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It wasn’t the threat in his eyes that made her fight back a shudder. It was hearing her name on his lips. He made the C too harsh, the N s too hard a stop, gave no space to the E . He punched it more than he spoke it.

What choice did she have but to lift her brows. “I do, when I’m around them.” She made a show of looking at her watch. “Did you need something in particular? Because I have appointments.”

“No, no.” He showed his teeth, but it would have been an insult to the word to call it a smile. “I just wanted to see you here. To see how you love it. To see the fear in your eyes when you hear that today will be the last day you step foot in this office.”

No. No—he was bluffing. And even if he wasn’t, she couldn’t, wouldn’t show him that stab of fear. She would give him only what he deserved—disdain. “Are you the rector of the university now? Congratulations—I hadn’t heard.”

“If you look at that letter behind you on your desk,” he drawled, taking another step closer, “you’ll see to whom the rector answers.”

She wanted to crane around, see if there was a letter, see what it said, if so. But she didn’t dare take her eyes off him. “And why exactly am I being let go, then? Because I’m a woman? Or because you misunderstand the nature of education and think it means just teaching people to agree with you?”

Another slow step. Ignoring her words, of course, as if she hadn’t even spoken. “But I can make this go away, Corinne. If it’s that important to you.”

Of course. Of course, that’s all this was—a sick little game. His own planned script, which he’d just expected her to play along with. Had he thought she’d panic at the mention of the letter? Be overwhelmed by fear? Did he think she valued this position so highly that she’d do anything to keep it?

She loved her job. Her students. She’d always considered it her calling. But she’d known the moment Gustaf showed up from the Ministry of Education that her days here could well be numbered.

So be it, if so. She still had the contact with all her scattered students to keep up that work, and she’d find something else, anything else, to pay the bills—with all the foreign residents and aliens barred from positions, she’d heard the lycées were in desperate need of teachers.

Perhaps younger children had never been her heart’s desire, but she could adapt.

Adjust. And then someday, when this madness was over, when they’d shoved the Nazis back out of their borders, she’d take her place here again, if God willed it.

She didn’t have to force the scoff of a laugh. “You’re pathetic. Will you really try to threaten me—and what are your terms?”

His gaze dropped from her face. Slid down her, slowly enough to make her skin crawl. Back up. “You’re such a clever girl. I bet you can guess.”

She leaned forward too, because she never did have the sense to back down from a fight. “I would sooner starve than be your whore.”

His hand shot out, fast as lightning. Palm? Fist? She didn’t know which struck, only knew that it was hard enough to make her see stars, to make pain explode over the whole left side of her face, to make her drop the stick and grope for purchase on her desk to keep from sprawling over it.

She must have screamed, because her throat ached. And then she added another, not from pain or fear, but from rage.

She could hear Father Serres in her head, yes, telling her to turn the other cheek.

But Oncle Georges was louder, and his advice had been long ingrained. You know how to stop a bully from hitting you again, Rinny? Hit him back harder—and below the belt whenever necessary.

When he lunged for her, she brought up her knee, landing it in his groin with every ounce of strength she had. And when he grunted and staggered back that crucial step, she grabbed the first solid object her hands could find—a hefty tome—and swung it flat into his nose.

She had a feeling Father wouldn’t call defending her virtue a sin.

..but he’d probably have something to say about the satisfaction that hummed in her blood when she heard the cartilage crack.

Blood spurted from his nose, onto his hands, onto her rug, and today it looked like triumph instead of defeat.

Her door, still half-open, flew into the wall. Claude was there, yes—and Gustaf too, with horror on his face. Her friend went straight to Ackermann, hauling him back with one meaty hand.

Gustaf darted for her, hands out and hovering around her face. “Corinne! What happened? Your eye!”

It was swelling shut, now that he mentioned it. But she scarcely cared.

“What happened ?” Ackermann roared, knocking Claude’s arm away. “I’ll tell you what happened! That woman attacked me!”

Well, his words were a bit more colorful, and a bit less flattering to her.

But she censored them for herself. A fat, black line over his insults.

And she lifted her chin. “I most assuredly did. After he threatened to have me sacked unless I slept with him and then punched me when I refused. If that’s how your officers behave, Sonderführer—”

“It is not .” Gustaf spun to face Ackermann, his neck splotchy and red. “You are a shame to your rank and your people! How dare you treat a lady so?”

Ackermann sneered. “She’s no lady .” But the insult fell flat, given the nasal sound of his voice.

Gustaf’s hands curled into fists. “This is unacceptable! Though I suppose I should expect nothing different from a man who would murder a fellow officer for daring to insist upon civility—during an interview where you should not even have been present.”

Murder —had Gustaf really just called it a murder ? What did that mean?

Gustaf lifted a hand, jabbed a finger in the brute’s general direction.

“You may outrank me, Ackermann, but you have no authority on this campus. I am the Ministry’s authority here.

And you have overstepped too many times.

I’ll have your job for this. And if I hear that you so much as look at Dr. Bastien again, I’ll have you busted down to soldat ! ”

She could see the thoughts stomping through Ackermann’s mind. The bluster. The disbelief. Then the doubt. The question. “Who exactly do you think you are, you little pencil pusher, to threaten me?”

The heat of adrenaline began to ebb, making Corinne shiver. She’d like to know the same.

Gustaf smiled. “Perhaps you should have asked that before you intruded on my jurisdiction. Because I’m sure my family will be very interested in your behavior. Who do you think I should tell first? Cousin Otto...or Onkle Carl-Heinrich?”

Corinne didn’t recognize the names, but by the way Ackermann’s face blanked into panic, the way he cursed and obeyed the pointing of Gustaf’s finger toward the door, the two relatives were important.

Claude stomped out after him. “I’ll see him off campus, Sonderführer.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

When they were gone, Gustaf spun back to her. “What did you hit him with? I think you broke his nose.”

“I hope I did.” She raised the book. Smirked when she saw what it was. The Complete Works of Josef Horowitz .

Now that was poetic justice.

Gustaf insisted on seeing her home, despite her every loud protest—but at least he agreed to go no farther than the front steps of her building. Otherwise, she would have led him to someone else’s flat, knowing well her neighbors would play along.

And truth be told, by the time they reached her boulevard, she was grateful for the supportive arm. He’d found ice for her, and she’d held it to her eye during the Métro ride, but her head was pounding, and she couldn’t see through the swelling, ice or no ice.

She still didn’t know what it meant, that he’d called Ackermann’s shooting of Christian murder . And it hadn’t seemed like a wise topic of conversation to be held on the train with countless sightseeing Germans and suspicious Frenchmen.

Now, though, she chanced a glance up at him through her good eye. “What did you mean back there—about Ackermann committing murder? If he’d done such a thing, why hasn’t he been arrested?”

Wishful thinking? Perhaps. But Papa had taught her to wish on every star that caught her eye, and this one twinkled with hope.

Gustaf’s face went tight, limned with sorrow. “My friend, Christian Bauer—the other sonderführer who sat in on your class a week ago. He was killed later that day. Had you heard?”

Given that she could see Kraus’s uniform here from the corner, positioned as usual outside the Library of Burned Books, she saw no point in feigning ignorance.

She nodded, in fact, toward the glum soldat .

“Kraus told me. I admit, I was distressed and shocked. To learn someone I had just spoken to hours before had been shot...”

Even now, even knowing what Gustaf didn’t, her breath tangled up in her chest. Because she could still feel his hot, sticky blood on her hands. She could still see his skin, white as parchment as all his color spilled onto the floor.

She cleared her throat. “Kraus made it sound as though he was suspected of disloyalty. That Ackermann was within his rights to shoot him for interfering in an arrest.”

“It wasn’t even Ackermann’s arrest to make!

” Gustaf’s words sliced, spewed. Soothed.

“No. I don’t know what information Ackermann thought he’d received, but Bauer’s files were sent from Berlin the moment the brass requested them after the incident, as were his , and the picture they painted is clear.

Bauer was just a good man insisting on civility, even when dealing with a criminal—as he should have done.

Ackermann is a bully who is constantly overstepping the bounds of his authority. And he’s going to pay for it.”

Files—files that were squeaky clean, just as Christian had said his was when he was interviewed for this position. Files that must have been tampered with, somehow. By someone. Perhaps that friend he said he had in the Gestapo?