Not a threat my father had made — my father had not said one threatening word, had not raised his voice, had not so much as taken a step toward anyone.

Gerald had simply seen a mark, and known what it meant, and been undone by his own knowing of it.

Across the room, my husband, understanding nothing, laughed.

Chapter 8 — Thomas Grayson

“Dad?” Trent said, half-laughing, looking at his father with contempt.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Because that is the thing about men like Trent: they always mistake terror for weakness when it belongs to someone else.

He had never in his life been truly afraid of anything, and so he could not recognize real fear when it seized the man beside him, could not understand that his father, who feared nothing Trent had ever seen, had just looked at an old mechanic’s forearm and come apart.