They either assumed he was my father or my older husband or they figured I was a mistress. We ate porterhouse at big clubby steakhouses with red banquettes and the waiters flirted with me. He had only a picture of the daughter on his desk. He had two children, a girl and a boy the boy was mentally challenged, and Vic somewhat kept this from me and the other people beneath him. He had a great vocabulary and a neat combover and an extensive collection of fine hats. He was generous, scooping creamed spinach onto everyone else’s plate before his own. He ate and drank voraciously but there was a dignity to his excess. He was very intelligent and clean and had a warm face. He was my boss, and for a long time before anything happened, I looked up to him. His arms were pale and soft and I couldn’t stop looking at them. I’d seen him only once in casual clothes, a t-shirt and jeans, and it disturbed me very much.

The sauce was thick and rust-colored and there was a bright sprig of parsley at the top. I was eating a bowl of tagliatelle Bolognese. On the exposed brick walls hung photographs of old Italian women rolling gnocchi across their giant floured fingers.

Do you see how this is going? But I wasn’t always that way. He did it in a restaurant where I was having dinner with another man, another married man.

He was a gluttonous man and when his blood came out it looked like the blood of a pig. I drove myself out of New York City where a man shot himself in front of me. Her short stories have won two Pushcart Prizes, and she lives with her husband and daughter in New England. She has contributed to The New York Times, New York, Esquire, Elle, Glamour, and many other publications. The following is excerpted from Lisa Taddeo's latest novel, Animal, about female rage at its rawest and an exploration of the fallout from a male-dominated society.

Lisa taddeo animal a novel