Page 9 of Leading Conviction
Hawk’s eyes narrowed as he straightened his posture, looking down his nose at his own general. “I’ve taken an oath. I would never shirk my responsibilities or my love for this country, but trustmewhen I say I’ll also never stop loving Hannah.”
The General’s pale face had already reddened and the rage welling inside him seemed to sprout through the perspiration on his forehead. He finally shook his head and backed up, returning to the center of the room, at ease with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Very well,” he huffed. “Training begins tomorrow morning at oh-six-hundred hours. Captain Greene?” Eagle’s shoulders tensed as General Smithers’s still angry blue eyes met his. “I will be informing you of your first job before the end of the week.”
“The end of the week? So soon?” Eagle blurted, unable to hide his shock. Normally special ops teams had to have years of training before they went out in the field.
Based on the uncomfortable shifting throughout the room, the rest of his teammates must’ve been thinking the same thing.
General Smithers’s brow rose. “I don’t repeat myself, soldier.”
The urge to question his commanding officer made Eagle’s lips open again, but what came out was automatic.
“Sir, yes, sir.”
CHAPTERFOUR
Present Day
“General Smithers was insanely protective over his daughter, even against me and Eagle, two guys he chose for his own team. Then again, maybe he was more possessive than protective. Unless he was schmoozing politicians, he treated her like a toy doll, practically ignoring her until he needed to show her off at parties. Once we started dating I put a stop to that shit real fucking quick.”
Hawk hoped like hell the General was just delusional and creepy and Hannah hadn’t silently suffered worse from her father. She’d always been open with Hawk—or so he thought.
He shook his head. What she might have kept from him was something he couldn’t think about without going insane.
“It was uncomfortable to see then, but now after all we know…” Hawk felt his face twist in disgust.
“Now it’s even more fucked up,” Draco finished for him. “Is that how you guys met? One of those parties?”
“Yeah. Hannah and I met at a military ball. It was love at first sight.”
“How did Eagle feel about that?”
“It’s funny, because I still wonder if he even knew how he felt about her, if it was a crush that grew gradually over time. We were all best friends. Anytime Eagle and I could go home to Atlanta after being deployed, the three of us were inseparable. We even hung out with Phoenix a few times when he could come up from Louisiana. It was that way until Eagle and I left for MF7.”
“Hawk, man, I didn’t know it all went this deep. If you loved her so much… why the fuck did you abandon her?”
The pang of regret and guilt collided with his heart and fell heavy like a rock into his stomach.
“Duty called,” he answered simply. “I didn’t realize duty meant I’d have to lose her. But when our jobs threatened her safety, too, I did what I had to do to keep her safe and at the time, I still believed we were a legit spec-ops team and the General could have me court martialed for desertion.”
“Fuck, if you’d only known then that running away might’ve been the best choice for everyone.”
Draco’s words twisted the knife already carved in his chest, but he confronted the accusation head-on.
“I’m not a deserter, and I thought I was doing the right thing. Watching those towers fall on live TV did a number on me, Draco. It was my dream to go into the MLB after graduating high school, but 9/11 changed me into this… this…”
“Soldier,” Draco finished for him.
Hawk’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. “I thought I could have it all. Fighting in my country’s name, saving lives all over the world, my best friend, my girl. But General Smithers stole everything from me the moment I signed on with MF7. When our enemies finally forced me to end things, Eagle and I made a pact to leave her alone and say goodbye. I broke it off with her, hoping it was enough to keep her safe, and moved on to MF7’s base that night.”
A vision of heartbroken tears streaming from Hannah’s sweet-tea-brown eyes cut across his mind. He shook his head to rid himself of the awful memory.
“Everything’s fucked, isn’t it?” Draco mumbled.
“Yeah, and it took seeing all of you finding the women of your dreams to realize how badly I fucked up my chance with mine.”
He’d wasted so much time for the good of a cause that had been a sham all along. It burned him up inside to know he’d lost the two best people in his life to an organization that not only tricked him and his men, but actively harmed innocents in the process. Anger welled in his veins, threatening to boil over, but he only allowed it to channel through his fingertips squeezing the steering wheel.
