But there was a second half to what her father taught her, and Sabetha, holding out that collar, had just walked her family straight into it.

But if they threaten someone under your protection, the General had said, do not argue, and do not warn them twice.

You act.

Decisively, completely, and only once.

Marisela looked at the little black collar with its cheerful golden bell, held out toward her sleeping daughter, and she felt the first half of her father’s rule quietly end and the second half begin.

She thought of him then — of Tomas Salazar, who had raised her mostly alone after her mother died, who had brought a soldier’s exactness to the small business of loving a child and made it, somehow, tender.