Preston’s ruin would have looked the same whether I had engineered it out of pure vengeance or pure justice; the SUVs, the audit, the handcuffs, all of it photographs the same either way.

But they are not the same, and the difference is entirely a matter of what governs them.

Revenge is governed by my feelings — by how much I want him to suffer, calibrated to my pain, unbounded by anything except the limits of what I can get away with.

It answers to me.

Justice is governed by his actions — by what he actually did, measured against what the law actually prescribes, bounded by the evidence and the statute, indifferent to how I feel about it.

It answers to the truth.