My stomach dropped.
“Sent them to a private laboratory under a false name. Paid in cash. No trace.”
He swallowed.
“The results came back inside a plain envelope.”
His gaze flicked to me — sharp now. “None of you were mine.”
A single tear slipped down his cheek. He didn’t wipe it away. He didn’t look ashamed of it either.
“The pain wasn’t anger anymore,” he said quietly. “It was annihilation.”
His voice cracked again — but this time with something colder underneath.
“I let her board that plane thinking she was going to meet her lover in Poland.”
My throat tightened.
“I had already arranged everything.”
He turned slightly, gesturing vaguely toward the sky as if the memory still hovered above us.
“A timed device in the cargo hold. Small enough to evade detection. Powerful enough to bring the aircraft down over the Atlantic.”
My breath hitched.
“I didn’t care that your brother — the boy I believed was mine — was on that plane with her.”
His jaw clenched.
“They both died by my hand.”
The words hung in the air like smoke.
“Your mother. The boy. Gone.”
My knees trembled beneath me.
His gaze snapped back to me — hard again, like steel reinforcing itself after breaking.
“And you two — the girls — I had my lawyer fabricate the story.”
He laughed once — hollow, cold, and empty.
“That I went with them to Poland on that plane... and crashed before we ever reached our destination.”
My vision blurred.
“I made sure the paperwork convinced you. Made sure you believed I was dead too.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I chased you out of the house at fifteen. Threw you into the world with nothing.”
His voice lowered to something almost personal.
“Let you think your entire life had collapsed overnight.”
