I had spent my life running from that shadow, and I stopped running from it that year, and made my peace with all of it, because I finally understood what the name had actually meant, underneath the fear, all along: it meant that no one in my family would ever have to stand alone against someone stronger, because there would always be five people who would come through any gate in the world to stand beside them.

That is not something to be ashamed of.

That is the finest thing I have.

Preston thought he was punishing a woman with no one.

He had, instead, raised his hand against a woman with five brothers and her own fortune and a mind he had never taken the trouble to fear — and he learned, far too late, that the quietest person in the room is very often the one you should have watched most carefully of all.

I took a slow, deep breath of the clean afternoon air, and I walked out of that place forever, into a life that was, at last, wholly and unconditionally my own.