The Fox and the Ladybug

Part Twenty-Six: The Office

Wow, we're on chapter 26 already? Awesome!

This'll be a pretty short chapter, sorry!

I'd like to add context that in this book, Chloe doesn't have self awareness about her actions. Okay, anyways...action!

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Chloe's POV

5:23 pm

"Daddy!" I screamed to my father a few hours after talking to him about firing Lila. Sabrina was right behind me holding her arms within each other in front of her. She possessed a timid look whenever she was in the presence of the mayor, like she thought that my dad was gonna look down on her due to her wealth. Daddy was always the type to be subtle about his disdain for people with less money, which is why he gets so many wealthy fans of him politically. Only the people who experienced his discrimination knew he cared about someone's money, because the rich ones couldn't care less.

On the other hand, I think it's stupid to be so subtle about your beliefs. For example, if I find someone not to my standards, they'll leave me alone quickly enough. That wouldn't happen if I was like my father.

I'm not like him, but I do still love him. I wish he would spend more time with me though. He's always working, or on the phone, or out of town. The only time I really remember me and him together was when I was three. We were walking around Paris, laughing, talking, eating ice cream with my mother who was smiling sunshine.

I wonder why we turned out how we did, as a family. I really do wonder.

"Daddy!" I said again; louder this time, but father didn't look up from his computer. I sighed in annoyance and walked up to his laptop, then rested my hand at the top of the screen.

"Oh, yes, princess?" he asked me sheepishly. I glared at him through the lenses of my amber-encrusted, thin sunglasses that he bought for me a couple weeks ago.

"Have you fired Lila yet?" I asked, even though I was positive he didn't.

"No," he said firmly. "Your mother has found her new muse, and we can't just expel her like that. You can tell me to buy you a new necklace, or to paint the limousine pink, but Lila is very important to your mother."

I froze in place. A hundred angry thoughts were racing around my mind, and the least noticeable one was the question of why Lila Rossi is all of a sudden Audrey's muse. My loudest one was from the part of my brain that always craved my mother's attention, and to see her give it out to random kids like cotton candy at a country fair...

"What?" I said sharply, failing to stop the tornado in my head by breaking the silence. My father stared me dead in the eyes, and repeated the words that were so rare in his vocabulary.

"No," he said.

 I felt my hands tighten into little fists, and Sabrina's hand hovering over mine, summoning up the courage to comfort me. My throat felt like a thick coat of sandpaper covering the inside walls and tightening until the wall crushed each other, leaving only fury behind. The only thing I could think of doing was taking my dad's coffee mug, and slamming it on the wooden floor only cushioned by a thin layer of fancy carpet. The mug shattered instantly, leaving silence behind for just a moment before I stormed out of the office.