I Fled the Wedding, the Obsessed CEO Lost His Sanity novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Microphone

I walked up the three stage steps with Rhys behind me carrying the box.

Daphne handed me the microphone.

Then she stepped aside and folded her hands, and waited with a kind smile.

The room was so quiet I could hear the champagne bubbles.

"Good evening," I said. "My name is Cassia Hollander. I illustrate children's books."

A few people murmured.

They knew the name from the video.

"Tonight's show is called The Fox Series. I'd like to tell you who drew it."

I turned and held out my hand.

Rhys set the box on the little table beside the stage and took out the first pencil study.

It was the heron on a post, on thin paper gone soft at the corners.

He propped it on an easel next to the framed heron from the wall.

The two pictures hung side by side under the lights.

The framed one was inked and washed with color.

The pencil one was the same bird, the same post, in the same tilt of the head.

"This is what I drew first," I said. "I draw everything in pencil before I paint it. I started this one on a Tuesday night at a kitchen table in Hyde Park, when I was twenty-two."

"Lovely," Daphne said into the silence. "She's very gifted at copying."

A few people laughed uncertainly.

"I have eleven of these studies," I said. "One for each piece on this wall."

Rhys set them up one at a time.

The hare.

The sleeping fox.

The owl in the pine.

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