Read Online Stepbrother Soldier's Baby: The Hero (The Complete Series) by Lila Moore - Free Book Online Page B

affair with Jackson.
    “Wake me up when you need someone to keep watch,” she said with a smile.
    She poured herself another drink, then walked up to Nate. She leaned in to kiss him, but he turned his head at the last second. Mia ended up kissing his cheek instead of his lips. She looked angry, but in typical Mia fashion she laughed it off like it was one big joke.
    The bedroom door slammed shut. I breathed a sigh of relief. We were finally alone.
    “Nate…”
    I had so many questions I wasn’t sure where to start.
    “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to make sure you get back home and that our…” His eyes drifted down to my stomach. “…that our baby is taken care of.”
    Hearing him acknowledge my pregnancy left me with a feeling of cold fear in the pit of my stomach. This was real. I was pregnant. It wasn’t until I heard Nate say it that I understood this was really happening. I finished the rest of my drink quickly. I wanted a second, but thought better of it.
    “What did Jackson mean when he said he wasn’t going down for what you did?” I asked.
    Of all the questions I had, this was probably the least important, but it had been bothering me. Nate was a war hero, wasn’t he? I didn’t want to think of him as anything less.
    Nate shook his head. “Nothing. It’s not important.”
    “No. You don’t get to dismiss my questions. Not anymore. He kidnapped me and threatened to kill me. I need to know why.”
    “When we were deployed…” He stared into the empty glass as if the answer was written at the bottom. “We ran into some trouble in a village. We split up. Jackson went off with half our guys one way, I went the other. When we heard gunfire, we ran to their position, but it was too late.”
    He paused. I waited for him to continue, but he seemed lost.
    “Too late for what?” I asked gently.
    “They’d killed a car full of civilians. Jackson swore the people had threatened them, that they were carrying weapons. We searched the car and found nothing. They were just innocent kids.”
    “Kids…? Christ.”
    “Jackson and the other guys were in serious trouble. We agreed to cover it up. We made a pact to keep it quiet.”
    It was horrible. Innocent kids killed because of miscommunication. Or was there a more sinister reason? I hoped not. Surely Jackson hadn’t fallen that far. Had he? I glanced at the bedroom where he lay tied to the bed.
    “It was a horrible mistake, right?”
    Nate looked up at me as if he’d broken free of some trance. “Yeah,” he said with little conviction.
    “You don’t seem convinced.”
    “I have to believe it was a mistake. I can’t accept that he would snap and do something like that. I mean, a bunch of innocent kids? It’s fucked up enough as it is, but to think he may have done it on purpose I can’t accept that.”
    Jackson and Nate had been best friends since childhood. I understood why he didn’t want to believe this man who had been like a brother to him was capable of evil. Jackson had kidnapped me and threatened my life and even I didn’t want to believe it.
    “But why does he blame you? He said he wasn’t going to go down for what you did.”
    Nate sighed and rubbed his face. “He’s fucked in the head. He’s convinced everyone’s out to get him. He doesn’t think it was his fault. He thinks we’re all trying to frame him. A lot of guys know the truth and he’s scared one of them is going to take him down. He could spend the rest of his life is prison.”
    “And that’s a bad thing?” I said sarcastically.
    I wanted Jackson out of our lives. He was dangerous and crazy. Why Nate felt the need to protect him even after everything he’d done was beyond me.
    “You have to protect your brothers,” he said sadly.
    I decided to let it go. In a perfect world, Jackson would take responsibility for his actions and face the consequences. But that’s not the world we live in. Terrible things happen in war