Netlify is not reading .env file properly when trying to deploy my app. (API key is not recognized)

Hello, my site name is https://gleaming-capybara-8bede4.netlify.app/. I am getting a 404 error when trying to get information from an API. The error message says: “You didn’t provide an API key. You need to provide your API key in an Authorization header…”. However, my local server 3000 works just fine without any errors since I provided the API key in the header as asked. Therefore, since I am saving my API key in the .env file I assume it is not being read properly when I try to deploy my website. Here are some screenshots:

hi there, did you give this a read through already?

https://answers.netlify.com/t/support-guide-using-environment-variables-on-netlify-correctly/267/118

there might be something helpful in here!