Chapter 33 : Brothers By Blood

Ray's POV |Twelve Years Ago| |Fiumicino, ‎Lazio‎, Italy‎| |April 10th, 1944 12:46 PM | It was sunny, a cool sixty-five in terms of degrees, which for a desert boy might as well have been below zero as far as I was concerned. But, the pair of soldiers from Pennsylvania—Allentown I believe—assured me that the temperature was perfect. Not too warm, but not too cold, but the sea was as frigid as a witch's tit. I should know, I stuck my big toe in it. It had been a dare, a way to distract from the horrors of war around us, particularly those of the shell-shocked POWs we'd found. They'd gotten caught behind enemy lines after the Battle of the Alps Major, and gone from two-hundred men to a measly fifty-one. We'd intercepted their distress call outside Grosetto after we'd taken the base in Punta Ala and happened upon… Well, we knew the Cult of Lone Wolves were a bunch of fuckin sun worshipin' bastards, but the things they did in that facility—the things we had to