Brenda Barrett had been living in Paris for over a year. She had plenty of money, as modeling jobs came her way easily. In Paris, modeling opportunities were better than they were in Port Charles, the city in upstate New York she had lived in before she moved to Paris, in spite of the presence of Jax Cosmetics, Inc., a company for which she had been the principal model and spokesperson.
She had fallen in love with the owner and become engaged to him. But that fell apart when an earlier lover, a mobster named Sonny Corinthos, had managed to convince her that their love was unending in spite of the break-up they had previously been through, and in spite of her love for Jax.
That had been the biggest mistake of her life.
Sonny had abandoned her for the last time, she had decided. The worst was on their wedding day, when she had been at the end of the aisle, ready to be married, with no bridegroom in sight. Finally, the news came. He did not intend to come. He sent his idiotic, robot-like lieutenant Jason Morgan to the church to tell her this.
By this time, Jax had moved on, though he remained a good friend to her. But seeing him around reminded her of her awful mistake. Sonny was out of town for good, or she'd have killed him. But Jax was enough, so she had gone to Paris.
So it was disconcerting to find, in the Paris press, that he was in town promoting his cosmetics. Pictures and gossip columnists confirmed that he was now married to a former police detective. The one who had helped Jax find her originally, when she had run off with Sonny, during the trip when she had told Jax that she was sure Sonny was the one for her.
She decided to head back to Port Charles. Now, neither of them was there. She could get back to her friends and her life.
Brenda took a suite at the Port Charles Hotel as soon as she got into town. She called her friend Ned and left him a message. Then she went down to the docks to take a walk.
She walked back and forth in the cold night air. Then she saw someone up ahead. She was shocked, and realized she had come all this way without checking. What nerve. Sonny Corinthos stood right in front of her.
He saw her.
"Brenda," he said, calmly.
As if nothing had happened! She hated him more at that instant than she had when she had first taken in the fact that he wasn't showing up at their wedding.
He came close to her, and looked as if he were about to say something. She slapped him as hard as she could.
He did not look shocked.
"What's going on here?" a female voice demanded.
"Carly," he said, in a rather peremptory tone. "Get out of here."
"Oh, so you're still ordering women around," Brenda said. "Who is this one?"
"My wife."
"Oh, so you showed up at a wedding? She must be awfully submissive to allow for that."
"Don't talk about my wife," he said, "you don't know her."
"Indeed," Brenda replied. "I don't expect to ever know any woman who you would marry. Or understand her."
"Stay away, you slut," Carly said to her. "You're not getting Sonny back, ever."
"What makes you think I want him back?" Brenda asked. "I don't want him." She walked off into the night.
Ned was glad to see her. Brenda described the encounter on the docks.
"I thought he was gone for good," Brenda explained. "Never dreamed he'd be back here."
"Are you staying long?"
"I don't know," she answered. "But it doesn't matter what he does. Though I wouldn't have come if I had realized he was here. Now that I am here, though, I plan to stay a little while, whether he and his wife like it or not. I thought that woman was married to your cousin AJ and they even had a son."
"She was, and she left him for Sonny," Ned said. "They forced AJ to sign his son over for adoption, too."
"So Sonny is happy," Brenda said. "Finally, he has found the woman of his dreams, and has a son."
"I wouldn't say that," Ned smiled. "That marriage is by no means stable. She just went back to him after having left him for several months, in fact."
"No wonder she's so insecure," Brenda said. "All I had to do was be there and she thought I was going to try to get him back."
"Will you?"
"No!"
"She is always insecure," Ned said. "Every female who even talks to Sonny is a threat to her."
"Being separated must not have helped."
"It didn't," Ned said. "He slept with his lawyer. She slept with the bodyguard he assigned to her. Both using the others, I suppose."
"Sounds like a marriage made in heaven," Brenda said.
Brenda took another walk on the docks the next night. She kept an eye out for Sonny Corinthos, but decided he and his wife weren't going to get in her way. They could keep out of hers, as far as she was concerned.
This time she ran into Jason Morgan. He gave her his usual implacable stare.
Really, it ticked her off the way he too acted as if nothing had happened. She had hated him ever since he had first worked for Sonny – he was a sanctimonious criminal, if such a thing could be imagined. He was a thug and a brain-damaged idiot. She didn't feel sorry for him like everybody else did. He had only been the messenger, but it was impossible for Brenda not to hate looking at him. She could never forget the sight of him at the entrance to the church on the day of her wedding. Not the bridegroom she was waiting for, but this emotionless robot, who was only there to tell her the one thing no bride should ever have to hear.
She brushed past him without saying a word. He stared after her for a brief second. Then he went on.
She went a little further, when she thought she heard something. She ran down the stairs onto a lower part of the docks, where the noise was coming from. There at the bottom, lay a bloodied and beaten young man.
She knelt down and pulled out her cell phone and called 911.
He was a real mess. It looked as if a gang had beaten him up.
He moaned with pain again. "It's OK, help is coming," she said. She pushed his hair back a little. His face was really going to be bruised up. Then she looked again.
He looked familiar. She studied his face. She couldn't place him.
Brenda was in the hospital, waiting. Somehow, she felt a responsibility to at least find out who it was and what had happened.
Dr. Monica Quartermaine went into his room, followed by her husband, Dr. Alan Quartermaine. Brenda knew them. She decided to ask them about the young man when they came out.
A few minutes later, they did. "I swear, he's always in some sort of trouble," Monica was saying to Alan.
They both cold when they saw Brenda.
"Well, look who's here!" Alan exclaimed.
"Welcome back," Monica said, evenly.
"Thank you," Brenda said.
"Are you here for long?" Alan asked.
"I don't know," she answered. "I did want to know about that patient you were just seeing. I found him," she explained.
"He'll be all right," Monica said.
"Who is he?"
"Zander Smith, one of your everyday hoodlums," said Alan.
"Oh!" Brenda said. "I thought he looked familiar!"
"Familiar?" Monica asked. "You know him?"
"Well, yeah, it was, like, when I was addicted to drugs. You remember."
"Of course," Alan said. "That explains it. He was in the business."
"I guess he still is," Brenda said. "Some deal must have gone bad."
"Supposedly he's not," Monica answered. "This probably had to do with his working for Sonny."
"Really?" Brenda was more intrigued. "He works for Sonny?"
"Well, not now," Alan said. "That's quite apparent."
Brenda came back the next day and asked to see Zander.
He was not sitting up yet, but he could talk.
"Hey, baby," he said.
"Remember me?"
"Who could ever forget you?"
She smiled.
"How did you get into all this mess?" she asked. "You're so young. How old are you now?"
"Twenty-one."
"Are you still dealing on the PCU campus? And around the modeling agencies?"
"Nope. I am a respectable bodyguard. Or I was."
"What? How could you be the one – the Quartermaines said you were working for Sonny – you are the one who got involved with his wife?"
"Don't look so surprised."
"For crying out loud," she said. "All the models in this town think you are adorable," she said. "Why would you waste time with that harpy?"
"I like your vocabulary," he said. "I don't know. Right now, it does sound like a pretty bad idea."
"Some bodyguard," she added. "Who did this to you?"
"Naturally, I can't say, or there will be a repeat performance."
She thought back. "I know who did it," she said. "I saw him. But I'll handle it as you like."
"Thanks," he said, weakly. He winced a little. She knew he wanted to act tough, so she gave him a second to recover.
"Do you feel safe?" she asked him. "In this hospital?"
"Not particularly," he answered. "But a little safer than other places."
She sighed. "You really are too much," she said.
Brenda went to the main office and found the financial division. She explained she wanted to pay Zander Smith's bill, and make sure they gave him everything he needed.
"Mr. Corinthos already did that," the clerk told her.
Brenda almost laughed. So this was more of that mob "honor." What else explained it?
The next day, he was sitting up, and looked a little more like himself.
"You really are the limit," she said. "Getting involved with a mobster's wife."
"They were separated," he said. "He was seeing someone else. Seems fair."
"Not to him," Brenda said. "The rules are different for men."
"Oh, yeah, I forgot. He does what he wants, she does what he wants."
"Did they beat you over that?"
"Oh, no, then it was probably my giving up his information to another gangster."
"If you are going to do things like that, at least make it the FBI," she said. "They have a witness protection program."
"Well, I wasn't thinking at the time. I got ten grand for it."
"You could have gotten more."
"Well, it's all in the bank. At least I can pay the hospital bill."
"No, Sonny already did it. Mob honor."
"Weird. Really weird. How do you know?"
"Because I went to pay the bill."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I like you, I guess."
"You didn't have to do that."
"I have plenty of money."
"Weren't you engaged to Sonny once?"
"Yes. I almost married him. Fortunately for me, he failed to show up on our wedding day."
"I can't believe he's that stupid!"
"Thanks for the compliment, but he is."
"Where have you been all this time?"
"In Paris."
"What brought you back here?"
"I wanted to see everyone, and my former fiancée was in Paris. Reminds me of the big mistake I made throwing him over for Sonny."
"Try to get him back."
"Well, it's a bad time. He just got married."
"So you came back to where Sonny is."
"It's been so long, I didn't think. When I left town, he had left town – he left town the day of our wedding. It never occurred to me he might have come back."
"He's been back awhile."
"What have you been doing?"
"Oh, nothing much. I committed a kidnapping, was arrested for murder. I got off, or, I ended up having the charges withdrawn because I could testify against the real murderer. That was in Sonny's interests. I got a job as a shipping clerk in his legal business. But all good things must come to an end. He promoted me to bodyguard to Carly and it's been down hill, really, since then."
"What are you going to do now?"
"I'll figure it out when I get out of here."
"Here, let me give you my number," she said. "Where is your cell phone?"
He pointed to the table next to his bed. She programmed her number into it.
"Call me," she said.
When Zander got out of the hospital, he headed for the Port Charles Hotel. He would stay there and think about what to do next. He had ten grand, after all. Why not stay there?
He went down to the bar for a drink.
He saw Brenda sitting there with a glass of white wine.
"Hey beautiful," he said, sitting down next to her.
"Zander! You're out! You look almost healed!"
"I'm stiff all over," he grinned. "But at least I can walk. And breathe."
"What brings you here?"
"I'm staying here, for a little while."
"Why here - because I'm staying here?"
"You are? I didn't know that. Doesn't make the place less attractive, though."
She laughed. "Get this man whatever he wants," she said to the bartender.
"I've got ten grand," he said. "I'll buy you the drinks."
"How did you get into dealing so young?" she asked.
"Easy money. I ran away from home. I wasn't used to sleeping outside. I forgot my social security number."
"How old were you when you ran away from home?"
"Almost eighteen. I didn't want my parents to find me. This was the best way, at least for awhile. My father wanted me out of the country."
"Sounds like a very loving father."
"He was. He didn't want the embarrassment of the criminal charges that were pending against me."
"So why aren't you out of the country?"
"I was in Canada. That was where I last lived, before I got into trouble with deals over here. I only came over here on business, you see."
"I see."
"Didn't you get along with your mother?"
"My mother, well, she's not all there. Well, let me just say it. She's crazy."
"I'm sorry," Brenda said.
"Oh, well, these things happen."
"You're not alone," Brenda said. "It happens that my mother is, too. Out of her mind. She's been locked up for years."
"My, I'm sorry to hear that. Have you seen her?"
"No, there's not much use. Doesn't do her any good."
"How about your father?"
"He died some years back. We were never close though. He couldn't get over how I wasn't as successful and responsible as my older sister."
"I know that feeling, too," he said. "My father could never get over how I wasn't as successful and responsible as my older brother."
"Really?" she asked. "You aren't just saying that, because I repeated that my mother was like your mother?"
"No," he said. "I lived it too long to have to make it up. Where's your sister?"
"In London. Being a big success."
"There's a difference. You're a big success, too."
"Never good enough for Daddy. Where's your brother?"
"I don't know, probably a law student at Harvard," he said.
The bartender brought him his drink. "Get this lady another one," he said to the bartender.