And then, smiling coolly, he backhanded Rosa as casually as he might bat away a fly. She fell backward, into the arms of onlookers, but he leveled his pistol at them. “Down,” he ordered, and they laid her on the ground and backed away.

He descended the steps. Another terrible gasp swept through the crowd, a wave of horror that engulfed them all. Nina could see nothing. “What is he doing?” she cried.

Matteo was taller than them all. “He’s kicking her! Papà—”

His father grabbed at his sleeve. “Stay. Stay.”

Zwerger had returned to the top of the steps, his anger palpable, seething, rabid. “I know you’re here, Gerardi!” he shouted. “I can feel it—and I’m never wrong about such things. I know you are here, and you are watching me, and so I have but one question: Can you watch as I kill your family? Can you bear it?”

He scanned the crowd, his gaze narrowing on one spot only a few meters from Nina. He pointed at it with his pistol and the crowd, so many panicked fish in his net, dove out of the way. More words, unintelligible, and one of the soldiers darted forward. He emerged seconds later, his gloved hand clenched around the shoulder of a small, struggling figure. A child—a boy—Carlo.

Nina opened her mouth to scream, but Aldo’s hand smothered it, his arms banding her chest and arms.

“I’ve got your brat of a brother!” Zwerger exclaimed, his malice masquerading as delight. “He cries like a baby when he’s scared—don’t you?” He took hold of poor Carlo’s hair, and with every scream of pain from the child, Zwerger pulled ever more savagely. “Shall I shoot you now? Just as I shot that dog of yours? A single bullet would do it.”

The crowd began to scream, their chants of “Pig! Pig!” interspersed with pleas to release the child, and a little of the fury faded from Zwerger’s eyes.

He kicked Carlo away, the child forgotten. His gaze returned to the crowd, searching once more. “I have a better idea! Let’s find your whore of a wife—if she even is your wife. You told me you married her in Venice, but not a single priest in the city knows of it. What—you think I didn’t check? And I won’t stop there. I won’t stop until I uncover the truth. I’ll dig up your secrets—yours and hers. You know I will!”

A murmur rushed through the crowd. Eyes turned toward her. She was lost, lost—

And then, at the far fringes of the crowd, a blur of movement. She could barely see, held fast as she was by Aldo, but she had to know. Had the soldiers found one of the girls? Paolo?