The silence of the gallery surrounded her like a cloak as she sat on its floor drinking from a shot glass. She'd poured herself a glass from a fresh bottle of vodka abandoned by the bartender who'd left for the night.
Liquid magma down her throat, burning and chilling her at the same time, but giving her a bit of a buzz. Something she needed right now as the shattered pieces of the night lay discarded around her.
The pieces still sharp enough to slide back into place again, not smoothed away like glass tossed about in the waves of the ocean until the edges wore away enough to be held in the palm of a hand without drawing blood.
Too bad she no longer had the will to rebuild the latest puzzle of her life. The night of reveals, the unveiling of masks worn by people that couldn't be seen or felt but still had hid the faces of those she thought she knew.
Derek Wells, the man who'd donated bone marrow to save Danny's life had turned into Julian Jerome, the mobster who'd used her grandson as his own insurance policy to stop Sonny from killing him. A hero turned coward and he'd slipped away like one into the night.
But not without leaving his mark.
She reached her fingers to trace the welts in her neck where his fingers had left their mark, the burn of her mouth from his stubble when he'd kissed her. She hadn't seen that one coming, they'd been playing a game after all.
Only it'd turned into something else…which had pushed them in separate corners as surely as the spilling of truths on a night filled with revelations. Julian had whispered something about seeing her soon while she listened to the sound of his footsteps recede as he left the building.
It hadn't been the first time he'd left her.
More alcohol in the shot glass to spread more warmth in her body. Natasha could handle the vodka much better than she could, and that part of her had receded again after she'd watched him walk away from her so she put the bottle away from her.
She still had to find her car and drive home after all.
Julian as he called himself now settled into the driver's seat of his sports car but instead of driving back to the MC, he just sat there staring out into the darkness interrupted only by street lights in the distance.
He still felt the taste of her on his lips. The images would have to wait…as soon as he got back to his suite he had to figure out his plan to unveil himself in front of the city.
Music wouldn't soothe him and he'd drunk enough champagne at the party, no liquid courage would undo what he had just done. His eyes closed, shame filled him, the eyes of recrimination that he'd never shake.
She seemed to know him better than he knew himself.
Alexis had been right after all. He had used their grandson, she just hadn't understood why. He knew there'd been collateral damage to his strike back at Sonny. His eyes closed as he pictured the fiery anger mixed with the chill of hurt in Sam's eyes which mirrored his own.
She was his daughter after all.
When she'd walked away from him, the protective arm of Silas around her, he'd charged after her until her mother stepped in front of him.
"You want to talk to someone…you talk to me."
Alexis in full protective mama mode reared in front of him. Derek had been impressed. Julian more so, tugging at his restraints behind the mask to be released.
"You bastard…"
The words that shocked him to the core but he couldn't deny him not even to himself. Too emotionally spent from the night's events, he'd only thought of trying to make Sam understand…but she was gone and Alexis blocked his path.
An Alexis he didn't recognize but Julian did and it was all Derek could do to hold him inside. Now afterward he sat in his car in silence and regret, running the scenes from the gallery inside his head in some endless loop.
Sonny's involvement faded into the background…Ava too as it had been all about the two other women in the room. His eyes, remained on Alexis' until Sam broke his focus. He leaned back in his seat, unwilling to start the car. Really needing to head on back to the MC, call Carlos and get his agenda back on track before it derailed further. All those years, decades spent planning, excising all else that wasn't absolutely necessary from his life. Anything that might mess it all up, take him off track for fulfilling the destiny he'd set for himself.
It had worked perfectly of course until he set foot back in his old haunt. The first couple of days…he'd blended in the canvas which had changed so much since his departure. Fate had other plans, caring little about his long-drawn out strategy, ripping it apart at the seams.
First his daughter talking to him instead of Connie about the bone marrow transplant needed to save her son's life…then walking into the Floating Rib to unwind with a beer after a difficult day at work. She'd been sitting at the bar as she had that night in New Hampshire and after watching her while sipping his beer, he'd walked on over to her.
He'd walked in having bumped the story on the bone marrow drive from his front page. He'd left knowing already finding a way to make amends which led him to get his own marrow tested.
"That depends on you…you're the match…"
The odds, 50,000 to 1 since he'd been some random stranger. A few minutes later, the probability of him being a match had increased exponentially when he realized the truth that had changed his life.
If not the trajectory of his plans, because he'd waited so long to return to PC. Nearly 25 years he counted down until weeks became days.
He'd just waited a lifetime longer than that for a family.
Alexis returned the bottle of vodka on the wet bar and knew she should head out to her car waiting in the lot. Sonny had called off his hit men and Derek…Julian had made it out of the gallery safely.
He'd live to be a mobster another day.
Damn, she thought, I have court tomorrow in the child custody case…the one that had started out as a simple adoption.
Lulu and Dante didn't have a prayer of keeping Connie…no more than she did in keeping her own baby that she'd birthed at the age of 16. When Lulu had told her she thought about taking Connie and going underground…she'd thought about her own desperate wishes. She'd wanted to flee with her own baby away from Mikkos.
In her dreams, she had gotten away from Mikkos and the rest of them, raised her daughter some place safe for the both of them. They'd had a whole different life together.
The prince and his car had never factored into it.
Her face tingled from the brisk cold air which rushed against it as soon as she opened the gallery door and walked outside. The walk to her car encased her in darkness but silence as well as PC had shut down for the night.
Molly would be waiting for her up at home and she didn't want her daughter to worry. She knew her oldest daughter had a man watching out for her as she processed the shock and awe of her own reveal.
As for Alexis, she didn't need anyone to fuss over her or looked out for her. She'd been doing that her own life since…well before she could remember any other life.
But as she searched for her keys, a pair of eyes a distance away watched her anyway.
Carlos stood next to his own car, wrapped up in a jacket because damn it, upstate New York was chillier than the beaches of Puerto Rico. His boss had instructed him to neutralize the threat to him waiting outside the gallery to take him out. What had happened inside the gallery, well Julian hadn't gone into detail, but the rawness in his voice, no longer smooth as spun silk…well that told him the confrontation between the two mobster bosses had gone sideways.
The woman in front of him unlocked her car and got inside of it, she'd had something to do with it. Carlos knew that as surely as he knew the man who'd recruited an angry young artist with a promise to make his own world right again.
He watched as the car started, and the woman drove away back home, no doubt. Sighing, he got into his own car and headed back to the MC to meet his boss.
As he navigated the icy street, he felt confident that crossing that bridge when he came to it would be replaced by strategic planning in a battle against an opponent more formidable than the reigning mob boss named Sonny Corinthos.
Julian waited for Carlos to meet him in his suite. In a few hours, his headquarters had become firmly planted in enemy territory. Without the element of surprise he wondered if he'd face an eviction notice in the morning. He didn't care about that, he always landed on his feet after all.
The article that he'd written and held for publication the day his identity came out needed only a couple revisions before the newspaper went to bed. Come morning, the entire city would be reading about the resurrection of Julian Jerome, not the mobster but the changed man.
He should feel confident. Even though his reveal had been rushed, he'd walked away from a dangerous situation, he'd proven to be a much better chess player than Sonny.
Only one person could match him at that game.
He shook his head as he went for some Scotch while waiting for his enforcer. As well as the game in the gallery had gone, that's how badly things had gone with Alexis and Sam. His face had burned with shame, even as his agile mind had kept one step ahead of the man intent on killing him. He felt Alexis' eyes on him most, looking at her kept him centered but also told him she wasn't having any of it.
None of the excuses that spilled out when it'd been just the two of them, the ones that felt weak in his ears now. All shot down as soon as they'd left his lips.
His wheels spinning, unable to regain traction. Even after…
The Scotch burned his throat, his eyes watering. Not his drink of choice but he'd taken it. He had only several hours to work with Carlos to get the plan back on track, beginning with enjoying his latest pawn in the game.
Newly elected DA Scotty Baldwin, back in his proper place again in the story line.
That plan had gone so perfectly, down to the letter as shiny pawn Morgan, simply raw material etched in a life time of bitterness and pain to become another brilliant pawn in his plan.
Two in his pocket now, soon there'd be more.
He downed his scotch and slammed the glass down. Some degree of satisfaction filled him at the battle he'd won.
Until the Scotch warmed more than his body, it allowed a piece of him to relax. The emotion erupting from deep inside him, walled off long ago threatened to overtake him once again, as it had at the gallery. If he hadn't escaped it…
He closed his eyes steeling what threatened to take over, if he let it.
The realization of the battle he hadn't won, the one that had been for more than his life.
The battle over his soul.