Diana Polk has many names but only one purpose: to find the men who murdered her family and exact revenge upon them. She is willing to follow them to hell, even if the price of doing so is her soul. But then an unlikely source intervenes.
I have just stepped out of our apartment with my three young sons. Via Rasella. Our dog, Pompey, an Italian Greyhound, has run effortlessly and obliviously ahead, looking for the first of his favorite corners and crevices in which to water his territory.
Isabella is still asleep, but I am up on a rare Friday off in order to get Paolo and Luigi to school. For most, the hour is early. For me, as a baker, the hour is late.
I have little Dominic in my arms.
There is a commotion down the street. A German troop transport has stopped and there is yelling. Other German vehicles are speeding toward the first, rushing past me and my boys like sluiced water. So I gather my sons to me. I worry briefly that Pompey will be startled and dart fish-like into the street, but he remains fixated on his early morning routine.
“Stay close,” I say to my boys. “Don’t look at them.” I face the wall of our apartment building and, with my one free hand, pull Luigi toward me, turning my six-year old’s head to my thigh as I do so.
Once I have Luigi nestled there, I am about to do the same with Paolo, my eight-year old. But there is an explosion that knocks all of us off our feet. The yelling and the machine gun fire that follows registers on my brain, but it is swimming. Through a fireball.
Temporarily blinded by the flash, I feel for my sons, making sure they are still close and in one piece. Once I am sure, I stagger to my feet, float really, bobbing up the wall like a dynamited fish, flopping, barely able to support myself.
I squeeze my eyes shut and, amid the circles and squares and trapezoids of red and orange I see there, I will my sight to return.
When I open my eyes, the light that had been waving in the morning is defeated by the darkness in my head.