Chapter Five

WHEN SONNY AWOKE in his cell he finally found a way that might lead him out of the hell whole he was being kept in. The sun was shining in his eyes and he could see it was coming in from cracks around the cobblestones. Getting up off the cot to take a closer look, Sonny saw that the mortar around the cobblestones was crumbling. If he could scrape enough of it away he could dislodge the cobblestones and climb through the whole he made to the outside. Looking frantically around the room for something he could use to scrape the mortar away, he finally managed to pull free a wire from the cot bedframe and began chipping away at the mortar.

He had managed to dislodge two of the cobblestones and was able to stick his head through the whole he made a glimpse the outside world. If he was able to keep working at this all night, by the next morning he might free of this place and on his way back home. Just then he heard the door to his cell being unlocked, and he quickly put the cobblestones back in place and laid down on his cot waiting to see what would happen next.

The two guards came tromping down the stairs and grabbed him up off the cot, then dragged him up the stairs. "Where are you taking me?" Sonny began to struggle and tried to dig his heels in, but they were too strong for him.

The next thing he knew he was being shoved into a room and Brenda was there waiting for him wearing nothing but a revealing nightgown. He looked around the room for the psychopath she'd married, but he was nowhere in sight.

"Where's your husband?" He spat.

"He's gone." She told him. "He left me alone here to seek my revenge against you for all that you've done to me."

"So," He asked, wondering what new torture she had in store for him. "What do you plan to do to me next." He used to know her so well, but now she was a total stranger to him.

"Take off your clothes." She ordered and added when she could see he was about to balk. "Either do it willingly or I'll call the guards back in and they'll do it for you. And then we will begin your next punishment."

Having no choice but to comply, he began to remove all his clothes. When he was totally nude, he looked her boldly in the eye. "Now what?"

She walked around her devouring every inch of his naked flesh with her hungry eyes. When she had finished she stepped up close to him. "This is what you did to me when you left me standing at the altar." She told him. "You stripped me naked in front of all our family and all our friends. It's not a pleasant feeling is it, Sonny?"

"I thought if I married you, you would die." He tried to make her understand.

"I almost did." She retorted. "Every bad thing that happened to me happened because you left me. None of it would have happened if you had married me and taken me away with you."

"Don't you think I know that." He declared passionately. "Don't you think I carry that with me everywhere I go. Because I made the wrong choice you've suffered horribly because of me."

"You seemed to have no problem getting on with your life." She pointed out bitterly. "You married the same woman three times. You must love her very much. So you might have gotten over me and your guilt over what you've done to me very easily."

"You don't know what I went through when they told me you were dead." He spat. "You don't know what it did to me."

"Then tell me." She dared him. "Tell me you at least cared when you heard I was dead."

"When Jason told me you were dead." Sonny's voice cracked emotionally. "I nearly lost my mind. I locked myself in my room for over a month drinking. When I went to sleep, I would dream you were alive and you had come back to me, only to wake-up in the morning to the fact you were dead, wanting to be dead myself so I could be with you, again. It finally got so bad they called Jason and he and Mike got me to come back to Port Charles. But everywhere I looked there were memories of us. So the only way I could survive and go on was to make myself forget you and pretend what we had never existed to the point I wouldn't even allow anyone to mention your name in my presence." He added angrily. "So don't you dare tell me I didn't care. You have no idea just how much I did."

"Is that when you and Carly got involved?" She acted unmoved by his emotional confession.

"Not exactly." Sonny saw no sense in not telling her. "From the first moment I met Carly I was attracted to her, but I fought it. I ended up getting involved with this woman who resembled you and I tried to do everything I did wrong with you right with her. It turned out she was a fed trying to nail me, and Carly was the one to prove it. One night we got into a vicious fight and we started pushing each other's button and we had sex. Afterwards, Carly ended up pregnant."

"Carly had your child?" She asked horrified. The thought of any woman giving him a child but her made her physically ill. "The two of you have a child together."

"No." He told her. "The baby died. Carly and AJ got into a fight at the Quartermaine mansion and she fell down the stairs." He added. "But by then I had fallen in love with her."

"And you married her three times." But this was no bite to that statement this time. She was feeling too relieved that Carly hadn't given Sonny a child, that the thought of his marrying Carly Roberts three time didn't make her see red, this time.

"What about you?" He threw back at her. "Just how did you hook up with your current Prince Charming, and why did you trade the last one in for this model."

"I'm asking the questions here." She smiled, then she noticed the scar that he sported on his chest. She trailed her fingernail over it. Sonny clenched his hands into tight fists to stifle the shiver of desire that passed through him at her touch. "Just how did you get this."

"There was a shoot-out in front of the Port Charles Police Department." He told her. "I almost died. It happened on..."

"Christmas eve." She finished for him.

"How did you know that?" He snapped. "Have you and your husband been watching me and plotting against me all this time?"

"You forget, Sonny." She reminded him. "I've always known when you were hurt or in danger. I knew something happened to you on Christmas eve, I just didn't know what until now." Then she lowered her mouth to his chest and ran her tongue up his scar.

Their eyes locked and his voice was husky when he spoke. "What are you dong?"

"Tasting you." She smiled. "You still taste the same, but, baby, you really need a bath." She walked away from him and ran fresh water into the bathtub, while Sonny stared down at his wedding band reminding himself he was married, even as his blood burned with the fire of desire only she could quench.