Page 2 of Grayson

“Your son is prepared, well-trained, and more importantly, he is watched over by all of us. He will come home.” Striker nodded, tears still coming down his cheeks.

“Then why I am so fucking scared for him?” he asked.

“Because you love him and you know how dangerous the job is,” said Gaspar. “Don’t you think we all felt this way with our children? Sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters. We worried for them all. Some of us cried behind closed doors, others cried in the open allowing others to comfort us.”

“Being a father is the toughest job next to being a mother,” said Hunter. “We try to be strong, brave, stoic. For what? For fucking what? To try and pretend we aren’t human? That we don’t possess feelings or fear? It’s all bullshit and I’m grateful every day that my wife has shown me how to let that bullshit out.

“You’re a good man, Striker. A good brother, husband, and father. A great teammate. You’ve done your job and raised an amazing son. Grayson will make it. We’ve all trained him to make it.”

“I know you’re right,” said Striker. “It’s just that we waited so long to have a child. We didn’t think we could have children and then he was there, like a message from God.”

“It was a message alright,” chuckled Antoine. “It was a message that said you needed humbling. Children have a way of doing that to you. But he’s not a child any longer, Striker. That is a full-grown man and he’s going to make us all proud.”

When they appeared from the gardens, Violet smiled at her husband, knowing what the men had done for him. She knew because she was surrounded by three dozen women who had done the same for her.

Grayson did not disappoint. They attended his graduation from basic, attended every time he was promoted, and watched as he received not one college degree, but two.

He’d received three purple hearts and more medals than he could carry on his chest. He’d seen war, skirmish, conflict, famine, disease, and everything else the world had created to kill man.

He was tired.

Now a Sergeant Major in the Marine Corps, he was thinking of returning home. This time for good. More than twenty years in service. No marriage. No children. Nothing except the medals on his chest.

One more time and then he was going home.

One more.

CHAPTER TWO

“Sister, where are we going?” asked one of the children.

“We have to leave, Sala. There are dangerous men headed this way. We must go now,” said the Sister.

The children understood. They understood all too well that bad men would often come through the villages, taking children. Boys for war. Girls for something much worse than war. If it were not for the Sisters, they would have been taken months ago.

With everything they could carry wrapped in blankets and secured on their backs, they left the small village in the dead of night, silently walking on the warm earth, their shoes hanging from their belts so as not to make noise or create footprints.

Father Tyler and the three other nuns were spread out between the children, Father Tyler at the helm. Sister Irene was at the rear of the line, holding tightly to the hand of one of the younger children. In her pocket, she felt the cold steel and guilt rolled over her.

Years ago her father hand given her a small handgun and knife in order to protect herself while at university. She’d been foolish back then, believing that nothing could touch her. She was wrong.

She’d chosen to go to university in Europe, attending the small college in Paris. It all seemed like a fairytale. College in Paris! She remembered feeling so free, so grown-up. But that all changed in an instant.

While visiting the French countryside one weekend with classmates, her world was turned upside down. They’d gone out to a local club to dance and just enjoy life the way college kids would. But it was all wrong. She knew it the moment she’d walked into the club.

Too many men. Too few women.

“We need to leave,” she’d whispered to her friends.

“Don’t be such a drag. It will all be fine.”

One of the men grabbed her friends arm and pulled her onto the dance floor, then another. Shoving drinks at them that she possessed the intelligence not to drink.

Unable to convince her friends to leave, she did what she knew she needed to do. She left without them, hoping to find a police officer that would help her. But she never made it to the hotel.

Two men from the club followed her. She’d kept the knife in her small bag and used it as her father taught her. But two grown men, large and well-built were too much.

They didn’t care that it was a damp, dark alley. They didn’t care that she was a virgin. They didn’t care that she was an American. The more she fought, the more aggressive they became.