Honor Bound Read Online Free PDF Page A

that he didn’t see the need for me to be worried about his well-being, but he liked the idea of showing the world that he had a bodyguard.”
    “Well? Isn’t that what you’re pretending to be? A…bodyguard?” He said the word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.
    “I’m not pretending to be anything. This is who I am, and this is what I want to do. You lied to me. There was never any threat to Gentry’s life, and now I’m stuck there.”
    “And out of harm’s way. Let the other boys handle the messy stuff. It wouldn’t look good if the head of the company had to get dirty.”
    I could literally feel my blood boiling. “We’ve been over this before—I’m not the boss. I’m not the head of the company. There are four of us—four partners. We’re equals, and they’re all on assignments where people actually need them. You set me up to look like a god-damned show dog—being led around by fucking Ken Gentry.”
    He yawned. He actually sat there with his eyes on me and simply yawned.
    I said, “I work to protect people. It’s not glamorous and it’s not pretty, but it’s what I do and you need to deal with it. I don’t want to wear a suit every damn day.” I held up my hands in front of his face. There were scars, and they were roughened from manual work—unlike his perfectly manicured ones. “My job can be dirty, and sometimes there’s pain involved—the people that hire me pay me to get dirty and sometimes to even risk my life, but it’s what I do.”
    My dad stood, took off his wire-rimmed glasses, and carefully placed them down on his desk before walking around it to face me. “Maxwells don’t do grunt work,” he said carefully, almost through clenched teeth. “Maxwells don’t work for other people. Other people work for us. You’re dishonoring the Maxwell name by doing what you’re doing.”
    “That’s absurd,” I said, my own teeth clenched so tight that my jaw hurt.
    “It’s the way that it is, Sebastian. Deal with it.”
    I shook my head. “Maybe that’s the way it is in your world, but not in mine. I don’t get off on sitting at a desk while I dictate to others. I enjoy working with people, helping people, and getting my hands dirty when need be. There’s real honor in that. Not sitting back in my big comfortable chair while other people do the work.” My father just gave me a bland look. “This is what I’m going to do with my life so you’d better get used to it.”
    Now he sat down on the corner of his desk with his arms crossed. “Look, your mother has informed me that I need to humor you right now. You were hurt while you were deployed, and some soldiers have a hard time adjusting to life back in the real world. I get it.”
    I knew that he didn’t, but I wanted to hear the rest of his little observation.
    “I’m going to let this go on for only so long, Sebastian. You’re a Maxwell. And this,” he gestured to the office at large, “is where we work. It’s where we’ve worked for three generations, and I’ll be damned if you’re going to go off and play at being some sort of servant, while I have to wait for you to come to your senses.”
    “I’m not playing at anything. Security is what I do now. Not this.” My words were curt and to the point, but I could see that the old man wasn’t the least bit intimidated or impressed.
    “I tolerated your enlisting and becoming a Marine. I was angry at first but then it seemed to impress people when I told them, so it was a good PR move. I lost count of how many times people told me that what you were doing was honorable. But now that you’re home, you can play hero while doing the job that you were born to do. You don’t need to prove anything else. You survived serving in the war, and it’s enough now. You belong here.”
    He just didn’t get it. He never had. And I realized right then and there that I could talk until I was blue in the face, and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. I was