Chapter 415

After he left, Elissa found she had no more words. She simply sat by the tombstone, quietly looking at her parents' names. After a long time, she finally stood, her legs numb and tingling as if being swarmed by ants.

She walked slowly toward the entrance, reluctant to leave. On her way, she passed a group of people heading up the path.

“Elissa?” one of them called out, her eyes widening in recognition. She glanced in the direction Elissa had come from and then hurried to catch up. "You are Elissa, aren't you?"

Elissa stopped and turned to face the woman, who seemed more like a stranger than family. Her aunt. After her parents had died, this was the only relative she had left, but her aunt had been unwilling to take her in. That was why she had ended up in an orphanage. Elissa understood, though. No one wanted to take on the burden of an outsider.

Mariana Drummond looked more closely at her face and became certain. "You're here to see my brother and sister-in-law again?”

Elissa nodded and managed a quiet, "Aunt Mariana." She had run into her a couple of times on previous visits.

Mariana noticed her swollen, red-rimmed eyes and sighed. "I saw on the news about the drug you developed. That's very impressive."

Elissa murmured a soft, "Thank you." The unfamiliarity between them made conversation difficult.

"You've become so successful..." Mariana began, her words hesitant, her expression pained. "Actually..."

Elissa frowned. "What is it?"

"Actually..." Mariana glanced back toward the tombstones and took a deep breath, as if steeling herself. "Now that you're so capable... maybe you should try to find your real parents."

The words felt like a physical release for Mariana. For Elissa, they were a lightning strike. She stood frozen for a long moment before she could process what she had heard. "What did you say?" What did she mean, *real parents*?

"You're not a Drummond.." Now that the hardest part was over, the rest of the story spilled out more easily. "The real Elissa died a long time ago. Around the same time, my brother and his wife were on a mission near

the border. They busted a cartel safe house and found you, left behind by the traffickers."

"When they came back, they wanted to find your parents, but the situation was complicated. They couldn't easily investigate, and they were afraid that if your identity was discovered, the traffickers would come looking for you. Since the real Elíssa had just passed away, they applied to temporarily raise you under her name, with the plan to search for your birth parents later."

But Elissa had been less than four years old and had suffered a head injury, leaving her with no memory of her past. There were no leads. Then, her adoptive parents took on a new case, intending to investigate her origins once it was over. But they never came back.

With no blood relation, Mariana had

refused to take her in, and the authorities, unsure what to do, placed her in an orphanage. Her true identity was lost. Fearing it would bring her danger, Mariana and the few others who knew the truth had kept it a secret all these years.

As the story concluded, the sun beat down, but Elissa felt as if she had been plunged into an icy abyss. Mariana was long gone, but Elissa remained rooted to the spot, her aunt's words ringing in her ears.

Her name, her identity, her parents-none of it was hers.

So who was she?

She had been rescued from traffickers. Her birth parents...

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