The worst part is I can’t write it here. I can’t write it, and I can’t tell Ivan. It would be so simple if I could just tell Luka everything I need you to know . . . but I know what they’ll do to him once they think he knows anything. And while they can’t take his memory, they’ll make him wish they could.

Protect him. He’ll take a bullet for you without even blinking. Don’t let him. He is good. Proof of God, and a better person than I am. But maybe you are, too.

If you’re reading this, you know what happens next. It’s August and I swear I can hear the symphony playing at the Wolkenturm. I wish we could have a long, good chat, because I have so much to tell you. But more than that, I wish we all had more time.

I just heard last night that Katia is gone. It’s all coming down.

Go back to the beginning of our story. I’m giving you everything I dare. You know what you have to do.

Give my love to Luka.

Me (You)

P.S. Don’t trust Nikola. He’s in league with them.

I stare at the far wall, so many questions slicing through my mind at once they may actually mince it to pieces. About Nikola, about Luka and me, what I had hoped and failed to achieve in Bratislava. About the story I’m supposed to go back to.

But most of all, what I’m supposed to do with it all.

You know what you have to do . . .

But I don’t. And though there’s still a pile of loose pages I haven’t even looked at, I’ve had all the revelations I can take for the moment.

I glance at the clock in the corner. I’ve been here too long.

I tuck the baby picture inside the journal and start to put everything back in the envelope, but pause at the sight of a sheet folded multiple times. It’s worn and yellowed, but that’s not what’s caught my eye. It’s covered with names, some of them fuzzy where the ink has faded, some of the letters retraced more recently. One of them, in new black ink, is mine. Luka’s is written below it.

I carefully unfold the sheet, laying it over the biometric box and envelope; it’s the size of a newspaper centerfold and twice as fragile, crumbling at the corners.

Rows and rows of names are scrawled across the page in progressively faded ink. There, near the bottom, is mine and Luka’s. My mother’s is a row above mine, alongside an empty box. Above her: Serafina, paired with the name Petar Todorov. Some kind of family tree?

No.

I jerk back from the table the instant I realize what this is.