More Than Business

Chapter 133

NICKI POV

We ended up meeting with Kathandra's parents the following morning. Anita made a big breakfast with help from Rachel and Lydia bought an assortment of bagels. We had fed the triplets ahead of time and were able to contain them in the playroom for the meeting.

They were still shaken a bit but nonetheless demanded we tell them what Kathandra said to me before she jumped. Lydia had apparently been sent the surveillance from my office with audio, and they had her play it from my laptop. I opted to leave the room while they watched. When I returned they were indifferent towards me, which I expected. But we all powered through to continue the meeting.

When they showed us a picture of Kathandra's 3 year old daughter, Alima, Lydia and I decided to not only raise money to pay for Kathandra's funeral, to pay off her debts, but also some money to help with raising Alima, and to start a savings account for Alima. The looks on their faces changed from distraught to thankful in a matter of minutes.

"We know that money won't bring Kathandra back, and it can't stop you from feeling how you feel right now." I told them, "But we know that grieving is a lot easier without the added financial burden."

They nodded and agreed, then asked why haven't made any statements yet. Lydia explained that the initial wait was because I had been unconscious and unstable for almost 20hours after it happened. And that we were coping with not only Kathandra's death, but the effects of my injuries. We were working with our staff members to take better precautions in the future. But most importantly we wanted to check in on them first. Before they left, they urged us to make our statement sooner.

Lydia went back to work and set up our website to sell only suicide prevention hotline themed merchandise. There was a bar graph on the side that showed our goal of raising $500,000 for the Carson family, as well as a separate bar to show how much money was being donated to the National Suicide Prevention organization. There was a disclaimer at the bottom of the page that explained that 80% of profits will be given directly to the Carson Family, 15% to National Suicide Prevention, and the remaining 5% was ONLY to be used to cover the cost of the clothing. We were making zero profits from this campaign. There was also two buttons: one to make a donation directly to the Carson Family, and one to make a donation solely to the National Suicide Prevention organization.

Once things were all set, Lydia returned and we decided to choose our platform for the official statement. It took a lot of research on all the different platforms, and thinking of who would get reach the audience we wanted the best. We decided our target audience would be women... our line caters mostly to women, we've always represented a very pro-femme front thus we chose the Real. We figured the news and journalists and bloggers could get it all from there.

After confirming our interview with them, Lydia, Anita and Rachel began briefing me on how much information was to be disclosed and how to word things as to not victimize myself and all that jazz. Which was true, but we needed a balance between getting the full story out, accurately, without shifting the sympathy towards me.

"But at the same time, you've created this very open persona online.. are you really going to hide all of that from the public?" Rachel asked, "Like are you going to hide your scars forever and always? People are going to wonder how you went from being the queen of cleavage to amish necklines... and if you do later show the scar once it starts healing-"

"You're right." I nodded.

Eventually Lydia and I took to social media. We both only tweeted one thing and then retweeted each other, then posted them onto instagram as well.

- Still grieving, still in shock... Losing ANYONE, especially a team member is incredibly hard. Prayers for the Carson family. And I pray, that all of us, anyone who reads this message will find the help they need, and the peace and joy they deserve. ~Lydia & Nicki