Black Diamond

31

Lance 

I was working on a fall shoot in Vermont when all of a sudden, my phone started blowing up with notifications. When I saw why, I thought my heart was going to drop out of my ass. Thankfully I was pretty much done with the shoot so I had my assistant pack everything up. I immediately rushed to my rental car and called Mani, only to immediately get her voicemail. Oh no, I thought to myself, I don't have a good feeling about this. I went to my contacts and dialed Beyoncé's number. She picked up on the fourth ring, "Bey! How the hell did this happen?!" I exclaimed, not giving her a chance to say hello. She groaned on the other end, "I don't know, but I know my snake of a father has something to do with this. I've been trying to reach him, but no luck. He might be dumb, but I see he ain't stupid. He can't hide from me forever. I want his fucking head on a platter for what he did," She growled. I shifted uncomfortably my seat. Angry Beyoncé is a scary Beyoncé. 

"This is all his fault," she sniffled, "and mines. I should have never left Mani in the first place. If I was a better mother, I wouldn't have left her and now look, people online aren't even bashing me, they're attacking my baby, and she's the most innocent out of all of this. This is why Mani wanted to be kept a secret, and this is why I never wanted Matthew to know about her. Everything was going fine, until he came and pulled the rug out from under us. He stripped us from the right to tell the public on our terms, and in our own way. I can't help but to feel like this is going to push me and Mani's relationship back to square one."

I stopped her, "Bey, calm down, the only way this will affect you and Mani's relationship is if you let it. You two have come so far, you've solidified your relationship with one another, nothing is going to change that. You knew the media was going to find out about you two, albeit we didn't expect it to be this soon, or this way, but we knew it was going to happen. That's why you two were strengthening your foundation, for such a time as this. Now it's time to do damage control. We can't be emotionally driven with how we handle this, hell if we did, I would have broken your husband's jaw the moment I landed in California after Mani told me what he did, but I didn't. I remained calm. And that's what you need to do as well. We have to think logically, because now it's like we're being arrested, anything we say or do from this point on can and will be used against us. So for right now, fuck what the people are saying, all they know is hearsay, and even though it's true, they don't have to know that. This is our life, and our business. What matters right now is making sure our daughter is ok, because she is the one who is the most affected, nothing of this magnitude has ever happened to her before, I know she is probably going through it right now, it's already bad enough that we're all the way in the east coast and she's in the west coast going through this by herself, well she has Zendaya and Ryan, but she doesn't have the protection of her parents with her. Have you talked to her? I called her before I called you and her phone went to voicemail."

"Really? I called her the moment I found out I called her and it went to voicemail too. You don't think anything is wrong, do you?" she asked with a slight panic in her voice.

I tried to reassure her everything was probably fine, but if we're being completely honest, I wasn't quite sure myself. I was actually freaking out because not only has my child been exposed to the world as Beyoncé's secret daughter, but I'm hundreds of miles away from her and I can't reach her. But I need to remain calm, because me being calm is helping Bey to remain calm, "I'm sure everything is fine, tell you what, you call Ryan and I'll call Zendaya, and see what they say, and then after that we'll go from there. I know you're mad at your dad, I am too, I'm beyond mad, but please don't do anything crazy, we don't need to be adding anything on this craziness."

She sighed, "I can't make any promises. Call me when you finish talking to Z." And with that she hung up. I took a deep breath, one issue at a time, Lance, one issue at a time. I called Zendaya, she immediately picked up, "Hey Mr. P, how's it going?" She asked with a bit of a nervous tone, it made me sit up in worry.