Click. Click. Click.
Confident footfalls echoed in the narrow corridor. Marble flooring gleamed from a recent cleaning and new lighting fixtures lit up the area in a warm glow but the Prada pumps adorning the feet of the WSB agent took little notice of the unusually expensive surroundings. There were more pertinent issues at hand. The sentries flanking the holding room straightened immediately upon seeing their superior and they nodded deferentially to her as she stopped in front of the doorway.
“How is he?”
“He’s been mannerly. Doesn’t raise his voice. Got a bit snippy when I wouldn’t bring him Sumarokov. “The guard hesitated before voicing his next thought. “I think he knows what’s going on.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Of course he’d know. It would be disappointing otherwise. With a flick of her head, the door was electronically opened and she entered the cozy holding cell. Stefan Cassadine sat in the corner of the room, looking studious and well kept for someone who’d been taken in the middle of the night without so much as a warning. Reading the New York Times from 3 days earlier, he looked as though he’d been waiting for her visit for some time. He raised his gaze to meet hers and reared back slightly, genuinely surprised.
“Dara!” he declared, recovering quickly. Folding his paper expertly, he stood, ever the gracious host.
“Agent Jensen,” Dara corrected, briefly flashing her identification.
“Forgive me, Agent Jensen.” Stefan offered a genial smile, hiding his general annoyance with the surprise. In his life, he’d ordered countless background checks on individuals who even remotely crossed paths with his family. Dara Jensen had been profiled almost immediately upon their arrival in Port Charles and nothing had been revealed of her career in the WSB. Had he known he certainly wouldn’t have allowed Nikolas to pursue her professionally.
Or himself, romantically as it became.
Obviously, a change was in order with the security personnel. Dara wasted no time with pleasantries and instead got to the matter at hand.
“I’m sorry for the abruptness of last night. Alexis moved a little quicker than we anticipated.”
After taking a seat next to him, Dara continued to bring Stefan up to speed. “She’s fine. She placed Kristina with a secure family, but we are keeping a watch on her as well. She and Gia Campbell are flying to Paris as we speak. Neither is aware of our presence.”
Stefan nodded slowly. “Nikolas?”
“He’s being kept up to date. He was the one who insisted on you being brought here,” Dara said, indicating to the room around her. Stefan nodded again. Barely 25 and his son was already living up to the Cassadine name. Holding a loved one captive was not an unusual first step. “It was a wise choice,” he allowed. Instead of attempting to exert authority over his Father, a fruitless endeavor, Nikolas had resorted to more primal tactics. Sticking him in a locked cage.
“It’s only temporary. Once Alexis has been secured, we can move forward with the next step.”
“Which is?” Stefan was by no means used to deferring control, but he would manage for the time being.
Dara took in a deep breath. It was best to take a few steps back “This goes back a long way. Back to your brother’s death. What do you know about it?”
Stefan’s emerald orbs hardened slightly. He knew plenty. “He was executed by Christoph Knapp, an agent for your organization. Poisoned. Of course, that was not the official story.”
“Luke and Laura Spencer?”
“Luke is a toy for Mother to play with. She pounces on the occasion, feels him wriggle beneath her grasp and then releases him for another day to enjoy. The fact that Laura has been institutionalized in recent years has delighted her. They are of no real consequence.”
20 years tormenting a family and it was of no consequence? It was just for Helena’s amusement? Dara never failed to be surprised by this family. Or drawn to it.
“Then you know that Robert Scorpio was also involved, alongside Christoph in Stavros’s death.”
“I know that he’s a fool who seduced my sister and thrust her into Helena’s path of destruction. I know that he caused her much grief and if I were to ever cross his path, I would not be as kind as she,” Stefan replied evenly, his loathing of Robert obvious.
Dara bristled at the dressing down of her mentor. “And you know about the baby Alexis had?” The words came out harsher than she intended.
Stefan stiffened at the mention of Alexis’s long deceased son. “I supervised the DNA testing myself when the child was recovered from the river. I held Alexis when we spread his ashes in Corfu. I am well aware of the events,” he answered tightly.
Dara leaned back in her seat and crossed one shapely leg over the other. Had he been in the comfort of his home, Stefan would have summoned tea and biscuits. Instead, he waited patiently for her to respond. Dara took a moment to sort her thoughts before she began speaking. She told him of Christoph and Robert and Alexis. She told him about Robert and Alexis’s relationship and the unexpected pregnancy. She told him of the massacre in Paris as Helena struck back at Robert for his role in both Mikkos and Stavros’s death. Stefan listened intently, nodding his head thoughtfully as he absorbed the 20 year old story. His chin dropped slightly at the mention of Helena exacting her revenge on Christoph by killing his wife. It was the innocents that left a burning knot in his chest. Throbbing painfully, his sense of helplessness always threatened his ability to keep her foul deeds and his culpability in them, at bay.
His face revealed nothing at the mention of Alexis’s child being believed dead in the massacre, having been discovered in the river. He had never revealed his feelings on the tragedy to anyone. He remembered Alexis after her child had died. She had buried her pain so deep and along with it, a huge part of herself. Her grief had been all encompassing and nothing Stefan did had helped her heal. Secretly, he always considered his inability to help Alexis protect her child had been his greatest failing in life. Greater than failing to kill Helena. Greater than keeping the truth about being Nikolas’s Father. The death of her child had both tightened the bond between them and sliced a chasm of ache that could not be repaired. They had never spoken of her child since that balmy afternoon when together, they had watched the ashes dance in the wind as they cascaded down the cliffs and into the calm blue waters of the sleepy town on the South coast of Corfu. It was no surprise that he distanced himself from both when Kristina was born. Another child for Alexis. The memories of her son had haunted him. He could barely stand to be in the room with the little one and he had never so much as picked her up. Unable to look into her sweet, innocent gaze without being overwhelmed at the child he had failed to protect. He couldn’t love this one too.
“Stefan?” Dara’s soft voice broke through and he jerked himself out of his reverie. “Go on,” he insisted, focusing himself once again.
“Helena wanted them to suffer as she had. It was revenge, straight up. Why should they be able to love and have children if her son couldn’t? Only, like most of her plans, not everyone who was supposed to die, did die. Christoph and Marie-Thèrese’s daughter lived. Christoph is still alive. Robert and Alexis survived the attack in Paris. Robert even went on to have another child.”
“There have been no threats on Miss Scorpio’s life.” That, Stefan was sure of.
Dara nodded. “You’re right. Once it was confirmed that she was Robert’s child, she was put under tight surveillance. An arrangement was made with Duke Lavery before his death. We have relinquished her protective detail to those in the underworld who were loyal to him. Helena hasn’t dared go near her. She knows that if Robin dies, Nikolas will follow in the next breath. She can’t control the Cassadine Empire with Nikolas dead, not until he marries and has a child of his own, at least.”
Stefan rubbed his bearded chin thoughtfully. “Continue,” he urged Dara. He was beginning to see the shape of what was at hand. The deeper implications of an event that had taken place over 20 years earlier.
“What we didn’t know until about a year ago, was that Alexis and Robert’s son was alive. Brought to the United States and raised without knowing a single thing about who he really was. Stranger is how he managed to make his way back to his Mother.”
Click.
Stefan closed his eyes and the key presented itself, as if it had been lurking in his mind all this time, waiting patiently for him to call it forward. The burning in his chest calmed ever so slightly.
“Zander Smith.” His voice was soft, but assured.
Now it was Dara’s turn to be momentarily surprised. “Yes.”
Stefan opened his eyes, his gaze centering on Dara. “Victoire saved him. It must have been her. She was our Nanny. She cared for all three of us when we were children. She and Alexis were extremely fond of each other. If anyone were to have spirited Alexis’s child that night, it would have been Victoire.”
Dara leaned forward, barely able to suppress her excitement at filling in a hole in the story. It had not been established just how Zander had gone from the villa in Paris to a Florida adoption agency or who had been responsible for it.
“Are you certain?”
Stefan thought for another moment before nodding. Yes, it made sense. “Absolutely.” He was careful not to reveal any elation over the discovery. Alexis’s son was alive. To even consider such an event to be true nearly brought him to tears. Dara caught sight of the frenzied emotions swirling behind his relaxed countenance but said nothing.
“Excellent.” Dara stood, smoothing the invisible wrinkles from her Donna Karan power suit. Stefan reached out and gently took her forearm. “Does Alexis know?” He prayed she didn’t. He needed to be there. So did Nikolas and Kristina. Her family needed to be with her.
“I don’t believe so. Her movements don’t indicate it. She does know Zander is alive and is with Robert. That’s where she and Gia are heading.”
“And how long has Nikolas been aware?”
Dara took in another deep breath. That was another big story she had to share.
“A few months before you returned to Port Charles Nikolas and Alexis had come to the WSB with their concerns over your erratic behaviour. They feared that you were somehow under Helena’s influence. Something had definitely happened to you. Your obsession with the Karenin fortune. Your arrangement with Lorenzo Alcazar. Your strange behaviour towards Emily Quartermaine. For safety reasons we brought in an agent to replace Lydia Karenin and allowed the false marriage to proceed according to your bizarre arrangements. We staged Summer Holloway’s death and then your eventual extraction. You were doing some pretty funky stuff near the tail end. You won’t remember this, but you were heavily sedated the night we staged your death. We took blood samples and found a toxic, foreign substance in your system. It took us weeks to withdraw.”
Stefan sighed and shook his head. Another attempt on his life. “Mother does try.”
Dara shook her head. “I don’t think she was trying to kill you. You were a guinea pig for an extremely volatile drug. We’d never seen anything like it before and we needed to know where it had come from and who had created it so we impressed on Nikolas to fabricate a story that you would believe. He took the reigns from there, bringing in the doctors and the specialists and insisting on your recovery taking place at an isolated Cassadine home you were already fond of. He did a great job at damage control.”
Stefan simply blinked at this information. He had no recollection of any of the drug that had ravaged his sensory system. Had he really become that vulnerable to his Mother’s manipulations? “Nikolas informed me it was a tropical disease I acquired from Peru. He said it explained everything. He was happy to have me back.” He’d believed his son when he’d awoken in the Puerto Rican hospital. “He lied to me,” he said softly, hardly able to believe the words he spoke. Not his Nikolas.
“He protected you. He learned from you how to do that. He knew that once you’d recovered, you’d disappear and go after Helena and he couldn’t have that. He needed you safe,” Dara said gently. “However, he didn’t learn of Zander’s true identity until a few hours before the shooting at the cottage. That’s why you were moved here. He’d known for some time that Alexis’s son was alive, but we kept Zander’s identity a secret. Robert had been planning the removal for months. Unfortunately, the situation went awry.”
Stefan arched his brow. “Awry? With Robert Scorpio? How customary.”
“Zander’s behaviour in the last six months had changed substantially. Of course, we rationalized the change due to the fact that his relationship with Emily Quartermaine was failing and he was normally hot tempered and impulsive. What we didn’t catch was that the drug used on you was the same as the one used on Zander. It was a less aggressive strain, but still extremely effective at making a person behave in a violent and irrational manner. We were slow on the uptake and consequently, he ended up taking Emily hostage and was shot outside his home.”
“Lovely,” Stefan said dryly.
“Robert wanted Alexis and Zander reunited, but done carefully. Originally he planned to get both out of the country without raising much suspicion. When the shooting happened, that plan went to hell. We lucked out though. Everyone in Port Charles, save for Nikolas, believes Zander is dead. The only people who are looking for him are Alexis and Gia, who’ve not spoken to anyone in Port Charles.”
Dara approached Stefan. It was a lot of information to take in one sitting. Again, Dara chose to not voice her concerns over his stoic manner. “Is that everything?” he finally asked. Dara remained silent. There was more, but nothing she could discuss with him.
Stefan zeroed his profile on Dara. “So Nikolas hiring you as legal representation at Cassadine Industries in Europe was a ruse.” Dara shifted in her spot. She knew he’d bring this up eventually. “Nikolas wanted an agent to supervise your movements and trusting an employee was out of the question. Once he learned of who I was, it was obvious that hiring me for the new offices was the best solution. Professionally and personality wise, we meshed perfectly.”
“A harmonious match,” Stefan intoned, his emerald orbs glittering darkly. His own implications were clear on Nikolas’s manipulations. “Clearly my son knows my preferences in every aspect of my life. He wanted me otherwise engaged and did not hesitate in doing so.” He shrugged slightly. “I should send him my congratulations on his success.”
He took a step towards Dara and heat coursed through his veins as he stood mere inches from the beauty whom had seemingly enslaved him. Effortlessly so. He resisted the urge to caress her cheek, knowing how smooth the caramel coloured flesh would be. He hated to even concede that her affections for him and his for her had been a complete fabrication. “So you were assigned to the task of bedding me?”
The remark stung and Dara nearly threw back the hypocrisy of that statement in his face.
“No,” she answered coldly. “I volunteered.”
Placing a small cell phone into his palm she issued him a withering glare. “Call your son. He’s expecting to hear from you.”
*~*~*~*~*~*
Millions and millions of stars in the sky.
And his feet squarely on the floor. It had been a long time since he’d felt even remotely normal. He wasn’t going to waste this beautiful night lying down. Gingerly, he tested his weight and found his legs a bit unsteady as he pulled himself from the bed. Grasping the back of a chair, he steadied himself, walking in place until his body got back into the rhythm of being upright. Carefully, he moved across the floor, sensing his joints as they complained. He took in slow breaths, careful not to twist or bend his torso too much. The floorboards creaked under his weight, but held steady and he finally crossed the room to the window of his choice. Easing the latch, he pushed the fabric aside and opened the window. Almost immediately, he noticed the lustrous moon as it loomed overhead. Stars littered the night sky and the scent of jasmine filled his lungs.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “I’ve been here before.” The smells, the sounds stirred something deep within him again.
“You were born here.”
The small voice startled Zander from his spot and he nearly toppled over. He let out a pained breath as his body protested the sudden movement. Thumping into a chair, he calmed himself and his aching frame. “Anais?” he called softly, not wanting to scare the young girl away.
She emerged from the darkness, regarding him with serious eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
Anais shrugged and looked off slightly, a gesture that Zander knew all too well. Biting back a smile, he tried again. “You spying on me?”
The hint of teasing in his tone brought forth a small smirk from Anais. “No, I just wanted to see you were okay.” Her voice was gentle with a soft German accent tingeing the edges of certain words. A striking contrast from the overall gruffness of her Uncle.
Zander nodded. “Well, I appreciate that. Does your Uncle know you’re here?” As much as authority in general irritated him, he was uneasy with the idea of Anais wandering around unsupervised in addition to him being a target.
Anais shook her head and Zander eyed the door nervously. “You don’t have much time. Someone will see you’re gone soon enough.”
Anais shrugged again, unconcerned with the very real possibility Zander presented to her. She’d done this before and knew exactly how much time she had before she needed to race back to her room. “I came to see you.”
Zander watched her for a moment before her earlier words came back to him. “You said I was born here.”
“Yes.”
“How do you know that?”
“Victoire told me.”
“She told you?” Zander asked in disbelief.
Anais’s mouth twisted once more as a giggle nearly escaped her. “Well, she didn’t know I was there.”
“You were eavesdropping.”
“Yes.”
Zander smiled. “I thought you rode horses.”
Anais bit her lower lip. “Not all the time,” she replied.
“Obviously not,” he agreed. Standing, he moved to ask another question but noise from just outside the window caught his attention. With difficulty, he moved towards the movements. By the looks of it, a guard change was taking place. “Anais, you should probably go,” he said, turning back to her only to find she had already slipped out the door. He hadn’t even heard the door lock behind her.
“Weird,” he murmured under his breath. Revolving back towards the courtyard below his window, his thoughts turned to Anais’s bit of information. He’d been born here. In this room even? His parents had never told him this. Why not? Zander furrowed his brow. He was frustrated and confused and injured. 3 things he hated.
Voices below him pulled him from his questions and he peered down to see who was there. A few well armed guards and Robert Scorpio were sharing a few words. The voices were too low for Zander to decipher. Dammit. Why couldn’t he go five minutes without feeling totally helpless and scared?
From below, Robert’s eyes instinctively went up and he locked eyes with Zander. His son was pale and sickly. Even in the dark and from a distance, Robert could see what the past few months had done to Zander. Emotionally, mentally and physically spent, the young man gazed down at him unblinkingly, uncertainty radiating from haunted eyes. Anger raced through him, energizing him fiercely.
Helena would pay for what she had done. For what she had done to all of them.
*~*~*~*~*~*
To her left slept Gia, curled up and snoring. To her right, Christoph dozed, his arms crossed in front of him. Alexis flicked on the overhead light to her seat and rummaged around in her purse. Too awake to sleep but deathly tired, she needed something to keep her mind going. Fingering a small envelope, Alexis pulled it from her bag.
“The pictures!” she whispered excitedly. One of the many rolls of Kristina, taken a few months earlier at a picnic in the park they frequented. Alexis smiled as she began looking at each one, remembering the moments captured on film. Zander had come along for the picnic. Alexis’s smile grew as she watched frame after frame of Zander grinning at, playing with and generally doting on Kristina. So gentle and attentive. So protective of the curly haired girl he affectionately dubbed, “Davy,” much to the chagrin of her Mother. Kristina, of course, had loved the special name Zander had bestowed her with and so Alexis relented. In part because she was as yet, unable to deny her daughter anything she set her heart on, but also because for the first time in months, Zander seemed genuinely happy and relaxed with them.
With them. Kristina, herself and Zander.
It seemed so natural to think of them as a unit. She’d always had a connection to Zander and she cared for him deeply. She’d continuously rushed to his defense, regardless of what information had been presented to her about him. Why was that? Why was she running all over the world, desperate to find him? Why her? Why not his Mother?
Zander never spoke of his Mother, not even to say her name, and the few attempts to locate the mysterious woman before they left Athens in the tiny plane Christoph had acquired had produced nothing. His entire family gone and not even his Mother knew where her child was, nor did she seem too interested. Despite knowing that he was in safe hands with Robert, Alexis swallowed the lump in her throat, the sadness of Zander’s life overwhelming her. “He must feel so alone. So scared,” she whispered as she held tight to the picture of Zander grinning widely as he nestled a content Kristina in his arms. His eyes were bright and cheerful, staring straight at her.
“I’m coming,” she promised him. “We’re both coming to get you.”
He would never be alone again.
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