"At first he was reluctant to talk," Lieutenant Grey explained, "but once we explained to him that the evidence was overwhelming and that his friend, Tony, had already turned on him, he began to spill his guts. But not before making one last attempt to convince us that Derek here was really the guilty party."

"What could he have possibly tried to say to blame it on me?" Derek asked, still in shock over the deception of his only nephew.

"Well, when we took him into custody, he was carrying some papers in his pocket. He claimed that before all of you and Mr. DiMarco arrived this morning he discovered them in your office, hidden in the back of a drawer. We suspect he was really intending to plant them in your office when he was interrupted, " he said, directing his answer to Derek. "If we didn't know better, some of them could have looked pretty incriminating."

"What were these papers?" Jonathan asked, wondering what crafty and manipulative plan Michael had been planning to embark on.

"One of the papers was a photocopy of some correspondence that allegedly took place between you, Derek, and Mr. DiMarco. There were a couple of notes scrawled on your personal letterhead and signed by you that seemed to indicate that the two of you were involved together in the attempts on Andie's life. One of the letters was from you and was informing DiMarco of Andie's new address in Los Angeles. And it was dated the day before the knife attack in her apartment."

"I never told anyone where Andie was living, I never even knew her address myself! I figured that if she didn't want to be found, it wasn't my place to go against her wishes." Derek could feel his blood pressure rising at the insinuation.

Lieutenant Grey attempted to calm Derek's anger. "We aren't accusing you of anything Mr. Sanders, you can relax. In fact, Michael later recanted this story anyway and admitted to forging the papers himself."

"You said he had several pieces of evidence?" Jonathan inquired. "What else did he have?"

"Probably the most clever thing he had to convince us of his innocence was a receipt, signed by Derek, for the gun that DiMarco had in his possession when we took him into custody the night of the attempted hit on Andie at your secretary's party, Jonathan. He tried to convince us that Derek had provided Mr. DiMarco with the weapons used in the attempts on Andie's life. He originally claimed that since Mr. DiMarco had been in prison he wouldn't have been able to get a pistol on his own and had requested that Derek provide one. The receipt for the gun was from an individual who deals guns through gun shows, therefore no official record was kept of the transaction. The receipt showed Derek's signature though and we have confirmed, through the serial number, that it is the gun that was used that night at the party. When we attempted to trace the weapon that night, our computer turned up no record of the gun. As we further questioned him though, he ended up admitting that it was he that had purchased the gun, forging Derek's signature as he had on the letters."

"Will forgery be one of the charges against him?" Andie asked, wanting to lengthen the time her cousin would be spending in prison.

"Yes, but considering the other charges against him, the forgery charge will be the least of his worries. Don't worry, your cousin won't be bothering you again." Lieutenant Grey looked at Andie, hoping to reassure her, wanting to help her put this whole nightmare behind her. "And Tony DiMarco is singing like a bird, he's been more than willing to cooperate with us. He knows he's facing life imprisonment for the murders of your Aunt and Uncle and the attempts on your life and he has no intention of going down alone. That fact, combined with the audio recording of the conversation between Tony and Michael in the office this morning will definitely put both of them away for quite some time. I must admit, setting up that voice activated tape recorder was a clever idea, Jonathan."

Jonathan noticed Andie shifting uncomfortably in her chair. He spoke up. "So Herschel, is there anything else we need to take care of?"

"I'd say we're finished here. We've taken all of your statements, and we will obviously need your testimony when this thing goes to court, but in the meantime you are all free to go. If I have any questions, I'll give you a call."

"Well then, shall we get out of here?" Jonathan asked of the group.

"Sounds good to me," Jennifer replied, with the others nodding in agreement.

They rose from their seats and moved toward the exit, with Andie briefly pausing to take the hand of the kindly Lieutenant. "Thank you so much for all of your help." She looked at him and smiled before releasing his hand.

Herschel Grey was touched by the gesture, a reminder of why he was in this line of work. "Good luck to you, Miss Brenner. Take care of yourself."

Later that afternoon, at the Harts home, Derek and Andie finally got an opportunity to talk privately. As they sat on the terrace, enjoying the breeze off the ocean, they knew that it was time to face their past.

"So, where do we go from here?" Derek asked her, unsure if he was ready to face the demons of his past. He knew he had a lot of explaining to do, much of it long overdue. But more than anything, he wanted to start over and make things right between them.

"I don't know," she said honestly. "Can you ever forgive me for thinking that you were trying to hurt me?"

"Me, forgive you?," he said shocked. "Andie, you are the one who has years of things to forgive me for! Considering the way I have treated you since you were a child, I can't really blame you for being so willing to accept that I could have been responsible." His voice trembled as he spoke. "I owe you a lot of explanations...and there are a lot of things which I can't explain... or defend. I did a lot of things to you, and to your mother, which were unthinkable. I treated you in ways that people should never be treated. I just hope that you will give me an opportunity to explain what I can." He looked into her eyes, hoping that her capacity for forgiveness was equal to that of her mother.

"Well, I'm willing to listen..."

"Andie, I treated you terribly for most of your life...and your mother too." He paused briefly, composing his thoughts and trying to put his feelings into words. "You know, of course, that things weren't always good between your mother and I. I blamed everything on her...on her affair with Max...but the truth was that it was mostly my fault. I just couldn't get past her relationship with him and it ate away at me, causing me to do things that I never should have done. I thought I could live with it when I agreed to marry her but I just couldn't get it out of my mind." He stopped talking for a moment, looking away from her briefly. "The pressure from our families for the two of us to marry was incredible.....neither one of us wanted to disappoint them...so we made the best of the situation. I told your mother that I would raise you as my own child and that she was never to reveal to anyone that you weren't. It was my only chance to have a child and I knew that continuing the family line was expected of me. So I accepted the situation and thought I could make the best of it. Only I couldn't..."

"I always thought that you didn't love me because I wasn't a son. I thought that was why you turned to Michael instead. But now I know it was because I wasn't really yours."

"No Andie, that had nothing to do with it. It was different with Michael. He didn't remind me of Kathryn's betrayal and of..." His eyes began to water and he looked away, avoiding Andie's gaze.

"Of what, Derek? What else did I remind you of?" He could sense the pain that he was feeling and instinctively reached out to take his hands in hers. "Tell me," she pleaded.

He faced her, looking directly into her eyes, perhaps for the first time in her entire life. "Though you weren't biologically mine, you reminded me of the little girl I lost."

She looked at him, saying nothing, but utterly confused. What was he talking about? What little girl? She longed to know more but somehow she couldn't bring herself to ask.

He continued for her. "A few years before I met your mother, I was involved with a young woman named Lydia. It was a brief relationship but it produced a little girl that we named Elizabeth. She was a beautiful little girl, and despite the fact that her mother and I weren't together, I absolutely doted on her. I could never tell my family about her, as they would never have approved." He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Just before her 3rd birthday she suddenly got very sick. She was hospitalized for about a week before she died. The doctors said it was some sort of virus that her body just couldn't fight off. We never really got answers, medical technology was much less advanced then. But it didn't really matter, what mattered was that my little girl was gone."

Andie reached over and wiped away a tear from her stepfather's face. She had never seen him look so vulnerable.

"I know this has nothing to do with you," he proceeded, "But when you were born, and especially as you got a little older, you reminded me so much of her. Everytime I looked at you, I would think of what Lizzy would have been like if she had lived to be your age. I know your mother believed that I distanced myself from you because you were a reminder of her past, and she was partially right, but the bigger factor was the constant reminder of the little girl I lost."

"So my mother never knew about this?"

"No, I never told anyone until now."

"Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me now," she said, genuinely touched that he would share such a closed off part of his heart with her.

"I owe it to you, Andie. You have a right to know why I treated you the way I did. I'm not trying to make an excuse for it, I'm just trying to explain it. And I know that telling you this now doesn't make up for a lifetime of pain. My behavior was inexcusable. I guess I was just protecting myself from getting too close. I didn't want to get hurt again." He pulled his hands from hers, wringing them together and fidgeting nervously.

"I wish I had known this all along, it might have made it easier. I just thought that I wasn't good enough, that there was something about me that made it impossible for you to love me. And then when I found out about my father, I thought that I finally understood."

"Andie, I am so ashamed of all of the stuff I put you and your mother through. She didn't deserve to spend her life with someone like me. She deserved so much better.....someone like Max."

Andie remained silent, unsure of her feelings and what she should say at that moment. She couldn't deny the fact that her mother's life had been unhappy because of Derek's actions.

As if reading her mind, he continued. "I did a lot of things that I shouldn't have. I drank too much and treated her badly. I used to get violent when I drank. I never laid a hand on her but I know she was intimated by my actions, I could get rather threatening. And I turned away from her rather than facing the truth. I never meant to hurt her, I just couldn't control my anger. I wasn't angry at her but somehow she became the target. And I did a lot of things that I now regret. I wish I could somehow take it all back and have another chance with her....and with you. But it's too late for that...and I am the last person who deserves another chance. I just don't want you to hate me, Andie."

"I don't hate you, Derek," she said softly. She didn't know what more to say.

"So, what happens now?" he asked. "Will you be staying in LA?"

"I honestly haven't thought about it. So many things have been going on that I haven't had a chance." She felt herself softening toward the man that just days before she had vowed to never speak to again. "Maybe I could come back to work at the office, maybe part time to help you out? I know that without Michael it's going to be tough for a while."

Derek couldn't hide the surprise, or the happiness, in his voice. "Really? Do you really mean that, Andie?" His eyes lit up.

"Well, I just thought that...I mean, I do have a vested interest in the company... maybe the two of us together could repair some of the damage to the company that Michael has caused."

"Oh...yeah," Derek replied, disappointment resonating in his voice. "We probably should work together to figure out what to do with the company." His demeanor had completely changed from just seconds before.

Reaching out to rest her hand on his arm, she returned to him the hope that had just vanished from his eyes. "And maybe while we're fixing the company, we can do some repairing closer to home too."

He grabbed onto her and pulled her close, unable to contain the joy he was feeling at that particular moment. He had never felt so close to her or as aware of the incredible feelings he had always harbored deep inside for her but hadn't allowed to surface. Finally, he was able to drop the barriers and allow himself to feel his honest emotions. She was all he had left and he didn't want to lose her.

Andie pulled away slowly and looked him directly in the eye. "I can't make any promises to you, Derek, a lot of things have happened between us, but maybe we could start over and this time things might be different."

"That's all I want, Andie...just a chance...a chance to make things right with you. I couldn't ask for anything more."

"Well, if there's one thing I learned from my mother, that was it...she always believed in second chances."