You built your whole empire on that assumption.

And that, Mr.

Caldwell, was never strength.” He paused.

“It was dependence.” And Charles lowered his head, because for the first time he understood that the wealth his family had paraded so proudly, the wealth Victoria had used to look down on a blind woman, had been built on a structure far weaker than he had ever let himself admit — a structure that had never belonged to them at all, but to the courtesy of the very man they had chosen to humiliate.

Chapter 16 — You Chose Silence