It had been a rough time, no question about it. His own mother had died when he’d been so young that he barely remembered her. She was only a vague, sketchy image in his brain.
From then on out, it had been his father’s younger sister, Sofia, who’d mothered him. Perhaps his father had taken advantage of the situation, with his younger sister living with them, but Max couldn’t really fault him. Arturo Villarreal had been distraught after his wife had died, although he’d hidden it well from Max when he’d been a child. But as Max had grown older, he’d begun to recognize his father’s pain—and he’d known that the older man had loved the wife he’d lost with a passion that couldn’t be replaced.
Perhaps that was why his father had snapped when Sofia had been taken from them as well. Max had been only a pre-teen when his aunt had left for the United States in search of adventure, but he’d been old enough to be happy for her. She’d assured him that she’d be back, and he’d had such a strong bond with his father that he hadn’t felt as if his aunt had deserted him.
But life had been different after she’d come back to Argentina. She’d been heavily pregnant and unmarried, and his father had been outraged. He’d demanded the name of the man who’d fathered the baby and his aunt had supplied it under duress. From that moment on, his father’s anger hadn’t been directed at Max’s aunt, it had been directed at Gordon Rule. They’d tried, he and his father, to be of comfort to Sofia, but they were men and hadn’t understood her softer feelings.
She’d given birth to baby Nora, and Max remembered their family being happy for a time. But that happiness hadn’t lasted when he realized how his aunt was being ostracized by the community. She had one true friend in the area, a youngish widow by the name of Magdalena Navarro, and Sofia had taken the baby with her for weeks at a time to visit her friend, just to get away, or so they had thought.
The shock of her suicide had devastated them. His aunt had left Nora with Magdalena and unbeknownst to them, she’d come home, gone up to her room and downed a bottle of sleeping pills. It was later that Magdalena had found her handwritten Will—and demanded her right to keep Nora, as Sofia had wanted it.
Their hands had been tied and his father’s pain and anger had escalated. Losing both his sister and Nora had thrown him into a downward spiral, but that wasn’t all. His father had been deeply rooted in his Catholicism and he’d firmly believed that his sister’s soul had been eternally damned by her suicide.
All through Max’s teenage years, it was all his father harped on—his venganza against Gordon Rule. It was preached to him almost night and day—revenge for the death of his Tía Sofia. Revenge for the baby that had been taken away from them. Revenge for the devastation and shame his family had endured. Revenge for his aunt’s soul.
Max had heard it so much that it had been ingrained in him. And truthfully, it hadn’t taken much to convince him that revenge was needed; he’d been cut to the quick by his aunt’s death . . . and by the loss of Nora.
Magdalena had died when Nora was quite young, and the only son in the family, Rafael Navarro, had inherited the estancia and immediately sent Nora to boarding school. It had pissed Max off to no end that he wouldn’t be able to see the girl grow up, as he felt was his right as her closest living relative.
Nora’s move to boarding school had caused friction between Max and Rafael, and when the young woman had finally came back to Argentina after college abroad, Max had barely been able to contain his anger. To his way of thinking, his young cousin was now living with a man she barely knew—a man who wasn’t even a blood relative. But he’d had no legal say in the matter, and when he’d broached the subject with Rafael, the man had become enraged. There had been zero chance that Navarro would release Nora back to Max. The confrontation had almost ended in blows—and the relationship between Max and Rafael had been contentious ever since.
Now, as Max held onto Erin, he felt the cadence of her breathing even out somewhat, telling him that she was asleep. It wasn’t an easy sleep; she was fitful beside him. He hated that she was troubled, hated that he was the one causing her emotional turmoil. But what the hell was he supposed to do? It was beyond his capabilities to let Erin go—it just wasn’t possible. Part of him realized that his own emotions had shifted—but he wasn’t going there. Emotions made a man vulnerable, and the last thing Max needed was to show vulnerability where Erin was concerned.