I truly despise the fact that the people around me are unsafe—because of some man's defect. What drives that thing? What's the end to all his ruin?
What was the true reason? It gnawed at me. Was it a twisted sense of revenge for some perceived slight? A craving for power, a desperate attempt to etch his name into history, however infamously? Or was it something far more personal, a poison festering within him that I had somehow overlooked, or worse, contributed to?
I lost soldiers, men who had family expecting them to come back home to them. I almost lost my mother… my wife. And my child… the phantom limb of a life I would never hold, a future stolen before it could even begin. The grief was a raw, gaping wound, and beneath it simmered a rage that threatened to consume me. The weight of those losses pressed down on me, a physical burden that stole my breath.
