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. He 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.”