Page 31 of Secret Love

“Before you were discharged?”

“I showed a talent for it pretty early on,” I say. “Infiltration, stealth, recon. Whenever they located a nest of possible enemy combatants, 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 until my commanding officer called me in to tell me I’d been dismissed.”

She squints. “But you’ve been gone for five years…”

“They put me on a plane and dropped me off somewhere in France. No orders. 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 who 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?”

“There’s not a whole lot Snake Eyes can’t do, Dani.”

She looks down. “So, 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 honorabledischarge 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. “That’s where you’ve been this whole time?”

“Yes.”

“Does that mean you’ve…?”

“Killed people?”

She flinches. “Yes.”

“Yes,” I answer.

“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.”