For a moment, Rowan could only stare.
Then he laughed once, softly.
Evelyn blinked.
“You still think this is about a name,” he said.
“It has always been about the name.”
“No. It’s about a baby who had a mother. Brothers. A father who should have known she existed.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You took a child and called it protection.”
Evelyn’s eyes shone, but whether with anger or fear, he could not tell. “You sound like him.”
“Dad?”
“He said the same thing when he found the files.” Her voice turned bitter. “He said families were not built by hiding inconvenient children. He said the Bellamy name would deserve ruin if it required silence to survive.”
Rowan’s breath caught.
His father had known.
“What happened that night?” he asked.
Evelyn looked toward the portrait. For the first time, something like grief moved across her face—not gentle grief, but a hard, trapped thing.
