My father-in-law and his eight sons b/ea/t my pregnant wife until she lost our baby… then laughed outside her ICU door, mocking me as a “worthless, broke soldier.” They had no idea I wasn’t just any soldier-I was the commander of a black-ops hit squad. As my phone buzzed with a message reading “Target confirmed,” I looked at them and whispered…

within my own soul. I looked over at Clara, sleeping peacefully, the suffocating burden of her family’s tyranny finally lifted from her chest. I realized in that quiet, sterile room that I could never return to the regular armed forces. The conventional conflicts, fought over invisible lines drawn on a map and abstract political ideologies, felt entirely continue reading …