General Salazar’s jaw had set like stone.

He did not raise his voice.

He never did.

“That table,” he said, very quietly, into the silence, “could have put my granddaughter in the ground.”

For a moment no one in the room could look at anyone else.

Marisela sat very still with Alma against her, and she made herself breathe, slowly, the way she had trained herself to breathe when the situation was worst and the temptation to react was strongest — because the thing rising in her now was not the cold discipline of the ballroom the night before.