"The way I was raised... obscurity is as good as death." He gives a shrug, tries to make light of things. "The one notion beaten into me from a very early age was to strive for excellence, in every field." Rubbing his palms down the seams of his pants, Cesare shrugs again. It's somewhere on a backshelf of his mind, this other certainty - that he tried to win father's love by being the best - swifter, smarter, stronger than Juan - and what had it amounted to? One boy broken and bleeding in the Forum, the other wheezing curses until he went for a last swim in the Tiber.
"Perhaps now I have to learn to excel in obscurity," he says softly.