She had learned, the hard way, that being underestimated was a weapon if you wielded it deliberately and a wound if you let it wield you.

She kept her ambitions quiet not because she was ashamed of them but because a person no one takes seriously can move unseen, can buy what she likes and build what she wants while the important men are looking elsewhere.

She raised me on that lesson.

And I had taken it — as young people do — and twisted it into something she never intended.

She hid her power to move freely.

I hid mine because I was afraid that without it hidden, no one would love the woman underneath.