Bodyguard: A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance (Snake Eyes Book 1) by Tabatha Kiss Page B

her.
    “Thanks,” she says. She twists the cap off one and swallows a large gulp of it without even looking at the label first. Her face contorts and a quiver shakes her entire body, but she takes a second sip. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
    “I trained as a sniper in the army.”
    “Before you were discharged?”
    I nod. “I showed a talent for it pretty early on. Infiltration, stealth, recon. Whenever they located a possible enemy base, they sent me in first to gather intel. Gained a pretty good rep for it.” I open one of the bottles and take a swig. Vodka. Strong vodka. “That went on for about three years overseas until one day my C.O. called me in to tell me I’d been dismissed. ”
    She squints her eyes. “But you’ve been gone for five years…”
    “They put me on a plane and dropped me off somewhere in France with no explanation. I sat down at some cafe in Paris and a few minutes later, this guy sat down with me.” I pause to take another shot of vodka that burns down my throat. “He said that he’d been watching me for a while and he could use a man with my talents.”
    “What did you say?”
    “I told him to piss off,” I answer. “But then he told me that he’s the one that had me discharged and it’s up to me whether or not my record says honorable or dishonorable.”
    “They can’t do that…” she says. “Can they?”
    “It didn’t take long for to me find out that there’s not a whole lot Snake Eyes can’t do, Dani.”
    She looks down. “What did you do?”
    “The only thing I could do. I joined him.”
    “Why didn’t you just take the dishonorable discharge and come home?” she asks, desperation clouding her tone.
    “Because to him, dishonorable discharge meant two bullets through my eyes,” I explain. “I didn’t really feel like dying that day.”
    “What did honorable discharge mean then?”
    “Killed in action.” She nods softly but says nothing. I scratch an itch in my beard before continuing. “Then he introduced himself. Mercer Black.”
    Dani finishes off her tiny bottle and her face twitches again. “So that’s where you’ve been this whole time?”
    “Yes.”
    “Does that mean you’ve…?” She can’t even bring herself to finish the question.
    “Killed people?”
    She flinches, but just barely. “Yeah.”
    “Yeah,” I confirm.
    “Innocent people?” Her eyes swell up, dreading the answer she already knows.
    I twist the cap off another bottle and bring it to my nose. It smells fruity, like cheap wine. “I don’t know.”
    “What, like you didn’t ask?”
    “It wasn’t my job to ask questions.”
    She scoffs. “I never pegged you as a just following orders kind of guy, Fox.”
    “It was kill or be killed, Dani,” I whisper. “I don’t expect you to understand it.” I swallow a mouthful of crap wine, hating every drop of it. “It sure as hell wasn’t what I enlisted for but they didn’t give me much choice. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
    “Why did you enlist?” she asks. “You could have stayed home.”
    “No, I couldn’t.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because—” I bite my inner cheek, curbing the rush of words just aching to fall off my tongue. I’ve never said them out loud before. I promised I never would, but… “Because your father told me to leave and never come back.”
    She blinks and the color drains from her face. “He what ?”
    I lose myself in the memory. “He saw us kiss, Dani.” Her eyes wince with embarrassment. “The next morning, he told me to get out. Being a nineteen-year-old, C-average jock, I went to the one place I knew would take me.”
    “ That’s why you left?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s why you enlisted ?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s why…” She pauses, the truth clouding her eyes. “That’s why you never said goodbye to me.”
    “I wanted to,” I say slowly. “But I knew I wouldn’t be able to go if I had and your dad was pretty serious about having me gone, so…