I hated to hear Jürgen take that tone, but I understood why he did. The last thing we needed was the girls becoming suspicious too.

Georg’s nostrils flared, but he scooped up his overnight bag from the ground and stomped toward the villa.

“He can accuse us all he wants, but until the war ends and we can explain, we can never confirm his suspicions,” Jürgen said heavily. “His whole identity is wrapped up in the Nazi cause. I fear he’d lash out if he knew.”

I looped my arms around his neck and stared up at him.

“I love you,” I whispered.

The tension in his face eased a little as he stared down at me and whispered back, “I love you too.”

Under the blankets that night, with the children all asleep in their beds down the hall, Jürgen’s voice shook as he told me how it had all gone wrong.

“Otto was waiting for me on-site when I arrived that morning. It all happened so quickly, before I even had a chance to help anyone. He told me that someone saw us stop at Kassel and asked me why we’d checked in under a false name. I told Otto that I wanted out. They arrested me immediately.”

“They must have been following us the whole time,” I said. Jürgen nodded.

“I thought they’d just execute me, but there was a beating…” His tone was curt—an unmistakable message that he wasn’t yet ready to discuss the assault. My heart broke for him.

“Oh, Jürgen…”

“I thought it would continue until they killed me. But over the days, I realized they were toying with me—beating me unconscious, patching me up again…just trying to get me to break and beg for mercy. But I refused to speak, mostly because I knew you were being held too, and I didn’t want to incriminate you. It nearly killed me knowing you were in a cell somewhere, Sofie, but we’d prepared for that.”

“We had.”

“After… Hell, I don’t know how many days, something changed. They sent a doctor in to patch me up again, then took me to the interrogation room and told me a car was on its way to the zu Schiller house to collect the children.”

My breath caught in my throat.

“The children?”

“God forgive me, as soon as they started talking about the ways they’d torture our children to death, I lost my nerve. I should have expected it,” he whispered miserably. “They think nothing of imprisoning and murdering Jewish children. Of course they wouldn’t hesitate to interrogate the children of a traitor.”

It was one thing to take a stand when Jürgen and I were going to pay the price for it. It was another thing to threaten the children’s lives.