I decided to say something profound as I left with KAD and Nikki. I turned, glared at Cherie. “I truly pity you. The worst thing about being lied to is realizing you weren’t even worth the truth.”
I heard Cherie yell out, “Bitch!” and almost lost it for real. Diederik grabbed my lower arm and told me to keep walking. If he hadn’t been there, I would’ve slammed her head against that sidewalk until I cracked her skull open. Little did I pick up on the fact that that thought was actually a premonition of what was to come.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Friday, November 9, 2012
11:12 p.m.
Atlanta, Georgia
I rushed into the house and up to my bedroom and slammed the door. Then I slid down to the floor on the opposite side and started crying. I couldn’t believe that I had done that. It was never my intention to physically hurt someone, even Cherie. I wasn’t sure if she was dead or alive, but I was praying for the better of the two scenarios. But what if she was in a coma, or if she’d have to have some limbs amputated. All kinds of thoughts ran through my head and none of them were good.
Diederik knocked on my door. “Where have you been? Kagiso said you disappeared on him at the restaurant.”
At first, I refused to answer, but he wasn’t going to leave me alone until I made something up.
“Wicket?” He was pounding on the door and trying the knob, but I had locked it. “Ladonna?”
“I’m fine,” I managed to get out. “Just tired. Kagiso is overreacting. You guys treat me like a baby. Sometimes I need some space . . . not to mention privacy. I’m entitled to that.”
Then I heard Antonio and Kagiso walking down the hall. “Is she all right?” Antonio asked Diederik.
“She says she needed space,” he replied to him. “And that we don’t give her any privacy.”
Kagiso said, “Bullshit. She could have told me that she needed space instead of running off like that.”
“Maybe she needs to go see that lady doctor again,” Antonio remarked.
“Something’s definitely going on here,” Diederik said. “Kagiso, where do you think she went tonight?”
“Hell if I know. Like I said, she ditched me like some espionage movie. When I went to look for her in the bathroom, she was gone and no one saw her leave the place.”
“Next time, you need to call the authorities right away,” Antonio chimed in. “Anything could’ve happened. From now on, she doesn’t go anywhere without at least two of us with her.”
“And one of us always stands outside bathrooms from now on,” Diederik said.
“Her father will kill us if anything happens to her.” Kagiso was getting too melodramatic in his tone and, quite frankly, they were beginning to piss me off.
They were taken aback when I flung the door open, after drying my tears. “You all do realize that I can hear you talking about me, right?” I eyed each one of them with disdain. “I’m not a fucking baby. I’m your boss. You don’t tell me what to do. I tell you what to do.”
I brushed past them and headed downstairs to the great room to pour myself a drink. I was still trembling and worried about the consequences of my actions. When Antonio mentioned the police, that had been a reality check for me. What if red lights and sirens flooded my driveway at any second? There were freaking security cameras everywhere in Atlanta, not to mention the possibility that someone had caught the entire thing on a cell phone. I had been covered up, but anything was possible.
KAD was in the room with me, but keeping their mouths shut, while I crammed a glass with ice from the bin behind the bar and mixed some Diet Coke with Mount Gay Rum. I took my drink and went and sat on the leather sectional.
Kagiso must have been the elected spokesperson after they exchanged glances. He sat down beside me, but didn’t get too close. “We’re only concerned about you. Surely, you know that much. You’re our boss, but we also consider you to be a friend. And in my case, I’ll even admit that my feelings go much deeper than that.”
I stared into Kagiso’s eyes and sighed.
“Man, this isn’t the time for all that,” Antonio stated sarcastically. “She’s not digging you like that.”
Kagiso snapped at him. “And how do you know that?”
“Because she’s not checking for any of us like that. Not for some sort of relationship.”
Diederik kept quiet. To say that it was an awkward moment wouldn’t have cut it. Everyone in the room was aware that I had done some freaky shit with all three of them over the years. I’m sure that they had compared notes. Spending time with Jonovan had put them all in their feelings, I was sure. The ironic part was that he was the only one I had yet to share my wild side with. Not sure that would ever happen, either.
“Listen, I’m home now, safe and sound. Can I have some privacy?” I asked. “I assure you that I’m not going anywhere else tonight. I’m going to finish my drink and go to bed.”
Kagiso reluctantly got up and walked off in a huff. Antonio followed in silence. Diederik was the only one who wished me “good night” quietly.
I turned on the local nightly news to see if they said anything about Cherie being the victim of a brutal attack. Nothing. I truly did feel bad about what I had done. I had no right to hurt her like that, even after what she had helped the others do to me.
I ended up making three or four more drinks and my emotions took over. I realized that if I were ever going to have closure, I had to go back to the beginning. I had to go back to the source of all my pain. The one person who had victimized me first and had caused my entire life to spiral out of control.
* * *
“What’s wrong, Ladonna?” Daddy snatched up his cell phone in Buenos Aires. “What’s happened?”
I was quiet on the other end, sans my breathing. It was 4:00 a.m. in Atlanta, which made it 6:00 a.m. in Argentina. He knew that I never called at that time of the morning so it had to be an emergency.
“Ladonna? Baby, what is it?”
“Daddy, I need you,” I finally whispered. “Can I explain when you get here?”
“I can have my jet fueled in an hour and be there by six o’clock this evening.”
“Thank you.”
“But do you need anything right now? Where are your bodyguards?”
“I’m safe. It’s not that. I did something that—”
“Don’t say another word over the phone. See you in twelve hours.”
He hung up the phone and it dawned on me that he was afraid that I was about to confess to a crime over a phone line. Damn shame that he was right. A crime! I’d never done such a thing; not to that degree.
My next call was to Marcella; not to tell her about what I had done to Cherie but to ask if she could arrange for me to sneak into the hospital to see my mother. I wanted to see her, but I couldn’t risk being seen. Between her and Daddy’s money and resources, I needed to make it happen somehow. Until I faced my mother, everything else that I was doing was for naught.
Marcella’s reaction was similar to my father’s after getting a call way over in the morning. She agreed to stop by my house about three. I didn’t even care anymore about going to the cabin. I would tell all my servants to leave, except for Nikki and my bodyguards. That way, there would be nothing for anyone to go to the press about. I didn’t trust my household staff, confidentiality agreements or not. Matter of fact, once Daddy arrived, I was going to have him make KAD leave the premises as well. They wouldn’t be bold enough to break bad with him over it. No one was that foolish, not if they wanted to have a job any longer. While I was technically the boss, and the queen of the castle, no one overlooked the fact that Richard Sterling was the king!
* * *
Daddy got into town right when he said he would and by seven, he was sitting across from me at the mixing board in my studio with a half glass of his favorite whiskey, Dalmore 62. Even though everyone else had vacated the property, as he’d instructed, I still felt more comfortable being in a soundproof space. H
e took a drag of his cigar and waited for me to spill my guts.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her!”
“Her?”
“Cherie.”
He set his glass down. “Two questions. Is she alive and are there any witnesses that I need to pay off?”
“I don’t believe I killed her. She was still breathing when I left and, as far as I know, there were no witnesses.”
Daddy closed his eyes for a brief second and sighed. “Atlanta was a bad idea. That was obvious to me from the start. I should’ve stopped this a long time ago. Tomorrow morning, we’re headed back to New York; all of us.”
“But let me explain. I was—”
Daddy held his palm up. “Let me stop you right there, Ladonna. What we’ve always feared about your condition has obviously come to pass and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure this goes away, but it ends right here and now. You’re not mentally stable enough to be anywhere near those people.”
“I lost control. I realize that, but it was because she called me a bitch the other day and something within me . . .”
“Snapped?” He took another drag of his cigar and tapped the ashes off the tip into a dish. “You snapped and you could’ve killed somebody. For all you know, you may have killed somebody.”
He made a quick phone call and then hung up.
“I have someone checking on Cherie. She’ll be discreet.”
“Can I finish telling you what happened last night? Please!”
“If it’ll prevent you from ever, ever telling someone else, then go ahead. Whatever you did, I love you unconditionally and it won’t change that.”
“I know. I also know that you’re the only person still breathing who I could ever fully trust.”
He leaned back in the swivel leather chair he was sitting in. “So what happened last night?”
“Believe it or not, I was out on a date.” I blushed, and his face didn’t change at all. “I’ve been seeing Jonovan for a couple of months.”
Daddy raised an eyebrow.
“No, we haven’t gone there yet, and he doesn’t know about my issues with intimacy.”
Daddy actually wasn’t aware of my sexual behavior either, not totally. He was aware that I freaked out whenever things transgressed too far with a man, and that I would shut it all down with a quickness. That I would break things off before they ever truly got going and make up an excuse why I didn’t want to continue spending time with them. He didn’t have a clue about my sadistic activities, though. I would’ve died if he ever found out, not because I felt that he would judge me. Like he’d just reminded me, his love for me was unconditional. I was too ashamed to admit that I was doing such things and, besides, the fact that I was beating people would only lend credence to his theory of me being a violent person. Having pets and them voluntarily allowing me to harm them had probably been the main reason why I hadn’t “snapped” sooner. I hadn’t had any “sessions” with them since that night in Hilton Head, so maybe that was part of the reason.
I voiced what I was thinking out loud. “I’m all fucked-up. Maybe I truly am bat-shit crazy like my mother.”
Daddy shook his head. “Your mother is a paranoid schizophrenic with a bipolar disorder.”
“Yes, and both of those disorders are genetic.”
“What you have is caused by childhood trauma. Two different things. Do you hear voices in your head?”
“No.”
“Do you constantly feel like people are plotting against you?”
“Well, no. But I do have mood swings, so maybe I’m bipolar.”
“You’re not, Ladonna. I had you tested for everything as a teenager and since those are genetic, you would’ve shown traits back then. They scanned your brain and none of that is the case.” He sighed. “But intermittent explosive disorder is definitely nothing to play with. I’ve done all that I can to protect you, but you coming here was not a wise decision. That’s become quite apparent.”
His phone rang. He listened for a brief moment and then hung up.
“She’s at Emory Hospital, but she’s alive and expected to recovery. She has several broken ribs and she almost lost her left eye, but they’ll be able to reattach it.”
I gasped and put my right hand over my mouth to stifle a scream.
“New York, tomorrow!” Daddy said. “Nikki can stay behind and close up the house, put it on the market.”
There was no sense in debating with him, when he was right. I needed to leave Atlanta before I did something even worse to Bianca. After all, I hated her the most. The inevitable was the inevitable.
“Okay, I’ll go back, but we can’t leave tomorrow. Maybe the next day. There’s another reason why I asked you to come here. I already ran this by Marcella earlier today and she’s agreed to help me.”
Daddy eyed me suspiciously. “Help you do what?”
“Talk to Momma!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sunday, November 11, 2012
7:12 a.m.
Smyrna, Georgia
The Broadmore Institute was on the outskirts of Atlanta. Momma had started out in an overcrowded, no-one-gave-a-damn psychiatric hospital. I had assumed she was still in that place until Daddy informed me that he’d had her moved a long time ago.
I was upset. I felt like she deserved the worst treatment that she could get. He reminded me that she had been born with mental issues, which led to her developing various substance addictions, which was culminated with being raped by her own uncle in the back of a car, which resulted in me. He felt like basic human kindness—and the fact that paying for it was a nonissue for him—dictated that he pay for her care.
Because he was doing that, and had made an additional huge donation to the place, getting in to see her was like shooting fish in a barrel instead of going through a lot of red tape and swearing people to secrecy. No one knew why Richard Sterling was paying for her care, and her confinement had happened so long ago, in another institution, that Daddy had simply paid to have her records doctored so that there was no mention of cutting up her daughter’s face. They knew that she was crazy and needed to be treated but that was all.
“She’s never told them about me?” I asked as we pulled up into the rear lot early on Sunday morning, when both staff and visitors would be at a minimum. “Why do they think we’re coming here?”
“I told Dr. Broadmore that you wanted to meet Denise. He knows that you’re my daughter. He thinks that since you moved here, you’re curious about meeting the woman who I’ve paid for all this time.”
“And who do they think Momma is to you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never offered up an explanation. I’m sure they speculated about a lot of different scenarios, but who cares? That’s not their place to be concerned with the who and why, just the money.”
“Maybe she doesn’t even remember she has a daughter,” I said, halfway disappointed.
“Actually, paranoid schizophrenics tend to have excellent memory. If she has mentioned it, they probably didn’t believe her.”
* * *
Marcella was waiting for us when we walked in the back door, escorted by a security officer. Then all three of us were taken to a room that was nothing but four walls and a table with four chairs. I paced the floor impatiently while I waited for a male nurse to go get Momma.
Once he walked her in, Daddy told him to leave and wait outside. He did as told without saying a word.
Momma stared at me. I stared at her. Marcella and Daddy stared at both of us.
Marcella broke the silence. “Denise, do you—”
“Caprice,” Momma whispered.
I took a step back. “You know who I am?”
“Of course. A mother always recognizes her child.” She ran her fingertips down her left cheek. “What happened? Why’d you let them do that to you?”
“Denise, maybe you should sit down,” Marcella suggested.
Momma looked at Marcella and then at Daddy. “Who are you people??
??
Daddy cleared his throat. “Actually, I’m her—”
“Lawyer,” Marcella cut in. “Mr., um, Langford is Caprice’s lawyer, and I’m her, uh, friend.”
I furrowed up my brow, wondering what Marcella was doing, and she made a gesture toward Daddy to go along with her lies. Then it dawned on me why she had done it. If Momma slipped and said that Richard Sterling was my father, and also told people that her daughter had come to see her, all of the damn cats would be out of the bag.
Momma walked toward a chair but never took her eyes off me, to the point where she almost missed the chair as she sat down and would’ve landed on the floor. Daddy rushed over to help her and held the chair for her.
Momma didn’t ask why I needed a lawyer, and I’m glad she didn’t. I was already working over some scenarios in my mind in case she did. She was now in her late fifties but looked all of eighty. Her hair was brittle, her skin was dry, and she had several missing teeth. All of a sudden, I cared.
“I thought you said they were taking good care of her in here?” I asked Daddy.
He looked her over as well and then replied, “I’ll have her moved tomorrow.”
I sat down across from her, trembling. “Momma, do you ever regret what you did to me?”
“You mean your face?”
“Yes.”
She continued to stare at the side of my face where the scar had once been. Then she shook her head vehemently. “No, no, no, I don’t regret it. I did it to save you.”
“Save me from who?” My voice was cracking. “Uncle Donald was already dead. He couldn’t hurt any of us anymore.”
“No, he’s not dead. I see him all the time.”
“What?”
Marcella and Daddy just stood there. They were both there more for moral support than anything else. Moral and emotional in case I lost it right then and there. It was difficult not to.
“Donald comes into my room every night and pulls down my panties and . . .” She lowered her eyes to the table. “He does nasty things to me.”