"Charlie, it's good that you're here, I was just about to make a sandwich for your father, would you like one? You've lost far too much weight." Judy said ushering her youngest daughter into the house. "You need to eat more, stay I'll make dinner for you to take home to Harper. She's a growing girl and you can't just just feed her bacon and hope that she makes it."
"That's what Santana said, but I have plenty of food in the freezer and fridge for Harper. Santana came over and cooked up a storm and left specific instructions on how to warm the food up." Charlie mentioned noting how her mother's smile turned sour for only a moment before it was replaced by her usual fake smile. "Mom," Charlie sighed.
"Are you sure Santana's the right one? I can have hundreds of single omega's here later tonight—it could be like a mixer. Or perhaps I should call that million-dollar matchmaker—"
"I'm hardly a millionaire," Charlie points out and her mother rolls her eyes.
"Of course you are, just because you haven't touched the money your father set aside for you doesn't mean that you don't have millions at your disposable. Charlie, you've already proven you can provide for your family but all this fighting it's not good for you. When you're sixty and have Parkinson's or some other disease from all the repeated blows to the head? Take the money and just relax."
"I said no mom, I want Harper to know how to work hard for her money. I don't want to spoil her, if she sees hard I work then maybe she'll work just as hard." It was a sticking point that they argued about every single time. "Dad always said to pull yourself up by your—"
"Bootstraps, and that's exactly what she's done," Russell said moving towards his youngest and patting her hard on the back. "How is it going with your mate? Do you need more advice? Let's go shopping for something that will make sure she knows you can provide for her."
Charlie scratched her cheek that was her father's solution to everything. It was a good thing her mother adored her father's attentions that way and enjoyed spending his money. But Santana wasn't like that and she was sure that it was going to be the other way around. Santana would probably make more than her and have a steady income. "No, I think things with Santana—well they're going as well as they could be expected. Harper's a godsend, I don't think she was even trying. I'm giving her a raise in her allowance—actually Harper is the reason I'm here. I need your advice."
Russell beamed at the thought of his formerly wayward daughter coming to him for advice. It was a sign of how far their relationship had come and he couldn't be happier about it. "What for?"
"I have a chance to make a name for myself, but to do it I have to go back to training and Harper—well Harper doesn't know yet. I don't know if I should stay in New York or go back to my old training camp. I would have said no if this was just some lame fight but it's for the championship."
"Do you think that you can win?" Russell asks immediately, raising a brow when Charlie nods. "And the odds of winning?"
"About twenty-to-one?" Charlie scratched her cheek. "It might end up higher, it'll be announced later so the odds will fluctuate until the fight. I do know that I'm the underdog, people haven't really been paying attention but I know I can win."
"Good, I'll tell my accountant to put a million dollars down. Don't let me down," Russell pats his youngest daughter on the back.
"Thanks dad, clearly there's no pressure there," Charlie mumbles and shakes her head. This wasn't going to plan. "Again, your gambling addiction aside, I'm worried about what to do with Harper, I don't want to break my promise to her."
Russell shrugged, "Kids forgive and forget, I mean you and Quinn forgave me for every single time I missed a game or concert or anything really."
"You ended up buying them toys instead," Judy pointed out.
"Right and they forgot all why they were upset, so my point still stands." Russell glances at Charlie for a moment, there were some things he regretted, perhaps if he had been around more what had happened to Charlie would never had happened but there was very little he could do now. Though the private investigator that he had hired was at work digging up all of that bastard's skeletons and Russell couldn't wait to watch that little worm squirm.
"What do you need Charlie? Do you want us to watch Harper for however long you need us too?" Judy asked.
A small trip down memory lane was enough for Charlie to shake her head. "No, but I was thinking that maybe I could bring the team to New York for eight weeks—so I don't have to go anywhere. Maybe use the summer home to—"
"No."
Charlie winced, she really should have expected that. Sure her parents had been great over the last year or so, but she should have expected that even they had their boundaries. "Yeah, I guess I'll just go to Arizona—"
Russell shook his head. "I mean, I don't want a bunch of strangers in my home. It's not that I don't trust you, Charlie. It's that eight weeks is a long time. Do you really need your team here? To win this match?" He pressed.
"I need a training camp to prepare. The New York camps eat into my profits too much." Charlie explained for the millionth time.
Russell frowns. "But do you need the team here? Or can you use people you trust to help you get ready?"
"I mean there's Puck, I trust him but he's never dealt with a pro-fighter before. I don't know if he has the skills to get me ready." Charlie frowns, in all of her amateur fights Puck had managed to get her ready, but Puck didn't have the equipment or the money to invest in getting some of the best guys. She frowns for a second, before flicking her eyes. "What about investing in a gym and being a silent partner. It probably won't make money until I win and even then—"
Russell raised a brow for a moment, it was a simple matter of investing a few thousand dollars, he had plenty of money but he wasn't a silent partner for anything. "If you want to invest in a gym that you believe in, well your trust fund is waiting for you. I promise not to mention it to your daughter."
Charlie made a face and looked at her mother, who chewed on the inside of her lip, "I'll invest in it for you."
"What?" Russell said turning to his wife who smiled.
"You'll have to attend a mixer of course and attempt to find a proper mate instead of Santana, but as you can tell by the gut your father's gained quite a bit of weight lately and he refuses to go to any gym that I sign him up for or use the gym at the country club." Judy said briskly and eyes her daughter before patting her mates protruding gut. "This needs to go."
"Now hold on!"
"Your cholesterol is through the roof and I know about how you've been cheating on your diet, I refuse to be a widow in the next three years. What am I supposed to do as a single omega at my age? The kids are gone, so you will get healthy for me and you will start by going to your daughter's gym with her."
"I'll train dad, but no mixer. Santana is my mate and I don't want to screw that up mom," Charlie says with a sigh. Her mother makes a face at this and looks like she's about to protest when Charlie holds out her hands. She knew she was going to regret this but she needed her mother to invest with Puck. "But, I do need a proper management team, which you could totally be in charge of."
Judy studied her daughter for a moment it was an open invitation into her daughter's life and while Quinn was around nearly every week, Charlie had been harder to pin down. "That sounds wonderful. Do you have an agent?"
"I do, I'll put you in touch and you can both tell me how to run my career and make it grow after dinner. I need to focus on training and being Harper's parent." Charlie frowned at her mother, it was best to set boundaries now before her mom went crazy with ideas. The last thing she needed was to get bombarded with ideas from morning to night.
~O~
Dani slammed the door behind her, furiously stalking into Maribel's office.
Maribel frowned. "Can I help you?"
"You lied to me." She spat. "Santana broke the bond and now I'm here trying to clean up after that Fabray's sloppy seconds."
Maribel's eyes narrowed. "I'm sure I misheard you refer to my only daughter as someone's 'sloppy seconds'." She frowned in disapproval. Maybe Dani hadn't been the alpha she had thought. She folded her arms over her chest and stood. "You'd better have a damn good reason for barging into my office with what is clearly a personal matter. It is not my fault, nor my daughter's so it's likely best if you bite your tongue and show some respect."
There was a reason that no one had contested Maribel's bid for district attorney for the last three elections. She was terrifying when she was angry, but Dani wasn't going to back down. She was the victim here. "I'll show you respect when you earn it. You lied to me."
"I didn't lie." Maribel spits out the insinuation like it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. She's an honest woman and the accusation that she's anything else makes her furious. "My daughter is still unmated. Whatever happened between her and Charlie Fabray means nothing if she still doesn't have an alpha."
"Nothing? It means everything. I've been patient, I thought she was just nervous about mating and now I find out that she's mated before? That changes everything!"
"Does it?" Maribel challenges. "If it does, then you aren't half the alpha I thought you were." She shakes her head sadly. She just wants Santana to be happy, and she is starting to doubt that Dani is the woman for the job. One thing she knows is that Charlie is selfish and has abandoned Santana in the past. She's not willing to give her the chance to do it again.
"She has an alpha and it isn't me." Dani counters. "You set me up to fail."
"I did no such thing. I encouraged you to date my daughter because I thought you were a woman who could handle her. Apparently I was wrong." Maribel sneered. "I should have known you'd be unable to close the deal with my daughter—"
"Too weak?" Dani interrupts, her fury growing. Maribel was her boss and she respected the hell out of her, but this had gone too far.
"I should have known you would be too weak to actually convince her to see reason and understand that a life with Charlie Fabray will only end in heartache. My mistake." Maribel is openly goading her now, but she doesn't care. Dani's been a suck up the entire time she's worked for her and she thought that Dani had the potential to make Santana happy. Clearly that was wrong.
"Don't put this on me, Maribel." Dani snaps at her. "I was a good alpha to my mate and I do like your daughter, but I was led to believe that it was just Santana simply hadn't found her mate yet and wanted to settle down and have a family. I have been ready, I have told her that whenever she was ready then we could do it. What was I supposed to do Maribel? Force her? She broke the damn bond herself, that is something that I needed to know."
"Be that as it may, I don't know that it was my job to tell you." Maribel counters. Santana probably should have told her about the depths that she and Charlie had fallen to, but Maribel hadn't wanted to scare Dani off. "I am your boss and short of giving you my blessing to date my daughter, I have tried not to interfere."
It was true, but that didn't matter. In dating Santana, Dani had not only wasted her time, she had sabotaged the relationship with Maribel that took her years to cultivate. This was a professional nightmare, and she wasn't sure how she was going to recover. "No one was honest with me, your daughter wasn't and you certainly weren't. So all I know is that I wasted six months for something that wasn't ever going to happen."
Maribel scowled at Dani for a moment before exhaling. "I didn't set you up to fail, Santana decided to date you despite her earlier attempt with Charlie. She had already chosen you, so what if she didn't tell you ever detail of her past? Did you tell her about your former mate?"
"That's not what this is about and you know it." Dani growls. It's a painful topic, one she almost can't even think about without feeling like her heart has been pulled from her chest.
"What I want to understand is how you managed to royally screw that up? Charlie is nothing, she doesn't have a steady income, she comes home covered in cuts and bruises, and more importantly she has a habit of abandoning my daughter and her responsibilities." Maribel shakes her head. Santana may have told her the barest details of what happened when they attempted to mate, but it was more than enough for Maribel to draw her own conclusions. Charlie had known how hard that would be and hadn't given Santana any warning. Of course her daughter severed the bond, she hadn't been prepared. It was a mistake, sure, but a traumatic one and maybe she was being ridiculously overprotective but Santana was her daughter. She wasn't about to let her be hurt again. "I'm not even going to go into the details of the horrors she inflicted on my daughter. You were the perfect candidate and all you needed to do was show my daughter that you were everything Charlie wasn't."
"Except for the fact that I am not her mate." Dani spat. "You know just as well as I do that people don't just forget about their first mate. I've been a placeholder while Santana figures out her feelings for a fighter. Yes if Charlie wasn't in the picture then we might have mated eventually, and Santana could have gotten over her. If Charlie died or became a vegetable or something, I at least would have had a chance. But with Charlie alive and kicking, Santana was never going to give up hope that she could mate without me. So yes you set me up to fail and what's worse you don't even see it. Santana openly chose Charlie, right in front of me and even though I like your daughter, I didn't sign up to be humiliated or someone's second choice."
Maribel was quiet for a moment taking in Dani's anger at the situation. She wasn't wrong and that's what made this entire situation infuriating. If only Dani and Santana had met earlier, they could have made it work. Dani was sharp and willing to fight for her responsibilities, not like Charlie. It wasn't fair they would have been the perfect power couple. Or at least, that's what she had thought. She hadn't thought Dani was the type to give up so easily, so clearly she had overestimated the younger lawyer. "Enough Dani, relationships break apart all the time. You've already filed your grievances. Now, perhaps it's time for you to vacate my office before you say something that I can fire you for."
Dani gritted her teeth for a moment, she did actually need this job, it was her ticket to better things and she couldn't afford to get fired now, especially since she was no longer in Maribel's good graces. Turning on her heels she marched out and slammed the door behind her, it was the most aggressive she could be, she knew that Maribel probably wouldn't hesitate to fire her if she gave her cause.
