Spinelli felt a strange sense of apprehension when Sam and Jason asked him to meet them at Casa De Stone Cold. Jason had sounded oddly gentle on the phone.
"We didn't wanna show you this before," Jason said quietly, "because we knew it would hurt you, but we don't have a choice now. Things are getting way too serious with Franco and you need to know everything."
"We went to his studio," Sam said, "and this is what we found."
She took some pictures out of her purse. One was a painting; the others were photos. The canvass was covered in what appeared to be red paint, but was still clearly recognizable. It was Jason, surrounded by seven people; Sam, Michael, Carly, Morgan, Sonny, Maxie and Spinelli.
"This is most disturbing," Spinelli said. "It looks as if he's covered us all in blood."
"This next one we already knew about," Sam confessed, "but we didn't wanna hurt you or cause trouble or- I'm sorry, but we really thought we were protecting you."
Spinelli looked from Sam's guilty face to Jason's placid one. He wasn't showing anything, but Spinelli could see a hint of sympathy in his eyes. Then he looked back at Sam and the picture she handed him and his entire world changed.
Maxie was lying on the floor in a chalk outline with a blindfold over her eyes. He wanted to kill Franco. How could he do this? How could he force Maximista to take a photo like this? What had he done to her? Had he somehow scared her into it? That had to be the only explanation. Maximista would never do something like this voluntarily after what had happened to Georgie.
"There's one more," Sam said gently. "I am so sorry, Spinelli, but you need to see this. You need to know how dangerous Franco is because you could be in danger, too; that first picture suggests that no one close to Jason is safe."
He looked to Jason again; his expression hadn't changed. Or had it? Was the sympathy in his blue eyes more pronounced? Spinelli couldn't tell for sure, but he thought so. What could be worse than seeing his poor Maximista forced to enact a violent crime scene?
But he was wrong. There was something much worse. The next photo proved that Maxie had not been forced into anything. The next one showed her having sex with Franco and obviously enjoying it.
"She betrayed me," he said in a small, disbelieving voice. "That is most definitely not the look of a woman who was being forced to- She knowingly, willingly betrayed me!"
Now his voice was a hurt, angry shout. He looked at his two friends, who had known about the photo and hadn't told him.
"You knew?"
"I talked to Maxie about it," Jason said, "and she said she thought it was weird that he wanted to blindfold her and take that picture, but she was desperate to get that photo shoot for Crimson and she just did it."
"So you spoke to Maxie and showed Samantha and neither of you thought I needed to know that the woman who claimed to love me prostituted herself to get a photo shoot!"
"Hold on," Jason said.
"Hold on? The woman I loved, my best friend and my partner betrayed me and I'm supposed to hold on."
"Spinelli," Sam began, looking hurt.
"I have to get out of here."
He left everything behind, including his laptop, and ran out of the house and down the stairs, taking two at a time, not sure where he was going.
