Page 2 of Dance of Ruin

I force a smile, curling my fingers around the stem of my champagne glass, trying to keep from snapping the delicate crystal.

“I’ve actually been dancing professionally since I was seventeen,” I smile, tilting my head in faux amusement. “So—not really a hobby,” I try to add as lightly as humanly possible.

Leonard’s grip on my back tightens, a subtle warning.

Play along.

“Of course, sweetheart,” he says. His voice is smooth as silk, but there’s a weight beneath it. “But one day, you’ll want somethingreal.”

Something real.

I want to hurl my champagne in his face.

Instead, I do what I always do. Swallow my anger. Let him talk, weaving the narrative that makes him look good and makesmelook like a silly little girl who will eventually grow up and step into the role Daddy has carved out for me.

Not that I ever will.

“Wasn’t your mother a dancer too?”

This question comes from an older woman who’s just joined the small group.

“Yes,” I say stiffly. “She?—”

“Oh, she was alovelydancer,” Leonard interrupts, ever the polished statesman. He says it with a dismissive wave, as if my mother’s entire career was a passing fancy. “But of course, she left all that behind when we married. A natural transition. A real career is far more fulfilling.”

I glance at the guests around us with their polite smiles, all nodding in agreement.

Before I can stop myself, the words come out sharply. “She wasn’t just alovely dancer. She was a professional who danced with the Joffrey.” I turn to level a defiant look at the woman who asked the question. “Personally, I think it’s a tragedy that she quit at all.”

A beat of silence follows, the kind of awkward pause when someone goes off script.

Leonard’s jaw tenses almost imperceptibly before his oily smile returns. “Of course, sweetheart. She was very…graceful.”

He swiftly redirects the conversation toward safer waters. I stand there, seething, a child in a room full of adults who have decided my opinion doesn’t matter.

A few minutes later, Leonard pulls me aside, his expression neutral but his tone laced with quiet reproach. “Naomi, please. The Daughters of the Gilded Era are alwaysverygenerous to my campaign. That was Delores Cunningham you just mouthed off to, for crying out loud.”

My brows knit in confusion. "Who?"

“The Vice President of the society,” my father mutters through clenched teeth. He exhales through his nose sharply. “Politics is an art too, Naomi. It takes skill to dance through conversations at these sorts of events.”

A slow smile tugs at my lips. “Then I guess I should go practice my steps.”

Before he can reply, I turn and slip away.

I need to get out, just for a moment.

I weave my way through the crowd, offering tight smiles and murmured apologies as I nudge past women draped in designer gowns and men in tailored suits. Leonard is busy schmoozing, securing whatever future he envisions for himself.

It takes me less than a minute to find the hallway. It’s quieter here, and the ornate excess of the ballroom fades, replaced by cold marble and sleek, modern architecture. A door marked STAIRS is at the far end, unguarded. I hesitate for only a moment before pushing through.

I start climbing, my heels clicking too loudly against the concrete steps in the silence. At the top, I push open a door to the roof of the building, and the cool night air finally swallows me whole.

New York stretches out glittering before me, and I slowly inhale and exhale as if to purge my lungs of the stuffy gala downstairs. There’s not much up here: a few plastic milk crates, a metal bucket of sand stuffed with cigarette butts, a couple of empty beer bottles. But the view isincredible.

I grin as I walk over to the edge of the roof. I lean over, daring myself to look down at the cars easily thirty stories beneath me as the wind rushes over my face.

I pull back, and when I glance to the side, my brows perk up in interest. There’s a divider wall next to me, as if sectioning off another part of the rooftop, with flowers, leaves, and trailing vines poking out from the other side. When I lean out again, I smile.

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