Zommunist Invasion | Book 3 | Scattered Picott, Camille (best ereader for pc .TXT) 📖

“Luca Trione.” Her voice was thick with emotion as she uttered the name. Only an idiot would miss it. Nonna might be old, but the wound over her brother’s death was still fresh.

Stephenson knew he should shut up, but he couldn’t stop himself. He’d never had anyone to talk to about this before. “Was he killed by Mussolini’s supporters?”

“That’s the story, yes.”

“That’s the story?” Stephenson frowned. What did that mean?

“Yes. The family story.”

There was a weight to Nonna’s words. Stephenson felt them settle heavily around his shoulders, but he couldn’t decipher their meaning. He attempted to prod the ambiguity.

“Did . . . how did you know he was like me?”

“He told me.” Nonna stopped in the middle of the trail and turned around to face him. She blinked wet eyes, but she spilled no tears.

Patting Stephenson on the cheek, she said, “No more questions, Stephenson. You don’t have to hide who you are around me.”

35

Footprints

Valentina sat hunched in the corner of the kitchen, her knees pulled up to her chest.

Her mother’s wail filled the small, cold room. In a kitchen chair, her grandmother rocked back and forth, hugging herself in sorrow. Her father stared at the wall with red-rimmed eyes, drinking straight from a bottle of grappa. Marcello had gone to spread word of what had happened to the other villagers.

Valentina was lost in a haze of grief. She couldn’t stop crying. She could hardly bear to look at her brother’s body.

Luca’s form was stretched out on the kitchen table. He was covered in snow, dirt, and blood.

Only his face was clean. Valentina and Marcello had made certain of that.

It had been Marcello’s idea. “Valé, do you have a handkerchief?”

“Yes.” Her voice had quavered.

“Give it to me.”

As Valentina handed over the handkerchief she always kept with her, Marcello pulled a flask out of his coat. She watched him pour the clear contents onto the handkerchief. Using it, he tried to clean the rouge off Luca’s face. His attempt was clumsy.

Valentina wordlessly took the handkerchief from Marcello. She barely registered what she did; the only thing she knew for certain was that her mother could never see Luca this way. She could never know the truth. It would break her even more than the sight of his dead body.

After that, they had carried Luca’s dead body back to the house.

He’d been on the kitchen table ever since.

Water dripped off his body as the snow melted. The wound in his side still seeped red. Valentina saw it drip off the side of the family table and onto the floor.

“How?” Mama wailed. “How did this happen? There are no Mussolini fascists in this village.” She hunched over the kitchen table, more sobs wracking her body. “Valé, you say you saw nothing?”

Valentina recalled the scene with gut-wrenching clarity. The bloody footprints—Luca’s footprints. There had been only one other set of prints there—and one set of bloody knuckles. Her mind had memorized the scene more perfectly than a photograph ever could.

“Luca—Luca—” She choked on her words. “Luca was already—already gone when I got there. Marcello found him first.”

“Even if we could find the killer, the authorities would hail him a hero,” her father said dully. Technically, partisans were outlaws, even if support of them was strong among the villages. “There will be no justice for our boy.”

Her mother dissolved into a fresh round of weeping, wailing Luca’s name over and over.

Valentina remained huddled on the floor, eyes squeezed shut. She wished she could unsee the two sets of footprints: Luca’s bloody prints, and Marcello’s clean ones.

“Excellent!” Nonna clapped from where she sat perched on a log. It was nearly midday. Stephenson had successfully hit no less than five large rocks that Nonna had put out for him.

“It’s the shoes.” Stephenson grinned at her.

There was a lightness in his eyes that was new. He was pleased with his performance with the machine gun—rightly so—but that wasn’t the source of his lightheartedness.

She understood where that light came from, even if he did not. She had seen that same light in Luca’s eyes all those many years ago.

It was the light of freedom, of authenticity. It made Nonna want to weep with joy.

But Nonna Cecchino did not shed tears of joys. She was made of tougher stuff than that.

“You think the shoes make you a better shot?” Nonna smiled at him.

“They’re my magic shoes. Like Dorothy’s ruby slippers.”

That they were. She understood. There was power in not hiding from oneself. Maybe things would have gone differently for Luca if he had not been so desperate to hide from himself.

Maybe fighting Il Duce and his Nazi bastards will make a man out of me.

Even after all these years, those words still haunted her.

“Are we going to take a lunch break?” Stephenson asked.

“I want to see you hit those rocks two more times. Then you can take a lunch break.”

“Okay.” He practically waltzed across the clearing to pick up the rocks he’d shot off the fallen log. His pink shoes were bright spots of cheer as he moved across the forest floor.

They were the exact same color as the rogue Luca had used to color his cheeks.

36

Exposed

“You should keep the shoes on when the others come back.”

Nonna’s words were like an electrical shock to Stephenson’s core. “What? No.”

It was late in the day. The two of them hiked back to the Cecchino cabin.

Stephenson already regretted wearing the shoes. Surely Amanda, Dal, and Lena would be home by now. What if they saw him in the shoes? The very idea made him want to throw up.

“You should keep the shoes on,” Nonna repeated.

“But . . .” He struggled to find the right words.

She had to know what the others would say. He would be ridiculed. They would hate him. They’d probably kick him out of the cabin and tell him never to come back. If they didn’t kick the shit out of him on sight, just on principal of his wrongness.

Stephenson defied logic and reason.