Sons of Thunder (29 page)

Sofia reached over, caught her hand. “No. That won’t happen. God will deliver us, right?” She added a smile, but Zoë didn’t match it.

She shook out of her grip. “Perhaps you might try really believing that.”

Sofia turned back to her son, saw on his face the curve of a smile, as if he might be dreaming. She lay down alongside him, propping her head on her hand, settling her arm around him. He smelled clean—at least someone had a bath tonight. She imagined him splashing in the washtub—his laughter like sunshine, and her chest tightened. “I
am
trying to, Zoë.”

Zoë sighed into the night, ran her finger down the open page of her frayed Bible. “‘Bless the L
ORD
, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies…”

The door down the hall closed, almost a slam, and Sofia jumped.

Zoë caught her eye even as footsteps echoed down the hall, past her room. The bedroom door next to hers opened.

Closed.

Catching her eye, Zoë shook her head. “Please—”

“If I don’t go, he’ll knock. Or worse.” She steeled herself against a shudder. “Lucien said he drugged him.”

Zoë got up, sat next to her on the bed, ran her hand down her arm. “Lucien says a lot of things.”

“He wants to marry me.”

“In the meantime, he’s going to get you killed.”

Sofia turned, met Zoë’s flashing eyes. “I’m already dead. My only job is to keep my son alive. For him, I would give up everything.”

“Including yourself.”

Zoë’s mouth tightened, and shame burned through Sofia. Well, she’d long ago made the choice to survive. “I have nothing of myself to keep anymore.”

She sat up in the bed. “You will stay here with him?”

Zoë pursed her lips. “They take everything. The olives. My father. Our home—”

“
Your
home. Ava’s home.”

“Colonel Kessler’s home.”

Next door, they heard a crash, a curse. Dino stirred.

Sofia kissed him softly, got up, and moved to the bureau. She picked up the brush, drew it through her hair. Wincing, she hid the tears that slicked into her eyes as she worked through the long strands. Zoë watched her in the mirror without a word.

“Someday, this war will end. And when it does, Dino and I will start over. We will leave Zante, and I will no longer be the woman who—”

“Has no husband?” Zoë’s eyes sharpened in hers. “You think you are the only who rises with grief in her breast every day? Ava burns for two husbands. And me. I want my dreams back. I want love, and the children that grief and war has so far denied me. But I believe, Sofia, that God does deliver.”

“Will He give you a husband? A child?”

Zoë put her hand on Dino’s body. “Perhaps he already has.”

Sofia put down the brush. “I have never had dreams. Except, of course, what I have stolen from others.”

From the bed, little Dino sighed.

“You did not steal what you didn’t know you had.”

Sofia skimmed on a layer of lipstick—something she used when she didn’t want to recognize the woman in the mirror. “I stole enough.”

She paused, sweeping her hair back up into its pins.
God will deliver
…. She didn’t even know what God’s deliverance might look like. After so many years, she’d given up looking for it.

Zoë caught her hand on the way out. “You are not dead.”

Sofia stilled, drew in a breath. “If he wakes, sing to him, please.”

Sometimes the colonel fell asleep with his arm clutching her waist. Other times he turned his back, and she snuck out with the sun bleeding over the western horizon and tucked herself beside Dino, his smell enough to heal her.

For Dino, everything. Food. A roof over his head. Safety.

She’d made that decision crossing the ocean, when he’d come alive inside her. When she realized she’d stolen him from his father.

Tonight, however, the colonel’s hairy arm imprisoned her, and she stared out the window at the sky, slate grey with the invasion of morning.

Yes, possibly it gave her the smallest stir of satisfaction to know that the colonel couldn’t keep his secrets, not in her arms. And those secrets she’d used to betray him. Thank you, Elsie, for teaching her German.

It didn’t exactly redeem her, but she’d lost that privilege three years ago, when she’d seduced herself into a different Dino’s arms, bartered his affections for honor.

She’d just been so—tired.

Alone.

Could she help that she fell for Dino’s adoration? His attention? His ministrations. It felt so much like love that in his arms…

The colonel stirred. Moved his arm off her, turned over.

She eased off the bed, grabbed her dress, and pulled it over her as she moved to the window. Light splintered between the silvery trees, their shadows gnarled and long.

Shouldn’t we talk?

Her own voice rattled through her, swept her back to that moment in her flat in snow-blanketed Minneapolis when she’d awakened, spied Dino staring into the sunrise, as if netted inside the misery of his sin, and a darkness seeped into her bones. She’d done this to him. She’d seen his eyes wanting her, wheedled herself into his arms, and slowly broken him.

Then she’d given him herself—or at least as much of her as she could—and ignored the sweep of shame inside.

Until morning.

Talk about—what? What a terrible man I am?

He’d kept his back to her, but she’d seen how he wiped his eyes, and she wanted to curl into a ball and wail.

Poison.
You’re not a terrible man, Dino.

Next door, a cry—one that curled out through the open window—jolted her. She glanced at the colonel then slipped through the door, back to her room.

Little Dino thrashed in his bed, in the fist of a nightmare. Zoë lay asleep in the opposite bed. Outside, a gate opened, the squeal of Ava treading out to gather the eggs or milk the goats before heading to the taverna.

Sofia wanted to drop onto the bed, curl into a ball. Instead she pulled Dino’s tiny body into her arms, settled his head against her chest. “Shh, my little fisherman. Shh.” His hair against her lips smelled like soap, silky and soft.

No, not a terrible man at all.

She leaned her head against the headboard as sunlight crept into the room, curling itself around Dino’s tiny form.

Sofia held him tight, refusing the rescue of slumber.

CHAPTER 22

“I won’t do it!” Sofia pushed the last of the leaves off the step. A few still scattered into the open door in the back of the kitchen, but she needed the breeze to skim the heat from the taverna.

“Keep your voice down!” Lucien used his arm to bar the door leading from the kitchen, nearly cutting Sofia off at the neck. She ducked and went under it, heading toward the oven. Grabbing a towel, she pulled out the baked bacalliaro—nearly slammed into Lucien—and placed it on the counter, the smell of roasted onions, olive oil, the tang of lemon and fresh parsley rising up to taunt her.

Lucien reached out to nip one of the roasted onions from the pot. “Why not? You know English.”

“I also want to stay alive.” She picked up a serrated knife. Gave Lucien a back-away look, then grabbed a thick loaf of bread. “Ava will be back soon. You’d better leave.”

He barely hid a flinch at that, the past scouring through his eyes. He avoided Ava Stavros as if she might be his own personal ghost. Now he held his hands up in surrender. “What if it’s a trick? What if it’s one of those pirated transmissions and the Nazis are trying to embed one of their own into our group, figure out our organization?”

She tossed a piece of bread onto a plate, stepped up to him. “Exactly.” She moved him aside, picked up another knife, and went at the fish. “The last thing I need is to bring some traitor into my life.” She used a
fork to slide a slab onto one plate, then the other, finishing it off with the carrots and juice drizzled over the top. “I do enough for this country.”

“Too much.”

She glared up at him. “What would you have me do? Choices aren’t a luxury I can afford.” She picked up the two plates.

His dark eyes flashed. “Or want.”

If her hands weren’t full, she would have slapped him. Her voice dropped, quivered there. “Is that what you think? That I want—this life?”

“I think you can’t bring yourself to see anything different.”

She blinked at him. Shook her head. “Stay away from me.”

“Sofia—”

“No, Lucien. I can’t bring danger into Dino’s life.”

He caught her elbow, put his ear close to hers, hissed into it. “You do every night.”

She stared at his grip. “I keep him
safe
every night. Because of the colonel, we’re fed. And safe. He promised.”

“And he doesn’t suspect that you’re the one stealing his secrets?”

She ground her jaw, glanced at the open door. “Maybe you could say that louder.”

“Sorry. It’s just that we’re trying to save lives here. Partisan lives. If this is a trick, we need to know.”

“I’m not your girl.”

“That’s clear.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Lucien—”

“I’m not a fool. I know you loved Markos, and frankly, your kid looks just like him.”

Every cell in her body froze.

“C’mon, you can’t seriously think that Ava hasn’t noticed. That she doesn’t see at least one of her sons in little Dino.”

“You don’t know anything.” She made to shove past him, but he levered his arm in her path.

“I know that we need your help. And you won’t give it.”

“So, you’re trying to blackmail me?”

He recoiled. “I didn’t think so…” He raised his hand, freeing her to pass. “Does he know?”

She slowed, not looking at him. “Does who know?”

“Dino’s father. Markos. Does he know about his son?”

She drew in a long breath. “Markos isn’t his father.”

Lucien’s eyes flickered, something at the edges. “Then who…”

“Leave me alone, Lucien.”

He came around the table. “No…is Dino the father?”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t know where his father is. He—joined the military.” Oh, please, don’t let the truth slide across her face, the fact that her only letter to the hospital in Minneapolis came back to her, the scrawled words of “gone to war” across the envelope. She could only guess it might be Europe—he might indeed be on a ship in the South Pacific.

Lucien reached out to touch her, but she recoiled. He dropped his voice. “What if this agent can help you find him?”

“That’s not fair—”

“Sofia, we really need your help.”

She stepped away from him, into the hallway. “Go.”

Her skin bristled in the wake of his fuming as she stepped down into the portico. Two SS officers, their black hats propped on the table, leaned back in their chairs, smoking. She set the plates in front of them, grabbed their beer steins.

Beyond them, Zoë and Dino built a sandcastle in the honeyed sand. A twist went through her, even as she watched Zoë laugh, scoop Dino up in her arms, rush him out into the water.

She and Ava had been generous with a pregnant, unmarried Sofia. She owed them the truth. Perhaps someday.

If, as Lucien suggested, Ava hadn’t already figured it out. Little Dino did look the image of—well, both of them. Markos
and
Dino.

But, when she stepped off the boat, she couldn’t shame Dino’s name with her own terrible sins.

And it seemed easier, somehow, to let Ava believe that he might be Markos’s son. In her traitorous heart, even Sofia sometimes thought that and wished she could hate herself completely for it.

But he was Dino’s flesh and blood, and the man
did
deserve to know he had a son. Lucien’s words simmered in her head—what if this officer could help locate him? What if—what if she could—make it right? Perhaps she might be able to look into her son’s luminous dark eyes—so much like his father’s—without wincing.

When she returned to the kitchen, Lucien had vanished, half the loaf of bread with him.

She refilled the beers and returned to the portico. The colonel had joined the officers. He usually spent his afternoon at the taverna, eyes trained on her. In the light of day, she supposed he could be considered handsome, if one disregarded his pale blue eyes. Tall, brown hair, sturdy hands, a singing voice that could have made a willing woman weak. He loved his accordion and now strapped it on, glancing at her without a smile. “Retsina.”