The marble.
The word “place.”
“No, Isaac,” I said. “I didn’t destroy your family.
I just stopped protecting it.
There’s a difference.
You spent six years telling me I came from nothing.
It turned out nothing was the most powerful thing in the room.
Because a woman with nothing to lose, and five brothers who never look away, and a photograph of the truth —
that’s not nothing, Isaac.
That’s everything, finally pointed in the right direction.”
I didn’t wait for his answer.
I walked out through the courthouse doors into a bright, cold morning, where my five brothers were waiting on the steps, and Noah handed me a coffee, and Marcus was already talking about my next case, and Leo was complaining that the parking was terrible, and Julian was laughing at him.
Five brothers.
One sister.
The Sterling name.
We’d come from nothing, all of us.
And we’d turned it into the only kind of power that lasts:
the kind you never have to raise your voice to use.
I got in the car.
We drove home.
