Sophie hadn’t spoken much all evening. In fact, she rarely spoke in public at all. Since the accident two years earlier—the accident that left her legs dependent on braces and her spirit bruised—words had become fragile things.
And now she was offering one.
“Sir,” Mr. Whitmore snapped sharply, his voice slicing through the air. “Please control your daughter. This is a five-star establishment. Our staff are not entertainers.”
A faint murmur rippled across the room.
Richard’s jaw tightened.
This dinner had been his compromise. Sophie’s therapists had insisted she needed exposure—real places, real people. “She needs to feel part of the world again,” they had said.
So he brought her to The Grand Meridian, Manhattan’s most discreet luxury restaurant. Private corners. No photographers. No spectacle.
And now his daughter was standing—braces visible—to ask the only Black waitress in the room for a dance.
“Sophie,” he said quietly, voice edged with warning. “Sit down.”
She didn’t move.
Her arm remained extended.
Naomi didn’t move either.