It is not, usually, a plan.

Gavin was not, in that moment, seriously intending to do me physical harm; he was a coward and a manipulator, not a killer, and I knew the difference by long training.

What a threat like that actually is, is a test.

He was watching my face to see what I would do with it.

He was measuring whether I was the kind of person who could be silenced by fear, the way my mother had been, because if I was, then I was no obstacle, and he could go on with what he was doing.

My whole response, everything that mattered, was going to happen in the next few seconds, on my face, and he was going to read it.