They knew I had five older brothers.

That much the Calloways knew.

They did not know much else, and what little they thought they knew was wrong.

Years ago, the Voss name had carried a certain weight — the kind of weight that made people lower their voices when they said it.

My family’s reputation, in another era, had been formidable, and not gentle.

But my brothers were not the men that old reputation described, not anymore.

Over the years, they had taken whatever hard-edged capability the family name once implied and turned it, deliberately and completely, into legitimate power.