She had not been guarding her son from a bad woman.

She had been guarding her own dominion from a good one.

And the proof was standing right in front of him, unrepentant in her kitchen, more afraid of losing control than sorry for anything she’d done — a woman who had thrown her own grandchild into a February dawn and could still say, with a straight face, that she had done it for love.

It was not love.

Desmond saw that now with the clarity of a man whose blindfold has just been cut away.

It had never once been love.