As I curled onto the floor in the interrogation room, I wondered how long Ebner would leave me this time before he started again. My forehead was damp with sweat, my face streaked with remnants of salty tears, and my shaking hands wiped away evidence of both as best I could. The acrid taste of vomit lingered in my mouth.

He could hear I don’t know and believe me and please only so many times before he tired of me. And then what?

When the guards picked me up, I tensed, but they returned me to my chair. I slumped against the table, grateful for the respite, and the typewriter dinged again. Click, click, ding! Over and over while the woman responsible did nothing but transcribe. Mouth closed, face blank, empty of either detestation or compassion. Even through a particularly aggressive series of blows, when I’d made eye contact with her and screamed for help, she’d ignored me.

Ebner sat across from me, and his bloodshot eyes held no sympathy, no regret, just anger and frustration. His cheeks were ruddy, sleeves pushed up, hair disheveled, upper lip and hairline beaded with sweat. Hours of threatening and beating a child took their toll.

During my interrogation, I’d kept my resistance knowledge in a refuge deep within the recesses of my mind. Now I was tired, so tired, and desperate for a glass of water. When Ebner’s chair creaked, I prayed it was over, but the sinister gleam in his eyes said otherwise.

“Fetch the family,” he said to the guards. “Maybe they can help us jog the girl’s memory. Start with the boy.”

He’s bluffing; please, God, let him be bluffing. They wouldn’t torture a four-year-old. But I’d witnessed firsthand what they could do, and I knew they would.

“Wait, please wait!”

At my cry, Ebner slammed both hands on the table so hard it made me recoil. “You think you’re so fucking brave, sitting here like a damn mute?” He was beside me in an instant, and he grabbed my hair and forced my head back. Needles of agony sliced across my scalp, and his enraged face hovered centimeters from mine. “Start talking, you little Polack bitch, or I’ll cuff your ass to this chair and you’ll watch while your entire family pays for your silence.”

My family was his checkmate against me. The last move I had was to confess to something, anything, to keep him from playing it.

“Messages.” It was all I managed before my voice caught. When Ebner returned to his seat, my lie came out in a frantic tumble. “I got messages from the resistance. I don’t know who wrote them, they weren’t signed—”

He leaned closer, and I shrank away and hugged my bare midsection, foolishly believing the gesture would protect me. “What did they say?” he asked.