Adam had once told Gansey, "Rags to riches isn't a story anyone wants to hear until after it's done.

What he truly wanted was to be left to his own devices. Not by his actual father, who could no longer truly intrude on Adam’s life, but by the idea of his father, a more powerful thing in every way.

Above him, the stars were brutal and clear.

How arrogant we are, Adam thought, to deliver babies who can't walk or talk or feed themselves. How sure we are that nothing will destroy them before they can take care of themselves. How fragile they were, how easily abandoned and neglected and beaten and hated. Prey animals were born afraid.

He left bloody fingerprints on the rock, but there was something satisfying about that.
I was here. I exist. I’m alive, because I bleed.

Adam didn't look at him when he said, finally, "It doesn't matter how you say it. It's what you wanted, in the end. All your things in one place, all under your roof. Everything you own right where you can see...