“My mother arranged it,” Marcus said quickly, trying to shift the blame. “She convinced me that with your health issues, raising a child under financial collapse would destroy us. She promised me the money would secure our future, and that the child would go to a home that could provide everything. I was weak, Elena. I let her make the decision, and once it was done, there was no turning back.”

“And the package in the soil?” I demanded.

“Agnes Holloway contacted my mother two weeks ago,” Marcus confessed, looking at the floor. “She said her conscience was bothering her and that she had recorded a statement before entering hospice. She mailed the drive and the items to my mother, who sent them to me to dispose of permanently. I couldn’t bring myself to destroy them immediately, so I hid them where I thought no one would look until I could figure out what to do.”

I stared at the man I had lived with for nearly two decades, realizing that the life we built was constructed entirely on a foundation of betrayal. The grief I had carried for seventeen years had been manufactured to protect his secret.

“I am going to the police, Marcus,” I said firmly, reaching for my bag on the table. “And then I am going to meet my daughter.”

Marcus looked up, desperation in his eyes, but he made no move to stop me. He knew that the truth, buried for seventeen long years beneath layers of silence and dirt, had finally come to light, and there was nothing left to hide behind.