Then Estelle’s fingers abruptly fell away from the pendant. She paced to the sofa, crouching to gently sweep the hair from the little girl’s pale face. “Help me get Aviva out of Paris—out of France—and I will become your new partner. I will help you do whatever you need to complete your mission.”

“No.” Sophie shook her head. “I am not leveraging the life of a child. Whether you help me or not has no bearing on this. That’s not at all why I offered to—”

“When Aviva is gone,” Estelle continued as if Sophie hadn’t spoken, “I will take you to the Ritz and help you do whatever it is that you came here to do. But I can only do that if I know that Aviva is already safely away.”

Sophie shook her head again. “I can’t promise that. That she will be safe. I can’t even promise that I can make this happen.”

“But if you could make it happen?”

“Then all I can promise is that she will have a chance. A chance to survive. To live life again.”

Estelle stared at her.

“I understand that that is a very frail promise. That it is probably not enough.”

“It’s enough.”

Chapter ​19

Chapter
​19

Estelle

Paris, France
24 August 1943

In the back of a café with cracked windows that overlooked rue Saint-Vincent, Estelle sipped her cup of whatever horrid, murky chicory mixture they were passing off as coffee and wondered if she’d been an utter fool to believe that the ice princess could promise anything. The café had been Estelle’s choice. She had chosen it because it was always crowded, and the lack of anything that resembled real coffee, advertised loudly and unapologetically by the proprietors, generally kept away anything resembling a German. A good place in which information could be exchanged quickly and casually without notice at a set time.

Yet three days had passed, and Sophie Beaufort had not reappeared, and with each passing day, Estelle’s trepidation grew. True to her word, the British spy had vanished into the streets of Paris the morning following her chaotic arrival and breathtaking promises. It was possible the agent had simply been unable to realize the hope that she’d offered. It was also possible her absence had far more sinister implications.