She looked at the doctor incredulously, as she sat on the examination table. All she wore was a paper thin gown which didn't cover everything. She pulled it up over her shoulders

"You've got to be kidding me. I can't be…I'm too old for this…."

The doctor just smiled at her, jotting some notations in her clipboard.

"Oh you most definitely are…it might be hard to believe but it does happen. Women of your age do…on occasion get pregnant and that most definitely is the case here. "

She just collapsed down on the table in such a state of disbelief.

"No it can't be…I can't be…God I haven't even had a regular cycle…I just assumed…"

The doctor smiled.

"You were probably In what's caused perimenopause. Your cycle might be more irregular as ovulation but it doesn't mean you can't get pregnant…"

She pulled her gown around her.

"It can't be…. I was told this couldn't happen. There was no way this could happen…I mean I'm 48."

The doctor patted her on the shoulder.

"That might be but it did happen. You weren't using anything when you…"

She sat up interrupting her doctor.

"I didn't think I needed to do so…Oh my god…I can't believe it…."

She felt like hyperventilating and remembering how so many well-meaning people had handed her a paper bag to get her breathing under control until the one man who had taught her other ways to deal with that.

No, she closed her eyes immediately steeling herself against the memories. She didn't want to think about him, the man who had captured her heart and then inexplicably shattered it to pieces.

"I can't believe it…."

The doctor leaned against the examination table.

"You need to face it. In about seven and a half months you're going to have a baby and it's not going to be an easy journey. There will be complications…"

She knew that at her age there had to be. Increased risks of miscarriage, preeclampsia, birth defects including Down's Syndrome. She would need regular monitoring and tests to give her any heads up on any of these complications. God she didn't know if she was up to any of this but as she rubbed her belly…she already knew she had to find a way to deal with it.

She took a deep breath.

"I know that…but I just never expected…. I thought I had the flu."

The doctor noted something on Alexis' chart.

"Oh you had the flu. But you're also pregnant."

Alexis just sighed looking forward, her mind trying to process all this information.

"I had no idea…it was the flu."

The doctor smiled.

"Look that might well be but you are definitely pregnant and you're going to have a baby. And while yes there are significant medical risks, there's no reason to belief that you can't have a perfectly heathy child."

Alexis barely heard her words. Her mind reeled from the news from the doctor. It had to be impossible…she couldn't have gotten pregnant. She was too damn old for starters. She was a grandmother for goodness sakes. She had three daughters all fully grown. There was just no way…. yet as she tentatively caressed her stomach.

"It just can't be…

The doctor cleared her throat.

"It is Ms. Davis and you are going to have some decisions to make okay? Your pregnancy definitely qualifies as high risk but that doesn't mean you can't have a healthy baby."

Alexis tried to process the information. She'd been feeling under the weather for the past two weeks and had gone to the doctor thinking she might have the flu. Only to find the only medical condition she had was of the nine-month kind. Which meant the baby's father could only be her very much estranged husband.

She shivered at the thought. Not wanting to think about Julian and how much he'd lied to her…about everything.

He hadn't been the man she thought him to be. The man who had treated her like she was the only woman he'd ever loved, ever wanted. His soulmate, his guiding star and all that…yet overnight he had suddenly changed. He had been very cold and distant, a total stranger to her and when she realized what he had done to Carlos….

Just like that their marriage had imploded because she couldn't live with his lies, his return to his murderous lifestyle. He had used the same knife that had stolen her mother's life to kill the one remaining person who could rob him of his freedom for the rest of his life.

Carlos had been stabbed nine times according to the medical report. She had initially been arrested for the crime and spent a week in lockup at PCPD then another week at Shady Brook being mentally evaluated while awaiting possible murder charges.

Then one morning, she had been lining up for breakfast in the mess room with the other women who had been dumped there with assorted diagnoses and forgotten by the world that continued on without them.

An orderly came up to her in the food line and gestured that she was to follow him to the office of the doctor who had been treating her. Treating her in the loosest sense of the term. He'd seemed only interested in medicating her though she pretended to take the pills and then dumped them wherever convenient.

She entered her office in her gown and slippers while he shuffled through some papers on his desk. He glanced up at her, looking bored as if she and everyone else there was a waste of his time.

"You're being released immediately."

Her eyes widened. That news surprised her. She had been remanded by the judge she had appeared before many times to Shady Brook for 30 days of observation to determine her fitness for standing trial for Murder 1 for shanking Carlos and watching him bleed out before dumping him off Pier 54.

She'd foolishly played into that handling the knife that had been stained with her blood and the rag that had been soaked in it.

"I thought…"

He waved his hand.

"The order came against my recommendations and that of the presiding judge on the Rivera case. I had no choice but to go along with it."

She narrowed her eyes.

"Who gave the order?"

The doctor closed the file on his desk and looked directly at her.

"The WSB…."

She remembered how that had all played out and the agreement she'd made, not knowing she had a new life growing inside her to protect.

The short man with the slicked back hair, dark as indigo ink rested back on the heels of his shoes and tapped his cheek with his fingers. His pinky ring glimmered in the glow of the mercury vapor light that stood next to the sliding door of his warehouse.

He looked down at the shiny medal that had just been awarded him by Mayor Lomax and Commissioner Jordan Ashford. He'd attended the ceremony with Carly as his date, showing herself off in her shimmering golden gown. Michael had attended the event with his off again now on again girlfriend Sabrina, his eyes lit up with eternal gratitude to Sonny for saving her from danger. Sure, Sonny had wrestled with Michael arguing that it was imperative that he not his stolen child be the one to save the day once again. Morgan was there, with some unknown blonde who looked eerily like a younger version of Ava Jerome.

Kristina was there with some guy she had met while working at the warehouse. Kiki had brought baby Avery. The entire town minus some malcontents had shown up to honor Sonny as the major crime fighting and peace keeping force in Pt. Charles. A five-piece band had played a piece named after him while he walked up to collect his award and Metro Court had catered it special.

The whole town worshipped him as it should. He truly was deserving of the award bestowed on him.

Sure he had his dark secrets including those that the PCPD didn't know, the mayor didn't know, even his wife didn't know.

He was at his main slip in the harbor awaiting one of his shipments that came in the darkest hours of the night. Not even a hint of moon tonight, only a line of street lights to illuminate the harbor. His contact, a Russian by the name of Serge Gustav had called him from one burn phone to another telling him when the shipment of product would be arriving.

Fresh off the assembly line in Brussels which had been the center spoke of a wheel that connected with Russia, Albania, Belarus and the Ukraine.

He pulled out one of his Cuban cigars, cackling. Lighting up, he thought of the irony that most of the people in town thought his contraband was Cuban cigars and that had only been a cover…

As he looked out into the blackness of the harbor in front of him that allowed him no visible horizon, he mentally counted the profits inside his head.

Not knowing that a man in the shadow's watched him carefully.

Olivia cooed as she left the award ceremony with her date, Ned Ashton. She had asked him to attend the gala to honor her original baby daddy and he'd reluctantly accepted but not before lecturing her on all of Sonny's sins and all the reasons why he was the only upstanding man in all of PC.

But he'd behaved himself during the ceremony though she had heard him sigh deeply during parts of the homage to Sonny about his heroism. Lomax saying that Sonny was the town's peace keeping force. Jordan saying that Sonny had solved all the major crimes in PC and even D.A. Paul admitting while on the stage with his enthusiastic new bride Anna that his office owed the dimpled Dom a huge debt.

Ned had grumbled afterward.

"I should have gotten that award. I'm the most noble and honorable member of PC society. I've never hurt anyone…well at least not when it hasn't been in their best interest."

Olivia simply nodded.

"I know that. I love that about you. You surrendered all your shares in ELQ to save me when I was blackmailed by Franco."

That had seemed a lifetime ago because Franco had won the medal of valor for saving Jake and all the other children at the PC elementary school from an untimely flashflood that had nearly drowned all of them.

"I had warned Alexis about Julian not being nearly as good and righteous as me but she didn't listen. If only she realized her destiny had been to be the perfect Q wife by my side, helping me hold my family together whenever I needed it."

Olivia frowned, clearly not liking where this was going.

"I thought you and she…"

Ned waved his hand.

"Oh that… she didn't listen to me. She foolishly associated with that thug when she could have had it all with me."

Olivia just rolled her eyes. She loved Ned, really she did and she loved going to movies and Monster Truck events with him but beyond that…they really didn't have much in common. And truth be told, she had been fixated on Carly looking like the golden goose, her gown simmering like diamonds in the spotlight. Something inside of her that she had never know existed, turned on.

Damn Carly looked pretty hot and until now…she had never known that.

Julian sat in the playpen.

Not a literal playpen but since he'd drowned his sorrows one night in a case of bourbon and wound up trying to trip the light fantastic with Nina, he had no idea who he was or where he was at.

After Alexis had kicked him out and he'd wound up crashing at his sister's crib, he'd found himself looking back at everything he'd done since his honeymoon as if it were done by someone else. Yet he knew he'd done it. Now he was at Nina's MC suite doing pushups on the floor, his mind wandering. Flashes in his mind of taking the knife from the cabinet at the house. Meeting Carlos at the pier. Sweet talking him with promises of a new life and then hugging him. Shanking him with the blade over and over, before kicking his enforcer and close friend into the harbor.

Nina had given him an alibi and in return had wanted him to help her become a mother. He had taken her offer but when he did, something inside of him had turned off. All he thought about was Alexis, his wife, the woman he had horribly betrayed. The further away he had gotten away from the house he'd built for her, from the knife he had used to betray Carlos…the more confused he felt. Nina reminded him over and over that he could go away for murder 1 if not for her protecting him and he owed her.

She was childish and borderline psychotic but then thinking back on his own actions, was he any different? He didn't know what had happened to him. It was like his whole life had been rewritten overnight.

He finished his pushups and started his sit ups. Nina walked back in her robe, holding a bottle of champagne, smiling crookedly. Her eyes widened beyond the point of normality.

"My ovulation chart showed that I'm at my most fertile period so let's just get it on already. I know this time will work. I know after tonight I'll be pregnant with our child."

Julian's eyes rolled back in his head but he got up to walk to her taking the bottle out of her hand.

"Expectant mothers shouldn't be touching the stuff…"

She seemed to understand the logic of that. Behind him, his cell phone buzzed and buzzed.

Carly tapped her foot as Jason answered her page and showed up clearly at her beck and call. Which meant Sam had to alter her plans for the evening so that Jason could do as Carly bid.

Just the way it should be. She had her best friend back.

He glanced at her brushing hair off of his forehead.

"So what do you want?"

She smiled at him.

"I just want you to make sure Sonny is safe. He just won this award and you know there are truly evil forces in PC that will want to punish him for that."

Jason cleared his throat.

"Julian Jerome and his sister…they might not be in jail but they are pariahs. No one wants anything to do with them."

Carly clucked her tongue.

"And Alexis…"

"She's a pariah as well and an inmate at Shady Brook. Sam visits her once a week but she's not getting out soon."

Carly nodded, satisfied.

"She shouldn't. She shacked up with a lowlife like Julian when she really wanted to be with Sonny. Julian was sloppy seconds when she realized that Sonny would never want anyone but me."

Jason had heard the speech. He stuck to business.

"Yes Julian is a coward and a liar. And I promised I'd help Sonny if he needed my help without formerly agreeing to work with him."

Carly nodded.

"Because you and Sonny are like brothers. And I'm going to send another card to Alexis at Shady Brook telling her I told her so."

Just then a shot was fired, that pierced the night. Jason instinctively pushed her on the ground to protect her.

They both heard footsteps suddenly that grew fainter. Jason leapt to his feet to chase the shooter. Carly watched her go and thought Jason risking his life to protect her was better than sex.

Sam had watched Jason answer his page and tell her he had to go help Carly. She nodded and told him it was fine to go. She had gone to the award ceremony for Sonny because he truly was an honorable and peace keeping mobster unlike her father who she shunned after Jason said he wasn't worth it.

She walked out into the parking lot to go to her car. Dimly lit because Lomax had cut the budget to pay for upkeep on the street lights.

"Hey Ms Morgan…"

She stopped searching for the source of the gravelly voice. One hand instinctively on her sidepiece.

"Who is that…?"

A man stepped out of the shadows.