I had wondered, on some level, whether I was wrong — whether there was some innocent explanation I was too suspicious to see, whether I had just summoned my best friend to my home under false pretenses and was about to humiliate myself.

That hope, thin as it was, died in the half-second it took Damian’s face to travel from Valentina to me.

Because an innocent man’s face, in that doorway, would have shown confusion — why is Valentina here, why do you have my phone, what is happening. Damian’s face showed none of that.

It showed calculation.

It showed a man who understood instantly and completely what had occurred, who skipped right past confusion to the problem of what to do now, whose eyes did the fast flat math of a person caught.

There was no innocence to find in it, not a flicker.