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Then I see him through the glass. He stands stoic, hands pressed against the concrete ledge, looking out at the rolling hills of the Davacalli estate. My heart clenches in my chest—seeing him look so… devastated pains me.

His pain is mine.

I push the door to the side and step out into the cool chill of the autumn air. The wind blows through my hair, cooling the heat at the back of my neck. “Mat…”

I try to call his name, but a lump lodges in my throat and steals the rest of my words. So I say nothing. Just stand there, watching him from a distance.

He turns slowly, and when he sees me—when our eyes meet—I see it all. The weight of it. The months he’d carried it. The guilt. The silence. The grief he thought he had no right to feel.

“You know,” he says quietly when I reached him.

I nod. “Yes.”

“I told him not to tell you.”

“He told me that, too.”

A silence stretches between us—long and tight, the kind that sits between heartbreak and hope and doesn’t lean either way.

I finally ask, my voice barely more than a breath, “Why? Why would you carry that alone?”

He glances at me, then down at the ground like the truth still weighed too much.

“Because your brother didn’t deserve to be remembered as a traitor. Not by you. He was just a lost soul… like Daniele. A good heart who lost his way before he even knew how to come back.”

My chest aches, sharp and slow. “And what about you?”

“I’m not the one you loved.”

The words shouldn’t have hurt—not after everything—but they did. Because he still didn’t get it. He still thought he wasn’t enough. Still believed that losing me was just the cost of his silence.

“You ran out to save him,” I say, my voice steadier now. “You could’ve walked away, but you didn’t.”

“I was too late,” he mutters.

“But you tried.”

He looks away then, his jaw locking like he’s holding back everything that has been building inside him for months.

“I hated you,” I whisper. “I woke up with it. Slept with it. Carried it like a second skin.”

He didn’t flinch.

“I know,” he said.

“And still…” I swallow. “I kept loving you.”

His eyes flick to mine, the faintest shimmer in them.

“I know that, too.”

I take a step closer. Then another. The space between us wasn’t cold anymore. It was full. Full of things we hadn’t said, and things we still couldn’t.

“You should’ve told me.”

“I didn’t want to take your brother from you twice.”

And that… that is what finally breaks me.