Zwerger’s face was almost purple with rage. “What is wrong with you people? Are you simpletons? Is that it? She is your enemy!”

Nina pulled at Zwerger’s sleeve until he spun round to face her. “You have me now. Why torture them further?”

“I do have you, and I’ll see you dead, here and now! You know I’ll do it!”

The children were wailing again, and Aldo had broken down, too, the tears streaming from his face. For their sakes she had to stop it.

“Stop!” she screamed. “Enough! It’s me you want—only me. Why torment them now? Haven’t you sinned enough?”

Zwerger pulled his arm from her grasp. “I am not the sinner here,” he snarled. “You brought this on yourself.”

One of the soldiers came forward to bind her, but Aldo surged forward and slapped his hands away. “Leave her—just leave her!”

In an instant, Zwerger’s pistol was at Aldo’s temple. “Stand back and shut up, old man.”

“Papà, no!” Nina cried out. It was the first time she had called him by that name. “You must let me go. The children need you. Rosa needs you.”

“How can I bear it?”

“You can—you will. Now let me go, and I pray I will see your kind face again one day.”

Her vision blurred by tears, she couldn’t see him or the children as the soldiers dragged her into the back of their truck. She could no longer see, but she could still hear, and their cries rang in her ears long after the truck had rumbled onto the road and away from Mezzo Ciel.

Chapter 25

The soldiers made her lie on the bottom of the truck, and they laughed whenever there was a bump in the road that jostled her about, and by the time it finally screeched to a halt she couldn’t think beyond or around the pain.

They were at the rear of an enormous building, though in which city she had no idea. She was hauled from the truck, her body pawed by one bruising set of hands after another, and it was those same brutal hands that half carried, half dragged her inside and along a snaking corridor to a large interior courtyard.

At its center was a gallows. A man had been left hanging there, his body swaying gently in the late afternoon sunshine, the sky above him achingly blue. The man’s head was covered by a black hood, but she recognized him still.

It was by his clothes she knew him, for she had mended the trousers herself, many times, and the dark blue coat he wore was familiar, too, with its faded hem and the bottom button that didn’t match. She recognized those trousers and that coat.

They belonged to Nico.