CHAPTER TWO

His eyes flashed guiltily. "That was a mistake."

She scoffed incredulously. "A mistake?" she repeated with a dangerous edge in her voice. "That's what you've reduced it to?" She shook her head. "Well, I'd rather be a McCall pawn than another one of your mistakes."

"Samantha, if you knew what your mother was like, you wouldn't be so judgmental."

She looked at him in outrage. "My mother was a con artist that dazzled you blind and played you for a fool. I would be proud of her for that if she wasn't the gutter snipe she was." Sam clenched her fists as she glared at her father. "You think Claudia was deceitful and treacherous? Let me tell you that you dodged a bullet because Evelyn put her to shame."

"Whine, whine, whine," Anthony mocked. "I sent you away so you wouldn't pollute John the way your sister did."

Sam yawned tiredly. "Oh, yes, because God forbid I corrupt the Golden Son." She wrinkled her nose at him and didn't mention that she stayed in contact with her brother over the years. "I hear John hates you now though." She giggled at the displeasure she could see in his eyes. "And that because of you he was riddled full of bullets."

"That was…" Anthony began.

"Another mistake?" Sam finished for him and then laughed. "Was killing Maria a mistake as well?" She saw the grief in his eyes at the mention of his beloved wife and her stepmother. "My, my, my. With all these mistakes of yours I have to wonder if anything you've done has ever been deliberate."

"My killing Corinthos will be very deliberate." He assured her darkly.

"Who is that?" Sam asked, already knowing that Sonny Corinthos was the kingpin in the area.

"The bastard who killed your sister."

Sam shook her head dismissively. "Your own hatred of him has clouded your judgment. You've been in prison ever since Claudia married the guy so you couldn't possibly know that he killed her."

"Some things are just a given."

She sighed. "And others can turn out to be way more complicated." Sam was determined to keep a clear head. Given that she wasn't involved in her sister's life in any real way, it would make that easier. A few scattered visits during which only fights ensued because the two sisters rarely saw eye to eye.

Emails and the occasional phone call were very impersonal but that was how their relationship needed to be in order for Sam not to lose her sanity with all the crap that Claudia had pulled.

"Well, I best get going," she announced and began rising from her seat. "I didn't intend to stay this long but I just couldn't resist seeing you in chains." She waved goodbye as she walked out the door.

"I did what I did." Michael Corinthos told his uncle quietly as they sat together in his father's nearly deserted restaurant. "I protected my mother and sister from that psychopath when I killed her. You can't shield me from that."

"I know," Jason admitted regretfully. "But it is still a lot to deal with."

"Claudia was dangerous." Michael reminded him. "She tried to kill Dad, she got me shot and she kidnapped Mom while she was pregnant. If I had to kill her again, I would."

"I know you believe that right now." Once again Jason wondered how it had come to this. "But taking a life no matter the circumstances is a lot to carry. Sooner or later, the weight of what you've done will come crashing down on you."

"I don't feel guilty about it." Michael repeated and felt his patience begin to fade.

"You will eventually but you need to remember that what you did was in defense of your mom and your sister."

"She got exactly what she deserved!" Michael exploded. "Claudia took out a hit on my father. She dragged my mother away at gunpoint while she was in labour. She's a complete whackjob who put me in a coma for a year." His face was bright with anger. "A year, Jason! And then she married Dad and pretended to care about me—do not make excuses for me because it won't change anything. And stop acting like I shouldn't have done it."

"You shouldn't have been the one to do it," Jason roared with every bit of anger that Michael was feeling himself. "I never wanted you involved in any of this." He bit his lip to calm himself down and then softened his tone. "This is not someone I wanted you to become."

"I didn't plan on killing Claudia but I did and I'm not sorry."

"You are better than me!" Jason exclaimed. "Killing someone is not something to be proud of. You shouldn't be this person who claims to feel no guilt because it's a lie, Michael."

"Well, I am," Michael told him unapologetically. "You may not like it but I grew up." He pushed himself up out of his seat and stormed off in a huff.

Jason pinched the bridge of his nose with his hands and sighed miserably. "I should have been the one to kill Claudia, not you." He told himself.

A shrill ring took him from wallowing in his guilt and he groped his pocket and took his phone out, glancing at the caller ID, and a wave of annoyance swept over him as he answered. It was Sonny.

"Morgan." He listened for a few seconds while his boss barked orders at him. "I'll be there soon."

John was busy working under the hood of a car, tinkering with some SUV's engine to notice when she walked in. He grunted in frustration and threw the rag on his shoulder down onto the engine and kicked a tire.

"I don't think the owner would appreciate that." Sam smiled at her younger brother when he turned around to face her.

"Sam?" John furrowed his brow at his sister and then closed the hood of the SUV. He began wiping his hands with the same rag he had thrown on the engine.

"Hey John." She closed the distance between them and hesitantly offered her arms out to him. They weren't that close. She knew that. But they were still family and despite the fact that she hadn't been very close to her sister either, she still felt Claudia's loss. She could only imagine how John was feeling.

He stood still for a minute, still staring at her, studying her expression. When he found sincere grief mixed with incredulity, he stepped forward slowly and hugged his sister. When he pulled away and looked into her dark eyes that reminded him a little bit of Claudia and then mentally checked himself.

The reason her eyes were so familiar was because all three siblings shared Anthony's eyes in varying degrees, only Sam's seemed more different somehow. They were darker at times and he could see flecks of amber in them, a trait he attributed to her mother. She wasn't around much when he was little because about six years after his birth was when his father had finally tired of the freeloading tramp and sent her away but Evelyn McCall had had bright blue eyes with flecks of dark chocolate in them.

He ignored thoughts of Sam's mother, knowing that however much he had disliked her, Sam had despised Evelyn on a level he could never reach. Instead, he asked, "So, how are things?"

Something flickered in her eyes as she stepped a few feet away from him. "Busy but overall, things are good."

"Is your grandfather still working you like a dog?" He couldn't hide the disdain in his tone. John had told her exactly what he thought of the way her grandfather used her but Sam had refused to see or acknowledge it because she kept insisting that he had saved her.

"He doesn't over work me, Johnny." She snapped at him, her natural defenses clicking back into place. "He appreciates everything I do for the family."

His own eyes narrowed. "He better because you've been risking your life to give him power for too long already."

"Here we go." Sam rolled her eyes.

"And we're going to keep going until you realize that I'm right about this." John snapped back, leaning against the SUV. "Mickey McCall is a piece of slime whose only achievements are thanks to the granddaughter he uses and abuses."

"Hey," Sam raised her hand to him warningly, her voice dropping so low that it was almost lethal.

Jason had entered the garage intent on finding Johnny to bring him to Greystone so that Sonny could lay out the details of the job that he wanted both of them to do together but stopped dead in his tracks at the sound of a stranger's voice.

He peered around the corner to see Johnny facing off with a petite brunette, a very pissed off brunette, he amended once he caught sight of the way her jaw was clenched and the narrowing of her eyes.

"He has never laid one hand on me and you should know that I wouldn't put up with it if he did."

"He abuses you by using your appreciation for rescuing you from a life on the run with your mom." He saw the spark of fire in her eyes at the mention of Evelyn and he recognized it as a sign to back off but he couldn't this time. Not after Claudia. "He knows you'd do anything to avoid going back to that life and uses it to his advantage to get you to do whatever he needs regardless of the fact that it could get you killed one of these days."

"As if your father is so much better." She shot back, aiming a challenging glare towards him.

It almost worked but he managed to see through her lame attempt at angering him. Anthony had been hell on wheels for most of his life, getting rid of whoever he thought might influence him in the wrong way including both Sam and Claudia. Even killing his mother during one of his fits. He leaned down towards Sam and shook his head at her.

"You mean our father." A direct hit; the truth that she never wanted to acknowledge being thrown in her face and so she reared back as if he had slapped her.

Jason felt his eyes widen in shock as he looked at the stranger again. Now that he was able to see them both more clearly, he realized gloomily that she and John did share a resemblance. And having another Zacchara in the mix could and probably would mean trouble for everyone.

"What are you even doing here?" John asked, dropping all pretences and no longer wanting to fight her.

Sam swallowed down her anger and looked at him. "That's a stupid question." She watched his eyes cloud with confusion. "Our sister is dead." And then she looked around the garage pointedly. "Where else would I be?"

"You hated Claudia." As soon as he said the words, he regretted them as he watched Sam's eyes fill with pain. She closed them tightly and then opened them, and once again her face gave away nothing.

"That's not true." He arched his brows up in disbelief. "Claudia is the one that made everything so difficult between us. She got on my nerves alot but I didn't hate her." He nodded in agreement. "And even so, it doesn't mean that I don't care that some asshole just blew her away."

"Claudia did a lot of bad things." Sam frowned at the statement. "She was always her own worst enemy. Her thirst for vengeance was never easily soothed and she went too far too many times for it to be overlooked." She stepped away from him, her eyes full of disbelieving anger.

"So you're saying that she had it coming?" She saw his bleak expression and felt like hitting him for being so disloyal to his own sister. "Does she deserve to be buried in some shallow grave and no punishment to whoever killed her?" John hesitated and shifted his weight onto his other foot as he raised his gaze to meet her glare. "I don't care how much trouble she caused, John. After everything you did for her, you deserve more. I deserve more. We both—certainly me since I had nothing to do with whatever she did—deserve more respect than Corinthos is showing us."

"You don't know all the things she has done." He told her gently and ignored the agreeing anger flowing through his veins at her outraged words.

Her eyes flashed. "I don't particularly care what she did at the moment, John. The bottom line is that we didn't do anything." She noticed the regret in his eyes and suspected that whatever their sister had done, it had been really bad and that if she only knew, she might rethink her current position but the suspicion didn't quell the anger inside her. "We should be able to bury her body in the mausoleum and lay flowers down for her. As her family, we have the right to mourn for her no matter how horrible she was. And I will not be denied that because Sonny Corinthos is a total asshole."

Jason ignored his own feelings on the matter and stepped forward. "Johnny." Both siblings flinched and turned to look at him. Johnny acknowledged him with a nod of respect while his sister stared him down, boldly looking him up and down, seemingly unmoved by the fact that he towered over her and unaffected by the warning look John sent her way. "Sonny wants us both at his house. He has an assignment."

Sam looked at John in amazement. "You're still working for him?" She shook her head incredulously. "Unbelievable, John… unfuckingbelievable."

John sighed. "It's more complicated than you think, Sam." He reached for her but she stepped away from him.

"The hell it is!" She stared up at him in anger, poking an accusing finger at his chest. "You constantly argue with me over working for granddad because you think he uses me and demand that I grow some self-respect and walk away from the McCalls yet here you are still working for the bastard who doesn't even respect you enough to tell you the truth about what happened to our sister let alone hand over her body so that we can bury it."