“You know who she is now,” he said softly.
I nodded. “Your mother.”
He didn’t deny it.
There was a pause. Thick. Heavy.
“Monte?” I asked, breath shallow. “Where is he? He said he was protecting me.”
Silas looked at me.
And didn’t answer.
My stomach dropped. “Silas.”
But his silence told me everything I needed to know.
Just like that, the floor shifted beneath me.
The man who’d stayed. The man who’d fought for me. The man who’d loved me—even if I hadn’t known how to love him back.
Gone.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice cracked. “Why did you let me wake up in your bed, your house, and not tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want the first thing you thought about to be loss.”
I stared at him.
And for the first time, I saw what he was hiding.
Not rage.
Not power.
But grief.
And guilt.
And a kind of darkness that had no name.
He stepped forward, slow.
But I didn’t move.
I couldn’t.
I just looked at him like he was a stranger. And maybe—after everything—I had to admit he was. Because this wasn’t the man I kissed in intimate moments.
This was the man who buried secrets in deep drawers.
The man whose mother started wars.
The man who brought me into one.
I wasn’t sure which side he was truly on.
I moved past him, the folder still in my hands, needing space. Needing distance. The room was too full—of silence, of truth, of him.
