If that was supposed to make him feel better, it had failed miserably. Nobody had trusted him, huh? Not even Buffy? Great. Good to know that the people who were supposed to know him better than anyone couldn't even entertain the possibility that he might have had decent intentions in taking over Wolfram & Hart. But then, he couldn't really blame them -- because the truth was, they didn't know him anymore. He hadn't let them. He hadn't let anyone. He had made a deal with the devil specifically to ensure that they wouldn't know him, at least not his reason for agreeing to the deal. "It's not your fault," he conceded. "I wasn't exactly transparent with my motivations. And you're hardly the first people to assume the worst of me in the absence of evidence to the contrary." If his best friend in the world could think he would kill his own son, nothing should've surprised him.