Everly’s gaze went distant; her lips parted. When the message cut off, her mouth pressed into a firm line, and she lifted her gaze to meet his. “I guess I’ll get my things together tonight.”
He crossed his arms. “Or you could just tell me who you are and why you’re here.”
“You know who I am and why I’m here.” She kept her voice low. Bella never stirred. “If you can’t accept it, I shouldn’t be here.”
He exhaled, frustrated, caught between firing her and pulling her deeper into the fold. “Then tell me where you learned to intimidate security guards, steal weapons from someone’s hand, and fight with a knife in your grip. What you did in there took years of training. Your actions were ingrained. Your quickness stems from muscle memory. Your mental fortitude in the face of danger was…nothing short of remarkable.”
She didn’t answer immediately. Then finally sighed with a shake of her head. “Why should I go to the effort if you’re not going to believe anything I say anyway?”
“Convince me,” he said. “Because I really don’t want to let you go.”
She turned on him. “Why don’t you convince me those guys were after Bella at the direction of a United States senator and not some kind of cartel or warlord? Then maybe I won’t walk away.”
Damn she was feisty. “You won’t like what I have to say.”
“You won’t like what I have to say either.”
What a mess.
A beautiful fucking mess.
He scraped a hand through his hair. “I brought Bella to Costa Rica to get her away from her grandmother. I was awarded custody after a court battle, but her grandmother got an injunction and filed an appeal. It may not look like it now, but at that time, I didn’t have a dime left after the first custody hearing. And I wasn’t going to lose her because Seaver had the power of politics and money on her side.”
He took a breath to loosen the knot in his gut. This was hard to admit to someone outside his teammates. “So I filed my discharge papers from the army, rallied my best buddies, and took her from the Seavers’ house while everyone was sleeping.”
“You?” Everly said, brow furrowed with disbelief. “The king of rules?”
“Technically, Bella should have been returned to me and wasn’t. So in this case, the rule of law had already been broken.” He thought back to that night. “You know the first thing Bella said to me when I woke her from a dead sleep in the middle of the night after not seeing her for two months?”
“What?”
“‘Grandma say you no want me,’” he said, using Bella’s language, looking at his little girl. “‘Her mad, Daddy. Her always mad. Her mean. I want you.’” The memory still broke his heart. “I’ll never forget those words.”
Everly’s breath whooshed from her chest. “Oh my God.”
“I took her to Mexico. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but we were out of reach, and it was cheap to live. I worked day and night to get a business plan together. I had the idea for my business early on in my career but thought it might be a hobby after I retired. I suddenly needed to take that sketch and sculpt it into a business. I had to make it so kick-ass no one could resist jumping in, because I needed that money to live. To make a home for Bella.”
When he stopped, she said, “I’m listening.”
“It took her a while to find us. When she did, she tried to file a Hague Convention application with Mexico. But the Hague Convention has three threshold requirements. One of those is that the child must have been removed from their state of residence in breach of custody. I had legal custody, so I had every right to take her out of the country. But Seaver plays by her own rules. Lives by her own sense of justice. She believed—still believes—Bella belongs to her. She hired a security company to go to Mexico and take Bella back.”
“And they did it? Even though she didn’t have the right?”
“Hired guns rarely care about right and wrong. You can pay people to do just about anything you want. But the team didn’t account for countermeasures. They either didn’t know I was military or didn’t think I’d fight back. They were wrong on both counts.
“By then, I’d gotten my shit together and secured three million in seed money. I moved Bella to Costa Rica. American-friendly, safe. Not as cheap as Mexico, but my company received its first order. I was able to pay back the investment and buy the house. As more orders came in, I added staff. One of my grandmothers is Costa Rican, so I was able to petition for citizenship for myself and Bella through ancestry. I got a US passport for Bella as soon as I got custody. Then got her a Costa Rican passport as soon as we got our citizenship there.”
Everly shook her head. “I can’t even imagine how much work and worry has gone into this. Why couldn’t you just work out shared custody? You could have stayed with the military, and Seaver would get the accolades for raising her part-time.”
Austin’s gut clenched. A dark, ugly feeling crept in. “Because Seaver refused to keep her father away from Bella.”
“Why was that so important?”
He heaved a breath and pushed the words out. “Because he molested Dawn.” He forced himself to look at Everly. She was as shocked as Austin had been when he’d first heard. “She told me about it in college. At first, I thought she was using it as an attention-getter, you know? But the longer I knew her, the more details came out. Usually when she was drunk or high. She said her mother knew about it. Seaver told Dawn all the money in their family came from her father, so if she wanted to stay in college, she’d better suck it up and deal with it. She continued to make Dawn spend holidays with him. I know it’s why she turned to drugs. And I think it finally broke her. There was no way in hell my little girl was going to go anywhere near that fucker if I could help it.”
“Holy shit,” Everly whispered. “Was he ever charged?”
He huffed a caustic laugh. “And damage Seaver’s precious reputation on Capitol Hill? Never.”