Here was far from home, and she was thin and frail, and there was no child in her arms. In an instant, Nico saw all of it, and Nina, in turn, was witness to the moment it broke his heart.

He fell to his knees. She ran and knelt before him, her hands coming up to cradle his anguished face.

“Why are you here? What happened to you?” he demanded, pushing her away, his hands shaking like wind-borne leaves, his horror so palpable she could taste it.

“Won’t you hold me?” she begged him. “I am alive and well. Truly I am.”

“Tell me now. Tell me the truth!”

“It was Zwerger. He came for me. He threatened your family. And so I went with him—I had no other choice. He took me to the SD headquarters in Verona, and there was a man hanging from the gallows in the courtyard. And . . . and he was dressed in your clothes. Zwerger told me you were dead, and I believed him. I believed you were lost to me.”

“Nina. Oh, Nina. All this time I believed you and our baby were safe and well. How can I bear it? Do you . . . do you know if it was a boy or a girl? Were you even able to—”

“She was born before they took me away,” she rushed to reassure him. “I named her Lucia, as you wanted.”

“She is safe? Truly?” he asked, the tears streaming down his face and vanishing into his days-old beard.

“She is,” Nina promised, and she prayed that it was true. She hadn’t had any news from Rosa, but she would believe that Lucia was well. She would believe enough for her and Nico both. “It’s been a long time since I saw her last, but she was a very pretty baby.”

“I don’t . . . I can hardly wrap my mind around all of this,” Nico whispered, and still he wept.

“I know. Let’s go into the waiting room,” she suggested. “The benches there are much more comfortable than this floor.”

They struggled to their feet, both a little shaky, but before they took a single step he enfolded her in his arms, his touch careful, almost tentative, as if he feared she might break. They held each other for long minutes, and it was the first time Nina had felt safe in a long, long time.

Reluctantly she pulled back, just so she might see his face as she shared one more revelation with him. “I have something else to tell you. Something good,” she added hastily, seeing how he flinched. “When I was imprisoned I made a friend. Her name is Stella and she’s still a girl. Still so young. She saved me, Nico, more than once, and her family are all gone. She has nowhere else to go, and so I thought . . .”