Stefan did not see it or hear it at first, but he felt a disturbance so insistent, that he rose from his seat in his private office and went not to the phone or the door, but across the room to the large window with the majestic view of the rocks and shore just beyond the grass verges. Three stories below, his blood turned cold as he witnessed Molly tear across the hunter green lawn, her face shattered with horror as her mouth opened in a scream. A guard was hot at her heels, barking furiously into his mouthpiece. Three more appeared from Wyndemere, racing past as the first guard pointed in the direction of the lower shores. Before he turned to rush out the door himself, he caught one more distressing look as Molly collapsed into the arms of her stepfather, Marcus, seeing the older man pull the girl into his arms and cart her back into the house.
*~*
Sabrina ran carefully, her bag tight in her hands, the family doctor a few feet behind her. She took deep, steadying breaths and ensured she did not expel all her energy getting to the shores. She would be of no use to anyone if she fell or was out of breath.
“It’s coming!” the older man shouted to her and both knew he was referring to the helicopter that would be needed. She gave no response but heard more shouts behind her. It strangely comforted her to know staff was acting exactly as they were trained to do. The estate and island at large would go into lockdown mode. Jack would be contacted by a secretary and given up to date information, but as long as he knew she was okay, he wouldn’t break too many laws in his race to get home to see her for himself. The guards would fall into well worn patterns of behavior and security. She would not need to concern herself with any matter other than the one before her.
A dark haired guard stood at the crest of the hill and barked a few words into his walkie talkie as he saw the medical staff approached. Wordlessly he extended his hand and she took it, allowing him to guide her down the bumpy and wet path, past the large bundles of rocks and driftwood along the way. “Two shots, center mass, one exit wound, poor pulse, we’ve done all we can,” he reported as they moved onto the sandy shoreline and picked up their speed once again. He left them and returned to his post at the crest as Sabrina spotted a guard waving urgently in her direction. Another minute or so of running and they’d be there. She could already here Jack’s bewildered, but grim question in her mind.
“What the hell just happened?”
*~*
Gia sighed as she slid her phone into her jeans pocket. Marcus wasn’t picking up and neither was Emily. “Her voicemail says she’s out of office until tomorrow. The only thing her secretary said to me was she was on vacation.”
Alexis frowned and looked at her own phone. Nothing from her own family. She handed the younger woman a cup of coffee and the two sat on the leather sofa that sat against a far wall in Alexis’ office. “You seem really distracted,” she observed with a gentle smile. “You know,” she started slowly as she went over Gia’s behavior over the last year, “you went to Hong Kong and you came back and you’ve been a different person.”
Gia let out a long, tired sigh, her body wilting into the seat. Alexis watched this with growing alarm. Things really had changed since Hong Kong. “What’s going on?” she asked, a hint of an edge to her question.
“Emily and I are not talking right now.”
“Okay,” Alexis replied evenly and waited for more.
Gia closed her eyes, as if the darkness would make it easier for the truth to come out. “I’m in love with the wrong man,” she whispered. Alexis had no reply but instead, Gia felt her warm, gentle hand squeeze hers and the tightness in her chest eased ever so slightly.
She wanted to stay quiet and keep Jason safe, but he couldn’t find Emily and things were going on with Marcus and Alexis and the Cassadines and while Gia wasn’t sure of what it was, she felt they were connected nonetheless. She needed someone to talk to.
“I met Jason in Hong Kong.” It was a simple 5 word sentence and yet there was an air of so much more surrounding the words. Secrecy, shame, joy and fear. All at once, Alexis had a much better picture of the world of turmoil in Gia’s world.
“He got hurt and he knew I was in Hong Kong, for that thing,” Gia said with a wave of her hand. A 3 month opportunity at a sister firm to one Alexis belonged to; it had been the experience of a lifetime. New part of the world, new experiences and she had loved every moment of it. Until one night, the rain pouring and the wind howling, there’d been a panicked knock at her 14th floor apartment door. She’d opened it to find a pale, saturated and injured Jason Morgan hovering in the doorway. Her life changed in an instant.
“If it had been anyone else, I would have shut the door. But it was Jason. It was Emily’s brother. The one she worried over and cried over and wondered over. I knew I could help him, even just for a bit.”
“So you helped him,” Alexis supplied quietly.
“I called who he told me to call. I kept him safe, I did what the doctor instructed and the days just flew by. He was so scared, I don’t think he’d ever been in that dark, near death place before and he was so weak and fragile.” Gia opened her eyes to find tears running down her cheeks. “He opened his eyes one day and looked at me, and he was so relieved that it was me. His eyes just sparkled.” Gia’s voice was a tremble as she spoke. “And right then and there, I knew I fell a little bit in love with him.”
“With Emily’s brother.”
“Sonny’s boss. Enemy #2 to my brother,” Gia added grimly. She shook her head. “I pushed back. I pushed hard. With every day he got better, I knew we were a day closer to him leaving. Only, I didn’t want him to leave, not really. It was like; our world was special and beautiful. I knew him in a way nobody else did.”
“Oh, Gia,” Alexis sighed with sympathy. She knew Gia’s path all too well. Believing in a man who showed a part of himself that was good and decent and worthy, when everything else about him was a waving red flag, warding her off, urging her to turn away. Loving Sonny had been a dizzying, drowning experience, and it was only when she realized she was carrying their child, Kristina, did she jolt awake and remove herself from his world. It hadn’t happened without pain.
It wasn’t until Marcus came into her life that she truly saw what love was like. How honest and warm it was against her skin. How she burned for the man she truly loved with every fiber of her being. How her daughters adored him and drew close to the rock that he was, the anchor in their world. It was a love that she could not describe accurately, words would do no justice to her life now, with him.
“And Emily found out.” Alexis concluded with a tilt of her head and Gia nodded.
“Honey, I’m so sorry this is going on.”
Gia shook her head, as if warding off Alexis’ words. “Oh, that’s not all of it,” she said, her voice suddenly dark and bitter. “A man is after Jason. A man who wants him dead.”
Alexis sat up, as though the Cassadine blood that ran through her veins perked at the ominous words. Her eyes narrowed. “What man?” she demanded.
Gia turned her gaze to her mentor’s, knowing this news would not go over well.
“Thane Bauer.”
*~*
The minutes had gone by like lightning. Sabrina didn’t believe he’d last another minute, let alone the ten it took for the guards to transport him to the helicopter, nor the other ten minutes to fly to General Hospital.
As they began their slow descent to the roof the hospital, staff she recognized waiting for the critical patient she was barely managing to keep alive, she remembered the look on young Kristina’s face when they pulled away from the ground.
The tears that stained the girl’s cheeks. The blood on her clothes, the way she shook, her whole body seizing as the adrenaline wore off and the cold seeped in.
Kristina had found him.
She had found him without even knowing he was there, and she had breathed life into him.
Nikolas had insisted that each family member learn basic first aid and CPR. Every year, they re-certified their skills, staff members included. Security had already for years been trained in higher levels of life saving skills, but never before had Cassadines learned chest compressions and mouth to mouth resuscitation.
Kristina and her guard, Leera, had done it for nearly 30 minutes, trading off every 5 minutes until Sabrina arrived. When Sabrina assessed her patient, Kristina clutched onto his ice cold hand, whispering to him, urging him to stay alive, to fight harder, and to come back from wherever he was. Had she not been so focused on keeping him alive, her own training steeling her into place, Sabrina would have crumbled at the sight and sound.
But she had barked orders to guards and the doctor at her side, hardly believing that her newest patient was alive. He’d been in the cold waters, he’d been shot and he’d been missing for 3 days.
He should be dead. By all accounts, by the very limits of what the human body could endure, he should have expired in the waters, no doubt one of the many of Helena’s victims.
“Where her ship was, he had to have swum. No tide would have brought him in,” one guard had muttered to the other while holding the IV bag, squeezing the fluid down the drip as directed by Sabrina. The other guard hissed angrily, no doubt wondering just how this drowned and shot man had come ashore and stayed hidden from security sweeps for nearly 3 days. Andresj would want to know as well.
Kristina clung to his side, somehow managing to move out of the way when Sabrina or the doctor needed her to move. Like a shadow, she floated to and fro, always near, never releasing his hand if she didn’t have to.
And when they had carefully moved to the rendezvous point, when the guards attempted to pull Kristina away, she had resisted. Sabrina had nearly shouted at the girl, her gears as a doctor, clicking impatiently in time, wanting to go, go, go. Instead, she waited, the air around them in a whipping frenzy as the blades on the helicopter churned at a blurring speed.
Kristina had leaned down and whispered in his ear in urgent and fierce gasps, before pressing a kiss to his pale blue cheeks and releasing him, falling into Stefan’s waiting arms. And then they were off, and Stefan simply carried Kristina into a side door.
She looked down at Ronan Cassadine, still marveling at the telltale beep of the machine signaling that he was still alive.
She barely knew the man. She knew Faith did not like him and that Kristina so clearly did. That he’d gotten involved with Helena and paid a high price for it.
Helena, who was once again, boasting her prowess to the family, littering the shore with another victim, reminding them of what she could do.
What she could always do.
“30 seconds!” the paramedic called as they lowered closer to the large H symbol.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she glanced at the message from Jack. Her lips pressed together, preventing the cry of relief that ached to be released. She couldn’t let go, not just yet.
“I’m coming to you.”
*~*
Nikolas stood at the shoreline, an indescribable expression on his face. Alazne drew up beside him, linking her arm through his, feeling the tension in his body.
“Kristina is taking a shower and then is going to the hospital with Faith. Marcus will stay here with Molly. Stefan and Andresj are debriefing security and looking for his family. Alexis is on her way. The children don’t know anything yet.”
Nikolas gave a slow nod, his expression unchanged as he stared at the waters. “This path,” he started softly. “Am I wrong?”
Alazne turned to face him, a determined look set to her face.
“This has been a slow burn from the beginning. One you cannot see or smell or taste until it is upon you. This path of Helena’s was always built for you to walk. You would never have been able to ignore it.”
Nikolas took in a breath, allowing her words to sink in. “My father would have. He would have seen the burn and he would have walked away from it. He never would have given it the life it needed to destroy.”
“Stop!” Alazne said, her voice loud and firm. “Yes, your father would have turned away, but you are not him. You are Nikolas Cassadine and you are your own man and you are the head of this family. He knows Helena in ways you never will and for that, you should be grateful. That does not mean that his way is the only way you should follow.”
Nikolas swallowed, his face pinched with emotion. “She could be just like Helena. I feel his disapproval every time he looks at me. I feel it from Andresj. I trust these men with everything I have and I know they are right.”
Alazne pulled him close. “Then why are you on this path?” Her voice was gentle and understanding, as though she had always known why he made the choices he did.
“Because she is a part of me!” he whispered fiercely, his fist pressed against his chest. “Because she is my sister! Because she is my twin! Because I can’t take another step without knowing who she really is!” He shuddered a breath and the waves crashed against the rocks, splashing sprays of water up into the air.
“Then I’ll get your bag ready.”
Nikolas turned to his wife, his mouth open; ready to protest when she shook her head. “You know where she is. Go to her. Walk the path.” Her eyes glittered with love and trust.
“And if it burns? If she’s what my father believes she is?” He was the head of the family; his choices had already had earth shattering consequences. How many more would there be?
She squared her shoulders, he eyes fierce once more. “Then I’ll come for you,” she promised.
“Alazne,” he said, his own gaze darkening at her implications. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and arched a brow.
“Every Cassadine woman is a woman of consequence. Helena, Faith, Sabrina, Alexis. I see it growing in Kristina and Molly and even in Asha.”
She flashed her teeth in a cunning smile and instinctively, he grinned back. Right here and now, he would marry her a thousand times over again if he could. If she would do him the honor. She let out a sharp laugh, the sound ringing around them, echoing off the rocks and the waters.
“And so am I.”
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