Did Kim Zolciak fire Sweetie Hughes?

It looks like Rickey Smiley’s campaign to emancipate Kim Zolciak’s assistant, Sweetie Hughes, wasn’t all for nothing.

Although the reason for Sweetie’s dismissal is unclear, when Kim’s oldest daughter, Brielle, was recently questioned, via Formspring, about who’d moved into their new home, Brielle broke the news that Sweetie is no longer with the family.

The only explanation Brielle offered was, “long storyy.”

In the preview for the upcoming season of “Real Housewives of Atlanta,” premiering in November, Kim can be heard screaming for Sweetie as she’s done in prior seasons. So, it’s likely fans will see exactly what unfolded between the two.

In season three, NeNe Leakes, with whom the Zolciak family no longer communicates, got into a verbal—and nearly physical—altercation with Kim about the way she treated Sweetie.

It was that blow-up that turned the on-again-off-again friends into practical enemies.

NeNe, who’d had enough after quietly sitting back and observing how Kim ordered Sweetie around, felt that their relationship seemed more like one between a slave and a master.

That’s what prompted Rickey Smiley to use his radio show as a platform to launch the “Free Sweetie” campaign, an effort that Sweetie said ruined her life.

However, Sweetie didn’t seem to have a problem with the way Kim treated her. She defended her boss and suggested that NeNe mind her own business.

“Kim’s a great friend to me. NeNe’s traumatizing my life. She’s bringing hell to it,” Sweetie told Life & Style magazine in February.

Many fans of “RHOA” naturally assumed that Sweetie would be a regular on Kim’s upcoming reality series based on her life with new hubby Kroy Biermann, their new son and Kim’s two daughters.

Whatever happened, Brielle opted not to go into detail.

“I dont really wanna talk about it…” she wrote.

See her Formspring responses below.