Because that was it, wasn’t it — that was the whole of what I had done, when you stripped away the acquisition and the ballroom and the folder full of numbers.

I had seen them.

Damian had looked at eight hundred people and seen a resource to be managed and, when convenient, robbed.

My mother had taught me to look at the same eight hundred people and see the entire point.

I did not write back anything clever.

I wrote back the only thing that was true.

It was easy to see you.

You were the only thing in that building worth looking at.