Context: Short story about an antagonist who can travel backwards and forwards within time.
Problem: Struggling to explain a large plot hole in the written world.
If the antagonist can travel backwards in time to manipulate events to their control how can I maintain the reader's suspension of disbelief that history would not go completely astray a la the butterfly effect?
How can the antagonist successfully plot the course of history would unfold according to their history-manipulating event?
Edit to Add: Time travel is conducted in a single reality that once affected can be reset by going back in time and preventing the action.
Example: Antagonist returns 1775 to disrupt the midnight ride of Paul Revere alter the course of US Independence hoping that the outcome would affect the future in a way favourable to him/herself. Antagonist can go back in time AGAIN to prevent the Antagonist from disrupting the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
Final addition: I don't want to bike shed the time travel paradox. That is not the question. The question is specifically about holding the reader's attention in a way that ensure they don't ask "What if the antagonist moved a cup...which then led to World War 3 in the modern era" etc etc. It is a narrative method to keep the viewer within the sandbox of the time travel scenario.