His ruin was not something I did to him.

It was only the shape his own choices finally took, once they met a system he could not corrupt.

That distinction mattered to me, and matters still, because it is the difference between justice and revenge, and I was determined to be on the right side of it.

Revenge is something you do to a person; you reach out and inflict a harm on them, chosen by you, calibrated to your anger.

That is not what happened to the Prescotts, and I want to be honest that it would have been easy, and satisfying, to make it what happened.