47. Stefi
47
STEFI
I sit behind the steering wheel of our getaway car, straining to listen to Joao’s conversation with Pavel Dachev. “This is for Stefania,” he says, “and for Christopher.”
My eyes fill with tears. Stupid pregnancy hormones. But when I hear Joao remember our dead child and tell Dachev he’s killing him for Christopher, it begins to heal a wound inside me that I thought would stay raw forever.
I will always grieve the baby I wanted so much that I risked everything to protect him, but I now realize there’s room in my heart for happiness. Joy will never totally replace sadness, but the two emotions can coexist.
I’m so lost in my thoughts that I miss the next part of the conversation. I hear Dachev telling Joao that he’s been feeding Q the information I bought from him, and then he says something that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “If that idiot hadn’t died in September. . .”
I freeze. Q died in September? But that can’t be. He tipped me off about Zaworski’s party six weeks ago, and I told him I’d be in Nuremberg a week after that.
If I wasn’t talking to Q, who was I talking to?
My brain is just beginning to put two and two together when I hear Dachev’s next words. “Seven and a half years ago, I went back to kill Stefania, but I found her in a hospital, in the middle of giving birth.”
My palms turn sweaty, and my heart starts to race. What’s Dachev hinting at? What’s he saying? Did he. . . Could he. . .
“What did you do, Dachev?” I hear Joao ask.
Then I hear the words that change everything. “I bribed a nurse to swap her baby with a dead one. Stefania’s son isn’t dead. He’s very much alive.”
The boy that shot me in Nuremberg. . .
That’s Christopher.
That’s our son.
It can’t be, but it really is. For a moment, I can’t breathe. The world tilts, and my vision blurs as Dachev’s words play in an endless loop in my mind. Christopher is alive. The baby I wept over, the baby I buried in Istanbul and whose grave I visit every year and whose death I’ve never stopped mourning. . .
Is alive.
Impossible relief surges through me, a flicker of hope so bright it’s almost blinding. My son lives. The last two months have been filled with miracles, and this is the most unlikely one, the most joyous. . .
But my happiness quickly turns sour as the next horrifying realization dawns on me. Christopher is alive, but Dachev gave him to Bach. A tidal wave of rage washes over me. The same monster who stole our childhoods, who turned us into deadly weapons, has my son.
And suddenly, there’s no room for confusion or hesitation. An icy determination settles over me. I will do whatever it takes to find Christopher and get him out, and I’ll kill anyone who stands in my way. This ends now.
My thoughts are still racing, colliding with one another, when the passenger side door opens, and a man slides in, his gun pointed directly at my temple. “I’m not at all happy with you, Stefania,” Henrik Bach says, his voice as cold as ice. “You’ve been a thorn in my side for far too long, and now you’re going to pay the price. Both you and your precious husband.”
I scramble to open the car door, but a movement in the corner of my eye stops me. Ewan—Christopher—appears outside the driver’s side door, pointing a blunt-nosed Glock 19 right at me. “Don’t even think about running, or Ewan will shoot you dead. Won’t you, Ewan?”
For a moment, I can’t think. It’s not fear that holds me captive; it’s sheer, blinding fury. I haven’t set eyes on Bach in eight years, but seeing him now, with his pretentious gold-rimmed glasses, his moth-eaten cardigan, and his slicked-back hair, hot anger bubbles to the fore. This is my child that he’s using to threaten me. My baby, taken from me all those years ago.
And I’m going to make him pay.
“You know something, Henrik? I’m delighted to find you here, alive. Both Joao and I felt terrible that we weren’t able to give you the death you so richly deserve. Looks like we’re going to get another chance, after all.”
His face twists with rage. He’s not used to being talked to this way by one of his trainees. We’re supposed to know our place, which is always under his boot.
“You fucking cunt,” he snarls, his face twisted in an ugly scowl.
Then he swings the barrel viciously across my face and temple.
And the world goes dark.