A: Oh, look at what's finally here! A lovely little sequel. Just in time for Christmas. The way I have this planned. If I post a chapter every day, I'll finish on Christmas Eve. Ugh... I'm so excited.

Prologue

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON, LIKE DAUGHTER
Zachary Pine; 16 July 2011

ABINGTON, VA – It's no secret the Quinn family has always had trouble with relationships. Especially when they have a tendency to fall for the wrong people. But it seems like Christabella's, the youngest of Jesse and Leotie Quinn, love life takes the cake.

Let's go back sixty years, when Marcus Quinn, the current head of the family and recently retired Director of the CIA, was twenty-three. The year was 1951, Marcus was fresh out of college and gas cost $.20. Global warming hadn't existed and social media didn't have power over you. Which was a good thing for incumbent Agent Quinn.

At the time he had a wonderful girl by the name of Caroline Elswood. Caroline came from southern royalty, the Elswoods having money tracing back to slave times. With the traditional blonde hair, blue-eyed look, she was the perfect arm candy for Marcus, whose family had always been a major player in the intelligence community. Making Marcus royalty of his own.

The two natives of Georgia had met during the summer holiday after Marcus' third year at Harvard, at a less than impressive party. Both had wanted to find a better scene and had actually run into the other as they left. They bonded over the lack enjoyment and spent the rest of the night walking through the streets of Savannah.

Things went well for the pair, as their impromptu walk turned into a full blow relationship, an engagement was announced six months later and plans were made for a wedding.

But it wasn't two months into the engagement that things began to get rocky.

Insert 20-years-old Margret Carter, Maggie to her friends. Maggie showed up in the college town of Cambridge, MA wielding a false detective badge with the name of Gene Fontaine, under the ruse of investigating a murder that had happened on campus. She had told a handful of the victim's friends, which included Marcus, that they had a correlation to couple of murders a few towns over.

Marcus had been roommates with the victim at the time of his death, and always one for justice, had insisted Detective Fontaine come to him if she ever needed anything. She had stayed in town for almost two weeks, meeting with Marcus nearly every day over coffee.

Two days after she left town, she and her brother, William, who had also falsified his identity in the town the original murders were committed, were arrested after they had dug up a grave and burned the body found in it.

They escaped before formal charges were made with help from an unknown assailant, who is thought to be their younger sister, Elizabeth.

After word reached Marcus, who, according to friends, had formed an unhealthy obsession for Ms. Carter, he began to do some investigating himself, after finishing his degree of course. He traced her back to the small town of Rockwell, NC, where he learned that her parents had been killed by a wolf attack. Since then, Maggie, Will, and Beth Carter had traveled the country. The only times their names had popped up was if one or two of them had been arrested.

It had been interesting enough, that Marcus had followed them, always missing them by a day or two.

At this point the wedding was just three months away, however it seemed he'd all but forgotten Ms. Elswood. That didn't sit too kindly with the southern belle, who'd confronted him after his chase had brought him home to Savannah.

The confrontation had been massive, talk of it circled the gossiping community for months, but Caroline had gotten Marcus to stay and the wedding went on without a hitch. This wouldn't be the last time Maggie Carter stirred up trouble in Marcus' life.

After the wedding, things were good for about three years.

The Quinns, now joined by a baby boy name Henry, had moved from Georgia to Virginia to be closer Marcus' parents who had made the journey a year prior when Franklin, Marcus' father, had been promoted to Director.

Six months after the move, Caroline, who had been on a walk through the small patch of woods that surrounded their house, was attacked by a wolf. It was Henry's nanny who had found the body, after taking the path to search for her boss who hadn't come back.

It had been the third death in as many weeks to blame on a wolf. Investigators had been stumped, animal control had never seen anything like it, and hunters had started taking to the woods in hopes of catching the animal responsible.

With the fourth murder, the story made national news, bringing reporters and hunters alike from all over the nation trying to get in on the action. With them come the Carter siblings. Will had come three days before his sisters, posing as a hunter from Kansas named Bill Donovan. Maggie and Beth had been reporters from North Carolina, their aliases unknown.

Beth had been the one to interview Marcus, who had clutched his son tight and insisted that he didn't know anything, he hadn't even been home at the time of the murder. It would prove to be four days before Maggie and Marcus would cross paths again.

They'd run into each other in town at the local supermarket. Maggie comforted him in the following days she was there, spending nearly every waking minute she could. A week later Will came into town carrying two rather large wolves, claiming them to be the cause of the eight murders that plagued the small town. Sure enough, the attacks had stopped.

When it came time for the Carter siblings to skip town, Maggie elected to stay. An unfortunate choice for her as she was taken into FBI custody three months later. Marcus had been her legal representation, his nonofficial cover story at the time a junior partner in a nearby law firm, and managed to get her out of all charges.

Eighteen months later, they married, eight months after that, their first son, Jesse was born. Their son James followed a year after that.

Fast forward sixteen years, to Jesse, who's a senior in high school. Currently, he's dating the beautiful Leotie Mercoletti, the half-Cherokee, half-Italian heiress whose own parents had a Shakespeare-esque love story.

Jesse and Leotie were high school sweethearts. They spent every waking minute together. So it wasn't shocking when sixteen-year-old Leotie ends up pregnant. It didn't destroy their relationship, neither's grades had slipped either, actually the pregnancy had only proved to strengthen their relationship.

With her parent's permission, Jesse had a manor built on the vineyard her father owned, and the two of them moved in after Jesse graduated, just in time for the birth of Fiona. Jesse took a gap year between schooling to take care of the child so Leotie could focus on her senior year.

Both applied to Georgetown the following year, Jesse intent on a linguistics degree and Leotie after a law degree. Liam came to them the following March, two months after they married, making their tiny townhouse seem even smaller. After they graduated, both successful in their degrees, they returned back to the manor, where the family of four were joined by triplets Payton, Patricia, and Paige and twins Alfred and Archibald.

Things didn't get rocky until then. With Leotie, the nanny, and Sylvia; Leotie's mother, all busy with the children and Jesse's job on rocky ground, he began to lose faith in his marriage. It started to split at the seams. And Jesse began seeing another woman

Jessica Sanchez was a longtime friend of the Quinns', having been in the same graduating class as them at Georgetown. The linguist worked alongside Jesse in his own nonofficial cover at a local translator firm.

At first, things were innocent, the two went out for drinks after work on Friday nights. Some days they would take an early lunch together. But things soon became more as they would spend more time together, they even took trips down to Jesse's lake house, and Jessica's title went from friend and confidant, to mistress and lover.

The affair went on for months, even after Leotie was diagnosed with a severe case of pneumatic plague while on a charity trip to Zimbabwe. It was during Leotie's battle, that Miss Sanchez took her leave after Jesse reportedly told her that "being by her side is the least I could do."

By some miracle, after doctors had given up, Leotie did regain her health, and the Quinns did manage to fix their marriage after Jesse confessed. They were graced with their youngest twelve months later; Christabella.

Christabella, who until recently preferred to go by Anabeth, is where our story goes next. We all know about her failed marriage back in '96, but the story between Ana and James Moriarty doesn't end there.

Now, unless you've been living under a rock, you've certainly heard the scandal Moriarty and self-proclaimed "Consulting Detective" Sherlock Holmes created over in England. And it really shouldn't come as a surprise that little troublemaker Anabeth was smack-dab in the middle.

Anabeth and James met up again after Anabeth had moved to London (where she became a burlesque dancer), and began to rekindle their romance. Whatever caused James to leave her at the altar, was certainly not a problem this time around.

Four months later, she moves into the same building as Sherlock Holmes and, according to sources who asked not to be named, began a slow building romance. Which, according to a different source who again asked not to be named, became obsessive on both ends towards the end.

Of course, that never stopped Anabeth from marrying James. Perhaps they should have gone with a simple ceremony the first time?

Just recently, Anabeth, whose back to using her first name, gave birth to a bouncing baby boy, Payton Hamish. And although the child bears the surname of Holmes, the name of the father was never given.

Which begs the question of which one of her lovers is the father? Or does she even know?

Marcus and Jesse both had their turmoil down Relationship Road, with stops at Over-obsession Outlet and Adultery Superstore respectively, but it's Christabella who stopped at both before booking a room at the Unknown Baby Daddy Bed and Breakfast. At least her bed has already been made.

"Don't listen to it Ana."

"I'm not."

"It's not even well written."

"I know. I can see that. Still doesn't mean Dad didn't cheat on Mom while she was dying. I might just kill him for that."

"I- oh. Well then. I didn't see that coming."

"You really should have, Alfie."

Some late night talk show

"I don't know if you've seen it on the news recently, but you know the Quinn's? The ones that make up half the CIA? Anyway, the youngest daughter, Christabella, she was the one that got caught up in that mess over in England, Between James Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes. What kind of name is that anyway, Sherlock?"

"She married the other guy," the emcee states, "the Consulting Criminal, James Moriarty."

"Really? I didn't know that. I knew they were engaged back in '95-'96. It was a big deal since she was so young. They had a huge wedding planned, and he left her at the altar."

"Yep. It was a shotgun wedding. From what her brother says."

"Huh, anyway, she had a baby last Friday."

The audience awes. The host nods. "Yep, a little boy, 8 pounds 4 ounces. Payton Hamish Holmes. Payton after Christabella's sister who died of cancer years ago, and Hamish after the little short guy that followed the detective around."

"I guess the weird name thing runs in Sherlock's family."

Everyone laughs.

"What gets me though is she gave the baby his name but the line on the birth certificate where you would put the father's name is left blank. So it very well could be her late husband's child or his arch nemesis'. I don't know what's worse, having to explain that he has the same name as his dead aunt or how he shares a last name with his father's arch enemy."

"How can you do it?" John asks, gingerly, like any moment the brunette will snap.

"Do what?" Ana responds.

"Go about life like nothing happened. Pretend that none of this media bothers you. You loved him."

She shrugs. "I wake up every morning to a miracle and he keeps me going."