Cellie's POV
Nino looked at me when I came out of the bathroom with the expression of a man who had been trained to read situations and was reading this one correctly and did not know what to do with it. I walked past him toward our room.
"Did something happen?" he said, keeping pace.
"No," I said, through teeth I was keeping together with effort.
"You were in there a while."
"I'm a woman in a club bathroom, Nino, it takes time." I kept walking. "Stop asking."
He stopped asking.
I kept moving and thought about Valentina's hand on the necklace and Demetrio came when I called and the word stepsister with its specific inflection and I told myself the same things I always told myself when something like this happened: he said it was over. He told me directly. He said it and I believed him and I was not going to let Valentina dismantle that belief with a diamond necklace and a well-timed bathroom entrance.
