Faced with his own twin’s serious crime, Sebastian did not choose the easy cruelty of simply turning him in, nor the easy cowardice of covering it up.

He chose the hard middle way, the way that required more of him than either extreme: he refused to lie, and he refused to abandon.

He gave his brother a week and a door out, and he made sure the truth was safe with Diego so that if his brother chose the lie again, it could not be buried.

It was mercy with a spine in it, the kind of love that will not let you destroy yourself but will not destroy you either.

And it is precisely that quality, that refusal to choose between honesty and loyalty, that got him killed, because Santiago could not tolerate a brother who would neither betray him nor be fooled by him.