That man had frightened me.

But the man standing frozen in that doorway, his careful plans collapsing around him, his uncle sitting upright and alive where a corpse was supposed to be, was not frightening at all.

He was small, and cornered, and afraid, and I understood in that moment that the confidence had only ever been a costume, worn over a hollow and calculating little core.

Cruelty is often like that, I have found.