The Road Beyond Ruin by Gemma Liviero

Author:Gemma Liviero [Liviero, Gemma]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Historical fiction, War, World War II
ISBN: 9781503904767
Google: BIRrtAEACAAJ
Amazon: 1503904768
Barnesnoble: 1503904768
Goodreads: 39289227
Publisher: Amazon Publishing
Published: 2018-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

STEFANO

Stefano is dreaming. It is one continuous war inside his head when he goes to sleep each night. Fire features the most, and he wakes breathless to the reality of his memories: faces in the fire, bullets whizzing past him, running in terror, and living on air, on little else for several nights. The adrenaline was high, and he was luckier than some, completing his missions before madness set in. But his dreams now are perhaps the delayed and resultant madness: nightmares that are disturbed with faces of people he loves, people dead, people still living, and all driving him forward for different reasons.

He had helped Rosalind clean up and carried Michal, who had fallen asleep on the floor beneath the table, back to the bedroom at Erich’s. He’d tucked the boy into bed once again. Stefano had bent over him, whispered good night, and touched his soft cheek. He smelled like pine, not the mixture of soil, smoke, and ash where the boy once slept. Then Stefano had waited there, watched him fall back asleep returning once more to the bedroom at the front to get some hours of rest.

Sometime in the night he wakes to a grumbling sky and the boy, beside him again, curled into his back and sleeping deeply. Stefano sits up at the edge of the bed to grip the sides, willing the images from his dreams to disappear. Thunder sounds nearby, distracting him suddenly, and the house shudders in anticipation of another storm. A squall sends the curtain flying wildly up to the ceiling.

He steps near the window, where spots of rain cool his bare chest and bursts of light capture the coiling silver river. As he begins to draw the window closed, movement in the woods to his right gives him pause. He waits several moments to catch the movement again, but when the woods are once more scattered with light, the trees appear alone.

Though Stefano is certain he didn’t imagine something there. He is used to watching for people. He checks that the boy is still sleeping soundly, and he waits for the noise of thunder before stepping out onto the creaking stairs, then onto the ground floor. He can see Erich’s bed at the back of the room and sees that there is something there: a lump, the shape of a person. He holds his breath and waits for the next flash of lightning to confirm that it is nothing but bundles of linen and cushions.

Stefano walks to the front door, a black space in front of him, his arm outstretched until he touches the door. He runs his hand down the wood and feels cautiously for the handle. Impatience will get you killed, Fedor had told him. He turns the handle slowly, one small twist at a time, then steps into the night and shuts the door the same way he opened it. Once it was skill; now it is habit.

Another wind gust and a burst of rain announce that worse is to come.

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