I analyze how the violence of a marginalized person towards privileged individuals is equated with the violence of society that provokes inequality in the short story «O Cobrador» (1979) by Rubem Fonseca. I examine the strategies of scarcity used by the autor to show the two violences and explore the reader’s dilemma of sympathizing with a victim who commits violent crimes. I show how the text places the reader in the vulnerable position of the privileged in whose world invisible violence towards the marginalized is allowed.