Vanessa Bryant posted a touching tribute to her late husband, Kobe Bryant, and daughter Gianna on Christmas Day.
“Always Together, Never Apart Together Forever In Our Hearts,” Vanessa, 38, captioned two family photos via Instagram on Friday, December 25. “Kobe, Vanessa, Natalia, Gianna, Bianka and Capri.” In the first pic, Vanessa and her daughters posed together on a couch, while in the second shot, Kobe, Vanessa and their four children smiled while situated among Christmas trees.
Kobe, 41, and Gianna, 13, were among nine people who died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California, in January. The couple, who tied the knot in April 2001, also shared daughters Natalia, 17, Bianka, 4, and Capri, 18 months.
Earlier this week, Vanessa posted an Instagram Story video of the Christmas gift Khloé Kardashian sent her: a gingerbread house that included a tribute to Kobe and Gianna. The pair’s names were featured on the roof of the house alongside the rest of the family’s names.
“Khloé, thank you so much, it’s beautiful,” the former model said in the Tuesday, December 22, video. “I love it.”
Ahead of the holiday, Vanessa spoke out after her mother, Sofia Laine, sued her for financial support. The 68-year-old claimed in court documents obtained by Us Weekly that she worked unpaid as a “longtime personal assistant and nanny” for the family and the late basketball star “promised to take care of” her “for the rest of her life.”
Vanessa denied her mother’s allegations, telling Us in a statement that Laine is “continuing to try and find ways to extort a financial windfall from our family.” She added that her mom “has spiraled out of control” and is “now trying to get more money than my husband and I ever spent to provide for her while he was alive.”
“She was a grandmother who was supported by me and her son-in-law at my request,” Vanessa told Us. “She now wants to back-charge me $96 per hour for supposedly working 12 hours a day for 18 years for watching her grandchildren. In reality, she only occasionally babysat my older girls when they were toddlers. As of 10 years ago, our kids were full-time students and athletes and I didn’t have another child until 2016. Her claims are obviously false but I still tried, repeatedly, to work things out with my mother.”
Laine later claimed in a statement to Us that Vanessa has “attempted to sever all ties and renege on all obligations and agreements.”
