Chapter 5

"A ballroom dancer." He repeated it like a joke. "Ladies and gentlemen, she wants to be a ballroom dancer."Scattered laughter, a few uncomfortable smiles. The orphans at the back table sat frozen.Cornelius looked down at Daphne. The smile on his face hadn't changed, but something behind it had sharpened."Let me tell you something, sweetheart. I've been to a hundred galas—Vienna, London, Monaco—black tie, the best dancers in the world." He leaned closer. "And I have never, not once, seen a Black girl from a place like this who could dance a waltz. You know why?"Daphne said nothing. Her fingers tightened on the plastic bag."Because waltz takes breeding, education, generations of culture. It's not something you just pick up in an orphanage cafeteria." He swept his arm across the room. "This isn't a dance studio, honey. This is a dining hall. You eat lunch here."The room laughed again, louder this time—the kind of laughter that follows money, the kind that says, "We laugh because he pays us to be here."Cornelius straightened up, adjusted his cufflinks, and brought the microphone back to his lips. "But tell you what." He pointed at the floor. "Dance this waltz, right here, right now. Do it right, and I'll adopt you myself."The room erupted: two hundred people clapping, howling, raising champagne glasses. Cornelius stood on the stage grinning like a man who had just delivered the punchline of the century.At the orphan tables, not a single child moved. One girl, maybe nine years old, looked at Daphne with wide eyes and mouthed, "Don't do it."Daphne stood at the edge of the stage. The laughter washed over her like a wave she had learned to stand in a long time ago. The camera lights burned white against her face. Two hundred people stared at her like she was an animal in a cage that had just been poked with a stick.

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