“My daughter.

My little Seraphina.”

The whole meaning of the room inverted in that instant, and everyone in it understood, and no one could look away.

A minute before, the arithmetic of the ballroom had been simple and settled: at the top, the billionaire whose favor they had all come to court; near the bottom, a woman in a ten-dollar dress who’d been told to wait by the restrooms.

That was the order of things, as fixed and obvious as gravity.

And now the man at the very top was on the floor, on his knees, on the polished marble in his thousand-dollar suit, weeping up at the woman at the very bottom as though she were the only person of worth in the entire gleaming hall.