Margaery sighed, staring at her grandmother's back. Grandma Olenna was in the middle of a particularly long-winded rant about - well, Margaery wasn't quite sure anymore. It had started about ambition, pride, drive - things that had been pounded into Margaery's head since she was a child. Things her grandmother was obsessed with, things Margaery strived to embody. Things that didn't jive with getting a C on a calculus test. All because she'd left her backpack on the table in between school and violin lessons and her grandmother didn't have any concept of privacy. Margaery glanced at the clock on her bedside table - 10:15. Great. With her luck, she'd be in bed by one, maybe two, after finishing up a rough draft of an essay for AP Lit and answering a few pages worth of AP Bio lab questions and reading some chapters for German and studying for her test in AP World tomorrow …

"Am I boring you, child?"

Margaery opened her eyes. She couldn't remember when she'd closed them. She looked up at her grandmother, keeping her expression even. "Of course not, Grandmother," she said sweetly, offering a small smile to hide the way her stomach was twisting at the thought of her grandmother's reprimands.

Olenna rolled her eyes. "Nonsense." She sat down on Margaery's desk chair. "You've been yawning ever since you came in here, and I just caught you sleeping."

"I was not aslee-"

"Don't try to lie to me, dear, you were asleep." Her grandmother paused, and Margaery waited. She'd learned it was best to let her get the last word in. "I'm not upset because you got a C on a test."

Margaery raised her eyebrows. Then why have you been ranting for the last forty-five minutes? "You're not?"

"Of course not. I'm upset because this is the third C you've gotten on something in less than a week." Margaery kept her face even, but she could feel her cheeks flush with warmth. "Have you forgotten what we're trying to accomplish?"

Margaery smiled. Her grandmother always ended up here eventually. "I could never forget that."

"Then remind me." Her grandmother's dark eyes bore into her, and her tone made Margaery's stomach tighten, but she inhaled deeply and recited the words her grandmother had taught her, long before she'd been taught their meaning.

"When we began, we were looked down upon, thought of as upstarts taking what was never ours. We are still seen that way, and it is past time that this view is changed. We must make them love us."

Slowly, a smile spread across her grandmother's face. "Very good, dear. And how do we make them love us?"

Margaery knew the answer to this question as well. "We remind them that we took the same oaths they did, even if ours were decades apart. We show them that we are just as serious as they are about the business. We run the best damn clubs this city has ever seen and fight tooth and nail up to the top - to hell with the cost."

Her grandmother's eyes were positively gleaming. "Exactly. And what are you doing to get to the top? Getting C's?" Once again, Margaery felt her face flush but she waited for her grandmother to finish. She'd been through this situation enough times to know that the Queen of Thorns was about to give a speech. Her grandmother stood up and moved to sit next to Margaery on her bed. "You are going to graduate at the top of your class and go to school at the best university in the country. You're going to get the best education money can buy, and when you come back from law school, you're going to work those damn cops over until they don't know up from down. You are the key, Margaery. You will earn the respect of those damned Lannisters and Baratheons and Martells and every other family who thinks they're somehow better than we are. That is still what you want, isn't it?"

Margaery smiled widely and nodded. "Of course, Grandmother. It's all I've ever wanted."

The smile on her grandmother's face almost looked demented. "Then you know what you have to do." Her grandmother leaned in to give her a hug, and Margaery let her face relax into an expression of distaste for a fraction of a second. She put the smile back on her face as her grandmother released her and stood. "Goodnight, dear."

"Goodnight, Grandmother."

That night, she studied like she'd never studied before. Her grandmother was right, after all; she'd lost sight of her mission. Not the one her family had for her - she'd given up on fulfilling that years ago. She knew her grandmother's real plan was to marry her off to whichever Baratheon gave Margaery the best chance of becoming the next Cersei Lannister. No, Margaery would go to Harvard Law School, just like her grandmother had always told her. She would become the best damn lawyer she possibly could be, and when she came back to Chicago, she would use all the knowledge she'd accumulated over her lifetime - both of the inner workings of the Mob and the inner workings of the law - to burn the entire Mafia to the ground.

A/N: Please leave reviews! I love knowing what you guys think of my story :)