The walk-up apartment in Vanier smelled of boiled cabbage, damp drywall, and the metallic tang of her father's oxygen tank. It was a stark, jarring contrast to the scent of sandalwood and filtered gold she had left behind at Genesis Altruism.
Avana stepped through the door, her soaked sneakers squeaking against the cracked linoleum. Her heart was still performing a frantic percussion against her ribs. She felt hunted. Every shadow on Montreal Road had looked like a suit; every pair of headlights felt like Francis's predatory eyes.
"Avana? You're late. Your shift ended an hour ago," her mother, Elena, called out from the tiny kitchenette. She was wiping down a mismatched set of plates, her movements slow and stiff.
In the corner of the cramped living room, her father, Elias, sat in his recliner—the "throne" of their poverty. The plastic tubing of his nasal cannula was looped over his ears, and the steady, rhythmic hiss-thump of the concentrator filled the gaps in the conversation. Her younger siblings, Leo and Maya, were huddled over a single, flickering tablet on the floor, trying to finish homework before the battery died.
Avana didn't answer immediately. She leaned against the door, her breath hitching.
"Avana?" Elias turned his head, his eyes clouded but sharp with parental intuition. "You look like you've seen a ghost, girl. What happened? Did that supervisor dock your pay again?"
"No," Avana whispered. She walked into the center of the room, looking at the peeling wallpaper and the 'Final Notice' envelope tucked under a magnet on the fridge. "Something... something happened at the suite tonight."
The family went silent. Even Leo and Maya looked up. In this house, news from the "top floor" usually meant a bonus or a firing—both carried the weight of life or death.
"I met him," Avana said, her voice trembling. "Francis Veridian."
Elias's eyebrows shot up. Everyone in Ottawa knew the name. He was the man who owned the skyline, the man whose face appeared on the business news every time a local factory was shuttered or a tech giant was devoured. "The CEO? What was he doing on the night shift floor?"
"He wasn't there for the cleaning," Avana said, her throat tight. She felt the weight of the memory—the way he had looked at her like she was a specimen under a microscope. "He was there for a... a selection. He's looking for a surrogate. A carrier for his heir. He had twelve women lined up like thoroughbred horses, and he rejected them all."
She swallowed hard, her eyes stinging. "He picked me."
The hiss-thump of the oxygen machine seemed to grow louder in the vacuum of their silence. Elena dropped the dish towel. Leo's jaw dropped.
"He picked you?" Elias leaned forward, his chest wheezing. "From the hallway? Just like that?"
"He offered me fifty million dollars," Avana blurted out. The number felt like a curse, a heavy, impossible weight dropped into the middle of their tiny home. "Five million just to sign the paper. He said... he said I'd never have to touch a mop again. He said he'd give me an estate. Medical care. Everything."
"Fifty... million?" Leo whispered, his eyes wide. "Avana, that's... that's not even a real number. That's like, lottery-winner money. We could move? I could get my own room? I could get the new laptop for coding?"
Elena walked over, her hands trembling as she touched Avana's arm. "Fifty million, Vee? Are you sure you heard him right? A man like that... why would he offer that to a girl he doesn't know?"
"Because he's a monster, Mom!" Avana snapped, her voice cracking. She pulled away, pacing the small strip of floor between the sofa and the TV. "He didn't look at me like a person. He looked at me like... like a piece of land he wanted to develop. He's cold. He's clinical. I told him no. I told him I wasn't for sale."
Elias made a low, strangled sound in his throat. He looked around their apartment—at the buckets catching leaks from the ceiling, at the empty medicine bottles, at the thinness of his children's frames.
"You told him... no?" Elias's voice wasn't angry yet, but it was strained. "Avana, look at us. Look at this place. I can't breathe without a machine that we're two months behind on paying for. Your mother is working on a hip that needs surgery we can't afford. And Leo... Leo is a genius, and he's going to end up working the same docks I did because there's no tuition money."
"Dad, don't," Avana pleaded, tears finally spilling over. "I know how hard it is. I'm the one scrubbing the toilets to keep the lights on! But you don't know him. I've heard the stories from the girls in the breakroom. Francis Veridian doesn't have a soul. He ruins people for fun. He's ruthless. If I sign that contract, I'm not just carrying a baby; I'm giving him my life. He'll own me."
"It's one year, Avana," Elias countered, his voice growing firmer, the desperation of a father who felt he had failed his family bleeding through. "One year for a lifetime of safety. You're nineteen. You'd be twenty and the richest woman in the city. You want to study? You could buy the university! You could go to Harvard, Oxford, anywhere in the world."
"I don't want to buy the university! I want to earn my way there!" Avana shouted, her face flushing crimson. "I want to be a student, not a 'vessel'! Do you even hear that word? That's what he called me. A vessel. Like I'm a jug of milk he's buying from the store. I wouldn't be able to handle a man like that. He'd crush me."
"We are already being crushed, Avana!" Elias gestured wildly at the room. "The landlord is coming on Monday. We have nowhere to go. This isn't about 'pride' or 'earning it.' This is a lifeline thrown to a drowning family. How can you turn your back on your brother and sister having a future because the man is 'cold'?"
"Because I'm the one who has to go through it!" Avana screamed back, her body shaking. "I'm the one who has to have his child! I'm the one who has to live in his house and follow his rules and feel his eyes on me every day! You saw the news when he took over that steel plant in Hamilton—he fired four thousand people on Christmas Eve just to raise his profit margin by one percent. That's the man you want me to give myself to?"
The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. Even the younger children were crying now, frightened by the raw intensity of the argument.
Elena stepped between them, her voice a soft, broken plea. "Elias, stop. It's her body. It's her choice."
"It's our lives," Elias whispered, his shoulders slumping, the fight leaving him as he stared at the floor. "It's the only chance we'll ever have. And she's throwing it away for a dream of community college that we can't even afford the bus fare for."
Avana felt a sharp, jagged pain in her chest. She looked at her father—once a strong, vibrant man, now reduced to a ghost tethered to a machine. She looked at her mother's tired eyes. She felt the crushing weight of their poverty, but more than that, she felt the terrifying, invisible shadow of Francis Veridian stretching over them.
"I'm going to bed," Avana said, her voice small and hollow. "I quit the agency. I'm not going back. We'll find another way. We always do."
She retreated into the tiny bedroom she shared with Maya, pulling the thin curtain shut. She lay on her mattress, staring at the ceiling, the rain tapping against the window like a persistent finger.
No, she told herself. I said no. It's over.
Down the hall, her father's oxygen machine continued its rhythmic, relentless hiss-thump, sounding more and more like the ticking of a clock that was about to run out.