A place at a table is not owed by blood; it is earned by what you bring to the table.

Love, even — the deepest bond there is — is not truly owed by blood, whatever we tell ourselves; it is made, and kept, by showing up.

Diego believed the company was his by birthright, and so he never built anything, and in the end he tried to steal what he felt entitled to and lost even his freedom.

I believed nothing was owed to me, and so I built, and earned, and paid, and in the end I held the only thing in that family that could not be forged or stolen or explained away, which was a legitimacy that came from actual work.

The Vances spent sixteen years certain that blood was the thing that mattered, and it cost them everything, and the outsider who never had a drop of their blood ended up holding their company in her hands — because she had understood, from the beginning, the thing they never would: that blood buys you a name, and nothing else, and that everything else has to be earned by everyone, every time, no exceptions, forever.

Chapter 6 — Carmen’s Text