cold.
He got bored.
She dumped him when she realized he’s trash.
Billionaires dating billionaires, how tragic.
Wonder if Alexander approved.
Wasn’t her mother involved in a cheating scandal? Like mother, like daughter?
Is that why they haven’t been seen together? Elliot Vale got bored... Go figure. Maybe if she didn’t look like an ice princess…
My knees hit the floor as I continued to read the comments, and tagged videos and pictures of Elliot with more women than I could count. I thought I understood who he was before we met, but then that Elliot bled into my Elliot, and I realized maybe he was never truly mine.
A sound left me; I didn’t recognize. Not a sob or a scream, more like my body trying to eject a memory.
I pressed both hands over my mouth. Because for a moment I could hear it, an old noise that had haunted my dreams for too long.
Camera shutters, the awful, hungry way strangers said our names like they owned pieces of us, the sound that came out of my father's home office when he got the call about Mom and Will.
My father came into my line-of-sight fast. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, hair still damp from the shower, expression already carved into something that looked like fear disguised as control.
“My angel.”
I shook my head. “I...”
He was on the floor beside me immediately. “I know.”
“No, Dad,” my voice broke. “I don’t know if I can do this again.”
His face changed; the mask cracked just for a second. Long enough that I saw the man who had lost everything once and was terrified of watching the world reach for what he had left.
“You won’t.”
“They’re doing it again.” My voice sounded so fragile and young, even to me.
His eyes closed, and I watched the words hit him. Watched grief move through his body like something physical. Then it was gone, no, contained. Put somewhere he could survive it. He reached for my phone, locked the screen, and placed it on the counter above us.
“No more.”
I laughed; it came out jagged. “You can’t stop the internet.”
He looked at me. “Watch me.”
That almost made me cry harder.
Thomas appeared again. “Sir.”
My father’s head turned. “What?”
“The security team is downstairs; they say that there are multiple vehicles outside and they are trying to clear the way for the two of you to head into the offices today.”
“Talk to the lead on today; tell him to double the team.” Thomas nodded, and my father continued, “No access to the townhouse. I want everyone to be clear; no one reaches her without my approval.”
“Understood.”
My father's voice was calm, but that was when Alexander Montgomery was most dangerous. He didn’t yell when he was furious; he didn’t bellow when he was scared. He organized and controlled what most people would assume was uncontrollable.
He stood and helped me to my feet, saying, “We will not hide again, and I will keep you safe.”
The townhouse changed within an hour. Two additional security personnel in the lobby, a black SUV parked out front, my father on calls in the library, voice low and lethal.
I sat at the kitchen island in a sweater too soft for how wrong everything felt and stared at nothing while people moved around me.
I had thought I was ready; at the gala, I had believed it.
For a few shining hours, I stood beside my father and felt powerful.
I felt like maybe visibility didn’t have to be a wound.
Then morning came, and the world reminded me what it did with women like me.
It turned us into stories. By noon, the articles had multiplied.
Some were glowing, others were speculative, and some pretended to be compassionate while picking through my mother’s death like a dinner plate.
One had a timeline, a fucking timeline, of my father’s alleged affair.
Then they did an hourly play-by-play of the paparazzi frenzy, and my mother retrieving Will from Blackridge.
How I was last seen at the funeral, and what my disappearance from public life must have been like for a sad little girl.
I made it halfway through before the edges of my vision darkened.
I shut the laptop, and then five minutes later, when I tried to open it again, my father was there taking it from me, handing it to an assistant and walking me to his office so he could keep an eye on me.
He gave me a new phone and instructed me that an assistant would screen any communication before it came to me, for now.
At three, Thomas entered the library; my father looked up.
“What?”
Thomas’s eyes flicked to me, then back. “Your father is here, sir.”
My father’s face hardened. Every trace of warmth vanished so completely that for one terrifying second I saw the man the world feared.
“No.”
Thomas nodded once. “He says he only wants to help.”
My father stood, slowly, a rough texture to his voice when he said, “Tell him to leave.”
Thomas hesitated, his eyes tracking to me for a moment before saying, “He asked to see Miss Montgomery.”
My grandfather was here for me. The man I remembered mostly in fragments. A harsh voice, the smell of expensive tobacco, my grandmother’s bitter smile, arguments behind closed doors, and my father standing between us even when I didn’t understand why.
I pushed back from the table, and before I could say anything, my father gave a curt “No.”
“He might…” I tried.
“No.” The word cracked through the room.
I froze, and my father turned to me; his expression broke immediately. Not anger, but what I could only explain as raw fear.
“No,” he said again, softer. “I am sorry, but no.”
I swallowed. “Why is he here?”
“Because men like my father can smell weakness and opportunity from another continent.”
Thomas remained silent by the door; my father looked back at him, saying, “There is no amount of time my father could have left on this earth that would ever earn him another minute with my family.”
Thomas nodded and disappeared. The silence he left behind felt enormous. I stared at my father, and he stared at the door, as if his father would somehow manifest before us. His hands were curled into fists at his sides.
“Dad,” I whispered, unsure how to fix this.
He exhaled, a long, ragged sound, and then turned back to me.
“I've already lost enough; they don’t get you too.”
The words were quiet, barely there, and even though I didn’t exactly understand them, they shattered something in me, anyway. I crossed the room and wrapped my arms around him.
For a second, he didn’t move. Then he held me so tightly it almost hurt.
I didn’t complain because I understood. Because I was holding on just as hard.
By early evening, I thought I had reached the end of what I could feel.
On my way back to my father’s office with a bottle of wine, I overheard a conversation, something about Elliot’s name being negatively linked with mine.
I put the wine down on the table outside my father's office and went to my room to check my phone.
Because I thought I could separate the truth from the PR…
When I got upstairs, I sat on my bed and searched. The results loaded immediately.
Pictures of us, more photos from those weeks together, some even candid. More speculation. A video from the second gala where Elliot’s hand rested at the small of my back, and I looked up at him with a smile I didn’t remember giving so freely.
Another article.
Was Elliot Vale courting the Montgomery fortune?
Another.
From Playboy CEO to Power Match: Inside Elliot Vale’s Connection to Harper Montgomery
The comments were worse now. Because strangers loved a romance until they could make it ugly.
He definitely targeted her.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
He doesn’t do relationships.
Imagine being worth billions and still getting played.
Was she used and thrown away too? Tragic family tradition.
Side-by-side pictures of my mom and me at the same age.
Comments comparing my parents to Elliot and me.
Pictures from Oliver's social media, where the comments somehow got worse.
People saying I traded up, or that Oliver was doing a favour because no one wanted to be with me. That I was broken and heartless.
I couldn’t breathe; my chest tightened all at once. Like a hand had wrapped around my lungs and squeezed. I tried to stand, but failed. My phone slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor. The sound echoed, and my vision blurred. I pressed my hand to my chest.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
I couldn’t find the rhythm. I knew how this unfolded. That was the worst part. Everyone kept saying it was different now. There were statements, better security, lawyers. But I knew.
The media machine always got hungry. It started with questions, then theories, then blame, outrage…
Then someone decided the people at the center of it were no longer people at all.
Just characters, villains, and entertainment.
I gave myself fifteen minutes to let it all out before I went downstairs and faced everything at my father's side, like I said I was ready to do.
It wasn’t pretty or quiet. I cried as if grief had been waiting years for permission.
For my mother, Will, my father, for the little girl who had learned to hide because hiding was safer than being hunted, and for the woman who had believed she could step into the light without the dark reaching for her.
Then, when the tears dried up, I washed my face, turned my phone off, and went back downstairs. Because this time I was not a scared little girl; I was Harper Montgomery, and I would not let my father face this on his own.