“You broke my heart the first time you cheated on me,” she told him. “Broke it into a million pieces. I was only twenty-one and a junior in college. You were twenty-two and had just graduated, and we’d only been together for a year. But you were so sorry, and oh Lord, my mother was so damn insistent. So I stayed and gave you another chance.” She turned to Russell and the powerful-looking stranger who stood beside him. “He can be persuasive, can’t he?”

Russell stared at her like she had turned into a rattlesnake, while the new, unknown man watched her with an impassive gaze. He had a hard, strong-boned face that was distinctive rather than classically handsome. In her mind’s eye, he seemed to shimmer with a dark essence, as if he was a polished onyx that caught the light while all the people around him faded into the background like flat paper dolls in a book that told someone else’s story.

“Molly,” said Russell with an embarrassed laugh and a sideways glance around the quieting room. “This is neither the time nor the place.”

Her voice sliced across his. “This is exactly the right time and place.”

Russell turned away, moving his square, bulky body like a weapon. In a low voice, he said to Austin, “Get her under control.”

Austin had whitened. His jaw clenched, and his eyes burned with a promise of retribution. Grabbing her arm with hard fingers that bit into the muscles of her biceps, he muttered, “We’re going into the kitchen. Now.”

Fury erupted, filling her body with a flash fire. She actually saw sparks of light like lightning at the edges of her vision.

Jerking her arm free, she hissed, “I believe the legal definition of assault is laying hands on another person without their permission. Or is that battery? I can never keep those two straight. Touch me again, and I’ll call the police.”

Red spots of hectic color burned in his taut face. He bit out, “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

Over his shoulder, she caught sight of the antique Japanese Satsuma vase he had given her as a wedding present twenty years ago. They had gone to Japan on their honeymoon and discovered the vase while shopping. It had cost so much money she had walked away from it, but Austin had returned to the shop to purchase it for her.

She had felt so happy then. So full of faith in their future, the shadow of his first infidelity buried well and truly in the past.

She focused all her rage and hurt on that vase. The specks of lightning at the edges of her eyesight flared, and something—some indefinable, invisible thing—shot out of her body like a thunderbolt.

Across the room, the vase slammed into the wall and shattered, and the stand toppled over.