“You are insufferable sometimes. You're not doing me, or yourself, any favors by pretending not to mind when you get hurt. I would have slapped you harder if I didn't know the truth--if I didn't know that you would just blush and bat your lashes as someone tied a tourniquet around your thigh and prepared to saw your leg off. Do you know why the worst thing Papa has ever done to me is push me to my knees? Because I wail and the scream and beat his chest with my fists whenever he tries to do anything more than bark orders at me from the chaise. You think he wants some mute little china doll to cook his meals and wash his sheets? No. He wants daughters with teeth. The hurting is the point. I can't believe it's taken you twenty-three years to figure out--if you even understand what I'm saying at all. It's no fun stamping through old dirty snow. People want to ruin things that are clean and new... He can't stand the idea of anyone spoiling us but him.”