The pull toward rage in that moment was not a weakness or a failure of character.

It was love, and it was righteous, and it was almost overpowering — the pure, molten fury of a man whose wife has been broken by cowards a continent away, taunted by one of them over the phone, dared to react.

Every good and protective instinct I had was screaming at me to explode.

And that is exactly why explosion was the trap.

The people who hurt those we love count on precisely this: that our love will express itself as fury, and that our fury will make us stupid, and that our stupidity will hand them the weapon they need.