It was Matteo, his face wet with tears. “Don’t fight me,” he begged. “Please don’t fight me.”

He carried her, running now, and Aldo was beside him, a bruised and battered Rosa in his arms, and Paolo had the girls. But Carlo—where was Carlo?

He had fallen, but Paolo stopped and gathered him up, and they ran on.

She caught sight of Carlo’s dear little face, maddened by the horrors he had just witnessed, and she recognized the look in his eyes. She had seen it on her father’s face more than a year ago, and she knew it was written across her own features now.

The death of hope.

She opened her mouth to scream again, but she couldn’t find her breath, not so much as a whisper. Deeper she fell, ever deeper, and then all was night and she knew no more.

Chapter 23

It was almost dark when she awoke. She was on the bed in her and Nico’s room, and someone had covered her with a blanket. She was cold, and her head felt fuzzy, and there was a moment, as she floundered back to awareness, when she felt certain it must have been a dream. Only a dream, and when she sat up and went downstairs all would be well.

Then she heard the children weeping.

Not a dream. A nightmare, and she was trapped in it, and there was nowhere to hide from the pain. Such all-consuming pain. She lay on her side, stricken, watching the last of the sun fade to nothing, and she waited for the stars to bloom.

The door opened. A weight pressed down near her feet, and a cool hand pushed the tangled curls back from her eyes.

“Rosa?”

“I’m here.”

“It’s not a dream. It really happened.”

“It did.”

“He’s dead,” she said dully. “Dead.”

“We don’t know that. Father Bernardi has been trying to find out all day. And I know what Zwerger said about not being able to stop him, but Father says the archbishop will go to one of Zwerger’s superiors. Will plead for mercy. They’ll probably just put him in prison. Or they might send him to a labor camp in Germany. That’s where a lot of the other partisans have been sent.”

“Zwerger hates Nico. Hates him for reasons beyond any of this. And he will do what he promised. I know he will. He’ll kill Nico, and we’ll never find out how, or when, or even where. And I don’t think I can bear it. I really don’t.”

Rosa now took hold of Nina’s hands, her grip strong and certain and very nearly reassuring. “You can. You must. For the sake of your baby, and the other children, too, we must all be strong.”

“And lie to them?”