My sister, Clara, stood beside me, her knuckles white as she gripped the railing. I, Anna, observed the scene, my role for the evening, as always, to be the calm anchor in the storm of my sister’s marriage. Clara was married to John Johnson Jr., who was supposed to be her protector, her partner. Instead, he was the leader of the pack, the chief tormentor, a man seemingly determined to use this public gathering of his family’s most important business associates to assert his dominance in the cruelest way possible.