The document in front of her was written in German, one of hundreds decoded and needing translation today. One of hundreds that she would translate and pass on. One of hundreds that would probably be too late to make any difference to the Allied men on the fronts and on the seas. Men who, unlike Piotr, still breathed and hoped—and fought and bled for what and whom they loved.

Her grief had been coupled with a numbing terror in the months after Piotr’s death, which, in retrospect, had probably been for the best. It had been the terror that had driven her onward, that had kept her from simply tumbling over the edge and into an empty abyss of grief. It had been pervasive fear that had helped her evade the Wehrmacht that flooded Poland with their tanks and troops and the Luftwaffe that rained bombs from the sky.

By the time she had made her way back to Warsaw, she found the city burning, entire sections reduced to rubble or skeletal forests of blackened timbers and jagged brick. The staff at the embassy were long gone, and Sophie hadn’t spent time looking for familiar faces. The north side of her own residence had been hit, though her south side flat was still partially intact. She was able to salvage her winter coat, the small wooden box of money that she’d hidden under a floorboard next to her bed, and a photograph of Millbrook that had survived in its broken frame. And then she had fled Poland.

It had taken her thirteen months to get home. Thirteen months that she had woken up each morning wondering if she would survive the day. Wondering if her wits would be enough to overcome the fear that threatened to paralyze her and the grief that refused to lessen its grip. When she had finally set foot on English soil, she had gone directly to London, emotionally and physically spent.

And discovered that she was too late. The Luftwaffe had taken the family Sophie had left.

The moment she’d stood in front of the crater and rubble that had once been her family’s London home, the grief she’d carried with her from Poland had detonated. The mass of sorrow had splintered and shattered, leaving her soul nothing but an empty shell, not unlike the devastation before her.

But in the days and weeks and months that had followed, the empty space started to fill. White-hot rage drifted and curled through the vacuum like smoke. Anguish and abhorrence thrashed and howled at the edges. And, most of all, a burning sense of impotency pulsed and writhed, robbing her of sleep. The need to do something—anything—to fight those who had taken everything from her gnawed at her relentlessly.