My father is not a nobody. He is the chief architect for one of the largest aerospace contractors in the country — a brilliant, quiet man who could buy and sell the Whitmores several times over and would never mention it, because he was raised in that “shabby little flat” by my grandmother, and he keeps it because it holds his whole childhood, and he measures wealth in things that can’t be photographed and sneered at.
I’d never told Lorna any of that. Partly because it was none of her business, and partly because — like Grayson, though I didn’t know it yet — I’d wanted to be loved for myself, not for my father’s position. I’d let the Whitmores believe I came from nothing, and I’d watched them treat me accordingly, and I’d told myself Lorna “didn’t mean anything by it” because Grayson kept asking me to be patient.
I understand now what that patience was really for. Grayson needed me to stay small and grateful, because a grateful woman from nothing doesn’t lawyer up. He’d studied me for two years, and he’d concluded I was manageable — easy to marry, easy to convince, easy to rob. He’d built his entire plan on my supposed powerlessness.
