Rick wasn't sure why his brother had invited him over for a visit. It wasn't that he didn't like RJ, because the kid was his brother, but the text message had been vague and just offered a time and RJ's address.

Reaching out, Rick knocked on the door to his little brother's apartment. The building looked expensive enough from outside, but when RJ opened the door and welcomed Rick inside, it looked horrific.

"Where are the rooms?" Rick pushed past his brother and looked around. There was an ashtray on the coffee table and it looked like it had recently been used. "You smoke now? Your building allows that?"

"My loft is designed to have one room. I like it this way," RJ explained, sounding as if he thought Rick was an idiot. He closed the door and followed Rick into what was probably the living room portion of the place. "And I don't smoke, but I had company over who does."

"Who do you know that smokes? Because the only people you know that I don't aren't in LA anymore."

"Yeah, thanks for never meeting either one of my now ex-boyfriends when we were still together. I really felt that brotherly love." RJ slammed his hand to his chest, then reached up and played with the brim of his bowler hat. "But I didn't ask you over to discuss my love life or my interior design, though you need to let me redecorate the mansion. It looks like Grandmother still lives there."

"I'll keep that in mind." Rick adjusted his lilac tie and made his way to RJ's sofa and sat down. It smelled of menthol cigarettes and chocolate.

He must've been making a face because RJ was making one back at him.

"So, why am I here?"

A devious smile crawled onto RJ's face. Rick's little brother clapped his hands together and spun once before giving him an answer. "I have a business proposition for you. And it's a huge one. It'll completely take the focus off of everything with my dad and Caroline, not to mention the Maya stuff."

Rick fought the urge to vomit when he thought of his ex. He was still disgusted when he thought of how he had fallen for that man in a dress.

"RJ, I would love to bring you into the Forrester fold!" Rick scratched the back of his hand and pushed away any thoughts of Maya. "You're a very talented designer, and I think you and Layla would be magic together, but wouldn't you still be under contract with L&M? The company isn't even a year old."

When RJ shook his head, Rick knew something was up. "Not me. No, I would never work for Forrester. I mean, I own 5% of L&M in addition to the building that houses our offices, so there would be a conflict of interest legally. Also, my dad is with Forrester and that would be a terrible situation for everyone involved. Not to mention Steffy."

"I'm aware of who my employees are, RJ. So if it's not you wanting to design for us, what could you possibly have to offer me? I'm very busy man and you're wasting my time with these games."

"The game hasn't even started yet, Big Brother." RJ smiled and his eyes shifted to a door on the other end of the loft. Rick followed him, but after a few seconds of waiting, nothing happened.

"RJ..."

"Quinn and Wyatt are still in their comas," RJ interrupted. "There's nobody else at Forrester who can handle the jewelry division. Now, if L&M had one, and we're too new a company to expand, I would keep this established talent for myself, but I figure I can do my big brother the favour of hiring her."

"Her?"

Then RJ bound over to the bathroom door and threw it open. "He's ready for you."

"Thank god. Do you know what it's like being trapped in an enclosed space with that woman? It's hell."

Rick bristled at the voice. It was impossible, yet his cousin Ivy emerged from RJ's bathroom with an accompanying aura of danger that spread out across the room.

"You have to be kidding me. This can't be real. She's dead. You're dead!"

"Oh, Ricky, I'm very much real." Ivy pushed RJ away and slammed the door. "We don't need to be interrupted. Negotiations can be very tense, and so can that old bat."

"Old bat?"

"Trust me, you're better off not knowing," RJ assured Rick as he and Ivy approached. "And it's really her."

Holding up a hand, Rick reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't call the cops. She's a murderer, RJ!"

"Alleged," Ivy corrected, brushing her hair off her shoulders. "And go ahead. Call the police. They'll tell you that there are no outstanding warrants. The FBI cleared me. I mean, of course they would. I'm an innocent woman. I couldn't hurt a fly, let alone do all those horrible things they said I did."

"It's true, Rick. Every single charge was dropped. I verified it myself before I called you." RJ walked around Ivy and sat on the coffee table. He pushed the ashtray away with a look of disgust, then crossed his legs and focused his attention back on Rick. "Ivy is not a criminal. She was the scapegoat for some guy back in New York, and the truth came to light."

"And you expect me to believe this? You want me to hire Ivy back to work on the jewelry line while Wyatt and Quinn are incapacitated? You must be joking."

Ivy walked around the table and put her hands on RJ's shoulder. Rick noted how uncomfortable his brother looked.

"Oh, nobody here is joking. And you won't be hiring me to work on the jewelry line. You're gonna hire me as the president of the entire accessory division, Rick. That's jewelry, ties, cuff links: everything. And you're going to make a big, splashy announcement to the press about my return to the company."

"There is no way in hell that is happening." Rick looked at RJ in disbelief. "You actually went along with this lunacy?"

RJ shrugged off Ivy's grip and clasped his hands together, leaning forward so that he and Rick were face to face. "You seem to think that you have the option of not hiring her, Rick. The sooner you sign Ivy's contract, the sooner she can reveal herself to the public and move out of my loft.

"Unless you'd prefer that the press, and Granddad, find out that you were part of leaking that tape of my dad and Caroline. How do you think everyone would take to finding out you left your poor, damaged little brother to take all the blame?" The smirk on RJ's face matched the one on Ivy's and Rick was afraid. "I mean, I have a sex tape making the rounds on the internet. Mom is heartbroken enough already. Do you really want to put her through even more?"

"Who are you?" Rick just stared at RJ.

"I'm your brother."

"And my favourite mini-cousin," Ivy added, wrapping her arms around RJ from behind and looking into Rick's eyes. RJ's smirk had faltered, but hers hadn't. "Now, do you want to do what's in everyone's best interests, or do you want to be stubborn and ruin our familial legacy even more than you already have?"

It was then that Rick realized that he had no choice. His tenure as CEO was already a mess, and if he had any hope of keeping his seat, he needed to make this deal with the devil named Ivy Forrester.

B&B

"Sí? Cómo puedo ayudarte?" The receptionist asked.

"Inglés." Maya wrapped an arm around Noah's waist and smiled. "American."

"Ah, yes. Of course. How can I help you?"

Wrapping her leg around one of his, Maya tilted her head and ran a finger along Noah's jawline. They'd agreed earlier to let her do all the talking. She hoped that the acting classes she'd taken back in LA would help her pull off this con.

"My boyfriend here, he's looking for a change. We were thinking pec implants. He just tries and tries, but the poor guy can't bulk up."

"Do you have an appointment?" The receptionist nodded to the guards on either side of her desk and they adjusted their grips on their guns.

Nodding, Maya never let her smile falter. "Yes we do. Strictly a consultation. It's under the name 'Avant'. I'm familiar with Dr. Fascinella's real name policy. I'm a former patient. I'm sure you still have my file."

"Yes, well, important as you think that is, Ms. Avant, Dr. Fascinella is with another patient at the moment. But Luciano will take you to a room to wait. After your pat down, of course."

"Of course," Maya agreed, pulling away from Noah and holding her arms out. He looked to her and followed suit.

She was handled roughly and groped in places that made her cringe inside, but her smile never faded.

The guards and the receptionist exchanged some more words in Spanish that Maya couldn't really make out. The one who checked her returned to his post, and the other kept a hand on Noah's arm and led them through a side door.

"You wait here," he told Maya and Noah after ushering them into an empty room. It looked exactly like a normal doctor's office, and Maya hopped up on the examination table while Noah stood in a corner. The man closed the door behind him and the sound of the lock clicking in place let them know they were trapped.

Looking around the office, Maya didn't see any cameras. Fascinella had a policy of potential patients and their financiers handing over their actual names. If he was going to do their dirty work, they weren't going to sell him out. It was mutually assured destruction and the man was good enough that everyone went along with it. Maya knew all of this after everything with Jesse. She just didn't know why Noah was so adamant that her former cosmetic surgeon was involved in whatever happened with his ex-girlfriend and possibly his twice dead fiancee.

After being satisfied that there were no cameras, Maya swept the room for listening devices. Whenever she had come with Jesse, there had never been any. Fascinella valued his patients' privacy, but things could have changed. The room came up clean. Her time in prison had taught her many things that they had hoped she would never need outside.

"We can talk," she told Noah while running her hands through her hair. It took a few seconds, but she disentangled a bug of her own from the kinky locks. "Thank god for natural hair, right? Nobody ever wants to touch it except weird ass white people with no sense of boundaries. Lucky for us, these guys didn't."

"Um, right." Noah clearly had no idea how to react to Maya's statement, which made her suppress a chuckle. "Are you sure you've never done this before?"

"I was in jail because my ex used drug money to pay for my transition, Noah. Not because a I was a corporate spy. This should be more your kinda thing, to be honest. Isn't your family always in the news over this kinda thing?"

"The Newmans hire people to do this stuff. And you gave them your real name?" Noah stared at the door instead of Maya.

She answered him while looking for the best place to plant the device. It didn't have to be there long, just long enough. "I gave them yours, too. They vet every person who enters this clinic. If I'd given an alias, we would've been flagged and turned away, if not shot on-site. And when the doc gets here, be quiet and let me do all the talking. Only answer questions addressed directly to you. You look like you'd be a terrible liar."

"I'd be offended, except it's true." Noah kept his face pointed in the direction of the door, but let his eyes slide to Maya. "Thanks for the all the help."

"Not a problem," she told him. Maya looked over the device, a small black box no bigger than half her thumb and with no blinking light to give away that it was anything other than a piece of plastic. Opening the cupboard on the wall, Maya slid the device into the darkest corner, behind a tin of bandages, then closed the cupboard. Now all they had to do was wait to leave and place the call to Noah's friend Kevin.

B&B

Bill watched as Celia looked around his mansion. She was awestruck. The girl who thought she was his daughter slowly spun, mouth wide open, taking in everything.

"I've been in mansions before, back in Pine Valley, but nothing like this." She looked back to Bill and smiled. He faked one back. If having this idiot think she was his offspring was what it would take to save his real son, then it was a small price to pay.

"There is rich, and then there is the Spencer family. We're the class above the upper class. The elite. And you're one of us now." Bill crossed his arms over his chest and walked past his fake daughter. "Katie, my wife and your stepmother, she doesn't know you exist. Not yet. And you have three brothers. There's Will, my son with Katie, you'll be living here with him. Liam, I invited him over for dinner. I'm going to introduce you to them then, but Wyatt..."

Stopping, Bill grabbed the front of his shirt and curled his hands into fists. He turned and looked at Celia, who was waiting on his every word with baited breath. His boys... They had never done that. They were always annoyed when he spoke. Even Caroline had ignored him for the most part. This was a new experience.

"Your brother, Wyatt, is in a coma. We're not entirely sure what happened. But you also have a cousin by the name of Caroline."

"Oh god, that's right. Caroline Spencer. I follow her on Instagram. Will she be at dinner? Can I get a picture with her? All my friends back in Pine Valley would just die!" Celia gushed and Bill soaked it in. Finally, someone who realized that the Spencer name was a symbol of pride.

Before he could answer her, Bill's phone began ringing. It was his wife. Holding a finger up to Celia, Bill answered the call. "Hello, Katie. I'm back home and I have a big surprise for you."

"It better be family appropriate, Bill. Did you find that doctor you were looking for?"

"I definitely found something I was after," Bill answered, smiling at Celia and giving her a thumbs up. She clapped silently and jumped in the air, barely keeping her excitement contained. "I'll tell you all about it when you get here."

"Bill, I'm calling to tell you that I'm bringing RJ to dinner with me. After his tape leaked and Noah left... He shouldn't be alone. I just want him to know that he still has us in his corner, you know? I'm picking him up after work, and you WILL be on your best behaviour."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll see you when you get here. And bring the proofs from the new Eye on Fashion and D-Pad with you. I've been gone too long."

He heard Katie sighed as she hung up the phone.