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“Not immediately. She went to Virginia to go to college. My father wanted her to go to business school in Florida and get involved in the business, but that wasn’t what Mia wanted. Gran made jewelry when she was alive, and that’s what Mia wanted to do. Mia had this house and her trust as an inheritance, but she didn’t have control of anything yet. She had to bury herself in student loans that she could pay back later to attend the college in Virginia that had the BFA and MFA that she wanted to become a jewelry designer.” Travis released an audible breath, pausing for a moment before continuing, “Kade and I were both in school too, but once I finished my business degree and was working, I decided to go to Virginia to surprise Mia. I ended up more surprised than she was when I saw what was happening to her.” Travis’ voice cracked, a slight dent in his emotional shield.
“What happened?” Max asked stoically, not at all sure he wanted to know. But he needed to hear it. “Did he hurt her?”
“Yeah,” Travis confessed. “Pretty badly right about the time I went to visit. But even through all that bullshit, she was working part-time and pulling excellent grades. She was about ready to enter her master’s program. And he was trying to convince her not to—with his fists. He didn’t want her accumulating more loans. The bastard wanted plenty of that trust fund left when she was able to get to it.”
“Fuck!” Max exploded, so enraged he wanted to kill the guy. How could any man hurt Mia? “How did she separate herself from him?”
“She didn’t have to. He went to jail. I think she’d been trying to get away from the relationship for a while, but he really did a number on her,” Travis answered, setting his coffee mug on the table, and leaning back in his chair, crossing his arms in front of him.
“What were the charges?” Max asked, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Travis, reading something unsaid.
“Assault with a deadly weapon. Nasty ordeal,” Travis replied, deadpan.
“You set him up,” Max guessed, fairly certain Travis was the man who had put the asshole in jail.
“I went to have a discussion with him. Let’s just say I made sure there were witnesses.”
“Did Mia know?” Max was enraged, his mind flashing with scenarios of Mia hurting, Mia crying, Mia bleeding.
“No,” Travis answered calmly. “She had her studies and her job to worry about. All she ever knew was that he was going to jail, and she was safe. It was all she needed to know.”
Max barely noticed when Kade got up and took the empty mug from his hand. He let go, his hand shaking with pent-up rage as he released the handle. “And last time?” Max rasped, spearing Travis with a resentful stare.
“He took her by surprise when she was leaving her car in a parking lot. She had dismissed your security, telling them she was going to be with Kade and me, and had our security. She told them to take some time off because she didn’t want them following her around town on errands. Danny had her in his vehicle before she even realized what happened. It was the morning you left, and he took her to an area near your jet, forced her to watch while he showed her how easily he could kill you,” Travis explained, picking his coffee mug up from the table and taking a sip of his coffee, scowling as he realized it was now cold.
“She’s a smart woman. She told him she would go with him, gave him everything he wanted to hear, but she said she needed a day to take care of some things first. She finally convinced him to let her go by herself by telling him she needed to arrange things to get to her trust fund. Somehow, she convinced him to meet her the next morning, making him think she wanted to go with him. I don’t think she wanted to even tell me, but she asked for my help and I wasn’t going to refuse her. We set up the stuff at the beach, hoping she would be assumed dead, and I got her away from Tampa as fast as I could. I wanted to tell you, Max. And I wanted Kade to know she was alive. I just wasn’t entirely sure how either of you would react. I couldn’t risk leaving any trail to Mia. This man was psychotic, probably more deranged than my father and a hundred times more dangerous. I wanted her safe and needed time to track his ass down. I never realized that it would take over two years to find the bastard,” Travis grumbled.
“What about the police?” Max asked, already fairly certain he knew the answer. He’d dealt with the police himself on Mia’s case, and he was doubtful he would have wanted to give Danny that kind of time to take Mia away.
Kade walked back into the living room, handing Max a full mug of coffee as he answered, “Our father was a nut case. Do you have any idea how many times the police were at our house for a domestic dispute, usually reported by neighbors? The Harrison family was notorious, and not in a good way. Do you really think they would have taken her seriously? They would have done their job, but it would have alerted Danny, and it probably wouldn’t have stopped him. There isn’t a lot they can do with stalkers.”
“But he hurt her,” Max argued, having problems even speaking those words.
“No witnesses. No proof that he was to blame. They wouldn’t have had any evidence to immediately arrest him. Do you really think we could be totally certain that she was safe?” Travis drawled bitterly. “I’m sorry, Max. But I wasn’t taking that chance with my baby sister or Kade. She needed to disappear for a while until I could track him down. Had I known the bastard was getting out of prison early, I would have had him tailed.”
“For over two fucking years? You should have told me. She was my wife to protect.”
“She was my sister before she was your wife,” Travis pointed out gruffly.
“I didn’t know,” Max answered, his statement haunted and hollow. “She never told me. I should have known she was in danger. I should have known abouthim.”
Did I ever open myself up to her? Did she think she really had reason to trust me not to judge her? She was trying to be the perfect wife, trying to please me.
“You’re not psychic, buddy,” Kade replied. “She obviously didn’t want to talk about it. I never knew either. And he had been in jail for years. Nobody could predict what he was going to do when he got out.”
“I was busy running away from how I felt about her, and she was trying to make herself into a perfect wife. It wasn’t all her fault. I wasn’t exactly accessible. I wasn’t really ‘seeing’ her,” Max admitted, knowing it was true. Mia was his one and only, but they’d spent two years dancing around each other, both trying to be what the other expected them to be. In some ways, they had been close, shared a lot of things, but none of the important stuff. Neither one of them had been ready to share the gut-wrenching, emotional things that they really should have talked about, helped each other through.
“And if youhadseen her?” Kade asked grimly.
Max shrugged. “I would have loved her the same way. But I might have been able to allow her to be who she was and not try to please me. Maybe I would have pulled my head out of my ass long enough to realize that she needed me too.”
The heavy silence between the three men was suddenly broken as music started pounding from the general vicinity of Travis’ hip. Max looked up in surprise as Travis dug into the front pocket of his pants to silence the upbeat, trendy song.
“Damn secretary has been playing with my phone again,” he mumbled, punching the button on the smartphone to answer it as he stood and walked toward the kitchen to take the call.
“Don’t blame Travis,” Kade requested quietly. “Growing up with my father wasn’t easy, and he was trying to protect Mia. We grew up trying to protect her from my father. Travis might have been a bit misguided, but Mia begged him not to tell anyone. She was afraid for all of us.”
“I don’t. Much,” Max admitted, both to Kade and to himself. “I should have known more about her past, protected her myself. But that bastard is mine. He’s dead,” he warned Kade, his eyes lethal.