Sonny
had no idea how long he sat there on the floor beside Alexis, his
head in his hands. After her ominous pronouncement, he had run out
and had torn through the house and had checked the grounds near
the residence. He'd found nothing. so he'd returned to her and they
had both subsided into shocked silence, neither knowing what to
say. The final strains of the aria had long since faded, yet the
two of them were still huddled together on the carpet.
He and Alexis had a child. A daughter. That angelic little girl
he’d held in his arms only once when she’d impulsively
hugged him at Kelly’s. He swallowed painfully and lifted his
eyes, full of unshed tears, to the ceiling.
What crime am I atoning for this time, God, that you put my baby
right in my reach and then let evil snatch her away?
Moments later, he shook himself. He realized that he had to act;
he couldn’t allow himself the luxury of shock or self-pity.
He had to take care of Alexis, and then set about looking for his
daughter. When he found Helena, he knew that no force on earth could
keep his hands from her neck.
He was jerked out of his dark thoughts by a whimpered moan issued
from Alexis’ throat. He turned to her and saw the tears on
her face dripping from her chin onto her hands. “Stay with
me, Alexis. It’s gonna be okay. We’ll get her back, but
you gotta stay with me, okay?”
Sonny knew she needed to feel a connection with him so he lifted
a hand to her jaw, turning her to him, cupping her face with a touch
that was infinitely gentle. “Come on, look at me. Focus on
me, Lex. I’m telling you I’ll get her back. You just have
to stay with me.”
His words touched her somewhere hidden and deep. They felt almost
as tangible as his fingers on her cheek. She hated crying, showing
weakness in front of anyone. But this was different. This was Sonny.
She saw a mirror image of her own anguish in his face. He understood.
And there was nothing she would rather do at the moment than trust
him.
“Do you think you can stand up?”
She bit her lip and shook her head. “I tried but…”
He placed his hand on her hip, the skin warming her through the
thin material of her slip. Unconsciously she leaned into his touch.
His left arm slipped under her knees and he lifted her in one fluid
movement onto the bed. Sweeping the pile of clothes out of the way,
he eased her under the quilt and tucked the edges around her quaking
limbs.
“It’s the shock, baby. We gotta keep you warm,” he
told her, and with a tenderness that no one would believe Sonny
Corinthos possessed, he brushed the disheveled tendrils of her hair
back behind her ears. He watched her closely as he asked her, “Sweetheart,
can you tell me what happened here?”
She took a deep breath; when she answered him it all came out in
one long rush. “S-somebody…somebody took my baby…
they drugged me…held s-something over my face…and took
my baby, Sonny.”
“Was it Helena?”
“No. She sent someone, a man.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“I—no, my eyes were blurry. I couldn’t see, “
she moaned. “God, Sonny, I tried. I just couldn’t see
him. I’m sorry. I’M SO SORRY!”
He sat next to her on the bed and framed her face with both of his
hands. “Shh, it’s okay,” he comforted. “I know
you tried. You couldn’t have stopped him. It’s not your
fault.”
Sonny’s eyes narrowed, his hands tightening reflexively on
her face. “Did he—did he touch you?”
“No, he didn’t. He just—he just took her.”
Sonny sighed, the sound raw in the quiet room. What the hell did
he do now? Their child had been kidnapped by a woman who was psychotic
at best. There were absolutely no witnesses, and he hadn’t
the vaguest idea where to begin to find the henchman of an international
criminal. A criminal with almost limitless resources. He was used
to fighting enemies who were too brazenly arrogant to hide from
conflict. The kind who stuck it to you because they wanted something
from you: money, drugs, manpower, territory. What the hell did Helena
want except to torture Alexis?
Sonny’s associates were the “Meet me on the corner and
we’ll settle this” kind of people. Not nut cases who liked
to play mind games from secret hideaways and such. It pained him
to admit that he didn’t have the slightest clue as to how to
start searching for Helena.
He couldn’t even believe the suggestion had passed his lips;
it tasted bitter on his tongue. But this was his kid. He couldn’t
let his own prejudices get in the way of finding her.
Alexis recoiled as she heard the police commissioner’s name.
“No!” she exploded. “No police.”
“Honey, you know how I feel about those idiots. Most days I’d
like to use Taggert for target practice. But—you know—they
have certain resources I don’t have. They can maybe get information
from agencies all over the world—“
“No! Helena will be watching. She’ll have someone watching
all of us…maybe she already does. She’ll punish us for
calling the authorities…she’ll punish Krissy.”
Sonny grimaced, not even wanting to imagine how the sick witch would
“punish” his child.
Alexis read his mind, and her eyes took on a vague faraway look
as she revisited a place in her memory that she had no desire to
ever see again. A violent shudder passed through her. “She—she’ll
put her in a dark place…a cellar, an unused attic room, a c-closet.
One time when I was really small…she put me in a-a cardboard
packing box. She sealed it. And she stood there daring me to break
free. I screamed and screamed but she just left me there. It seemed
like days before Stefan found me…”
Sonny stared at her, once again struck by the fact that her childhood
hell had also been his. The connection between them was still undeniably
strong. No amount of time apart could weaken it.
Alexis returned her focus to him. “Promise me you won’t
call the police… they’ll only make it worse. They don’t
know how to handle this, Sonny!”
Sonny ran a hand over his face, a weary expression there. He wanted
to tell her, “Well, Alexis, I have no idea how to handle this
either.” But he wouldn’t say that. She was trusting him
right now, and she needed to hold on to any hope he could offer.
So he bit his tongue to ignore the fear coiled like a snake in his
belly, and he looked into her eyes with as much reassurance as he
could muster.
“Okay, we’ll play this your way, no cops.”
“Good,” Alexis sighed. “We just have to wait…hope
she’s enjoying her game…that she wants to draw it out
a little more. Then she’ll contact us.”
“She’ll contact us,” she repeated, this time her
words taking on the uncertainty of a wish, a hope, a prayer. “She
will, you’ll see. She loves the game. She’ll contact us.
She has to.”
He realized that her control was slipping again. So he shed his
suit jacket and his shoes, then he slid his arms around her waist,
pushing them both down to the mattress together. As if it were the
most natural thing in the world, her hands entangled in his and
they spooned together on her bed, each drawing warmth and strength
from the other.
“You--you don’t have to do this,” she whispered,
even as she leaned further into the heat of his body. “I know
that eventually you’ll have to go…explain to Carly…
to Michael. I understand. I’ll be okay here.”
He didn’t answer. She felt him move, draw something from his
pocket. She heard the beeping sound of a cell phone dialing, heard
a man’s voice answer on the other end. “Yeah, Johnny,”
she heard Sonny say. “I’m gonna be here for the duration.
Go back to town, put Marco and Max on Carly and the kids. Tell Carly
I’m unavailable for a while. I’ll explain it to her later…Yeah,
I know. I’ll have to pay you a bonus for taking the earful
of expletives she’s gonna hurl at you. Thanks, man…One
more thing, stop by the warehouse and pick up the suitcase I keep
there. I’ll be needing those clothes. And Johnny, no one—NO
ONE--is to know I’m on this island till I want them to…Yeah
that definitely includes Carly…Jason? He’s on another
assignment. I’ll contact him when and if I need to. Take care
of this for me, John. Alright, good man.”
He snapped the phone shut and reached over her shoulder to place
it on her bedside table. “It hurt like hell just now that you
thought I’d leave you to face this on your own,” Sonny
whispered. “But I’m gonna just assume it’s the stress
of what's just happened.”
“I’m s-sorry. I just meant, your family is important to
you...”
“You are important to me, too. I know in the last few
years I haven’t shown you that—”
“I haven’t shown you that either,” she admitted.
“Yeah, well, now things are different. And there is no way
in hell you or I are going through this alone. We wouldn’t
make it. We need each other. So I’m not leaving, Alexis.”
His arms tightened around her and she sighed into him feeling the
most secure she’d felt in ages…maybe forever. “We
need to rest,” he said. “Clear our heads so that we can
think. And wait for Helena to get word to us.”
She nodded her understanding, exhaustion quickly taking her over.
As her heavy eyes closed, she heard him whisper, “I’m
not leaving you, Alexis. I promise.”
If Marcus Taggert had thought the night was odd before, he certainly
knew it was getting stranger by the minute now. He had been out
on the docks for his evening jog earlier when he’d spotted
a very distraught looking Sonny Corinthos boarding a speedboat bound
for Spoon Island. He had stopped to watch the progress of the little
vessel captained by Sonny’s personal bodyguard, Johnny O’Brien.
It was common knowledge that the beautiful Alexis Davis, formerly
Corinthos’ lawyer, lived on Spoon Island now. But she also
reportedly hated the gangster’s guts. So why had Sonny been
going out there tonight?
Taggert just couldn’t resist a good mystery when it had to
do with the dapper don of Port Charles. So he had jogged himself
to a diner, grabbed a double grande cappuccino, and had then set
up his own unofficial stake out behind a bait and tackle shop. He
just knew that that little speedboat would return.
And return it had, about an hour or so ago with O’Brien alone
on board. The man had exited the craft and walked purposefully out
to the street to the Corinthos limo. He’d left his boss behind?
Was there some sort of reunion going on between the classy lady
lawyer and her former client? The boys at the station had taken
bets as to whether Corinthos had ever gotten lucky or not. The good
women always fell for the bad boys, it seemed. Kicked men like Ned
Ashton to the curb in favor of the “Sonnys” of this world.
But as he’d sat at the dock, freezing because he’d downed
the last drop of his coffee, Taggert saw O’Brien return with
what looked like a suitcase. The guard mounted the speedboat and
took off again towards the island. What the hell was going on?
Just as Taggert was busy puzzling that out, he heard something crash
on the docks. He came out from behind the bait shop to check it
out. There on the upper level of the pier he spotted the very blond
very angry Carly Corinthos. She was staring out at the ocean where
she’d clearly been watching her husband’s speedboat leave
the dock. Tears streamed down her face as she focused on the boat
till it was out of sight.
Taggert grimaced. The front window of a nearby shop had been broken.
It seemed Carly had thrown something through it. He swung his gaze
toward Wyndemere. By the looks of it, there was soon going to be
a mob war of a very different kind in Port Charles.
