When he spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper.
“But my wife was killed one month after our child was born.”
Silence suffocated the room.
My heart clenched. “Oh, Mathias…”
Emily gasped softly, a hand pressed to her mouth.
Mathias schooled his features into a blank and untouched expression, like a canvas yet to know the stroke of a brush, void of emotion and anything human.
“I couldn’t go on,” he said, his voice low, rough, stripped of all warmth. “I didn’t want to raise the child. I didn’t want any part of my offspring. I gave my child away to someone else.”
A pause. His jaw tightened.
“I thought… I knew I wasn’t good enough for her. I had failed my wife. I had failed to protect her.”
The words came out like jagged glass—harsh, bitter, cutting.
Silence swallowed the room whole.
Outside, the wind howled, a thrashing tempest, as if the storm carried the echoes of his misery.
I swallowed, glancing at Emily.
She squeezed my hand, her eyes brimming with tears.
“Say something,” she mouthed.
I swallowed, my throat dry. “Do you know where your child is? Is there any way you can contact her?”
Mathias exhaled, his expression clouding with something distant—something painful.
“No,” he said quietly. “I wanted to protect my daughter. Give her the best life. So, I gave her to good parents.” His gaze drifted past me as if he were seeing ghosts in the dimly lit room. “At that time, I was too consumed by revenge. I wanted to kill the man who took my wife’s life. I couldn’t be a father and a killer, so I made a choice. She had to go.”
His eyes refocused, meeting mine with quiet intensity. “I knew where she was for a time. I made sure to keep tabs on her. To watch over her.”
Then, his expression darkened.
“But then… she fell in love with my sworn enemy.”
The words hung heavy between us.
I frowned. “Wait—you’re saying your daughter fell in love with the man who killed your wife?”
Mathias gave a stiff nod.
“Did she know?”
He shook his head, his jaw tightening. “She knew nothing. She was utterly charmed by him. Blinded. She had no idea of the suffering he had caused—no idea that the man she loved had murdered her own mother.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. His hands clenched against the armrests of his chair.
“She loved the man who destroyed my family.”
With a sudden movement, he slammed his fist down.
The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot.
