They mistook my powerlessness for pliability.

But those are not the same thing.

A person can have no money and no power at all and still have a line they will not cross, still possess the one form of wealth that cannot be taken or bought, which is the refusal to become the kind of person who lets a murder happen in the next room because stopping it is inconvenient.

That was the one asset of mine they never thought to account for, because it was the one asset they did not themselves possess, and so could not imagine in anyone else.