This was the other thing, the thing her father had warned her about, the thing that lived underneath the discipline and only ever woke when someone reached for the people she was sworn to protect.

She had felt it exactly twice before in her life, both times overseas, both times in the half-second before she did something decisive.

She felt it now, sitting in a drawing room in Connecticut, looking at a woman who had arranged a marble table so that a five-week-old might fall.

And she let it rise, and she looked at it clearly, and then she set it down — not because the rage was wrong, but because acting on it was exactly, precisely what Sabetha had spent weeks trying to make her do.

The whole scheme had been built to provoke a reaction the family could point to.

Marisela would not give it to them, even now, even for this.