Part III
Sam paced the floor with the length of the dagger twisting between her fingers, studying the tip as her slow movements took her from one end of the room to the other.
"Sam, what are you doing with that?" Alexis' voice trembled with emotion as she watched her daughter keenly, unsure of what she was thinking or what she would do. She recognized the dagger in her hand - last time she saw it the police had confiscated it as evidence. She wasn't surprised that her resourceful daughter had it but she was concerned about what she planned on doing with it.
Pausing to look back at her mother and the man who spawned her, Sam lifted her head and rested back on her heels as she asked, "What am I going to do? What are you doing here, Mom?" She swept her hand slowly around the span of the dismal room, "What exactly are you doing in Julian's motel room?" Her mom was the last person she expected when she tracked the coward to his hideout.
"I forced her to come here, don't blame your mother, Sam."
"Don't speak my name!" Her venomous spit in his direction chilled Alexis to the bone and she looked from Julian anxiously to where her daughter glared coldly at his face. "Don't you ever say my name again!
"Sam, please - he's your father!"
That incited her. "He is not my father! He's the man who impregnated you when you were a kid and never looked back! He's the man who put a knife to your throat and would have slit you from ear to ear if Sonny hadn't stopped him! He's the filth who protected Olivia Jerome and allowed her to almost kill me and my child, while he cowered like a little bitch behind his secrets! Don't you ever call him my father again!"
Sam's anger was pulsating as it seemingly bounced from her in waves. She saw the look that darted between them and asked again, "You didn't answer my question, why are you here, in this pig's motel room!"
"She's my prisoner - I forced her to come here." Julian hurried to offer some explanation that wouldn't turn his daughter's ire upon her mother as well. She was in rare form, frightening almost, her wary anger barely controlled underneath the surface.
Sam knew better. She saw the way his eyes shifted when he lied, the way he hurried to beat her mother's words with his own. She also didn't miss the quick glance her mother threw to the unmade bed and back at him, and her stomach churned.
"You've gotta be shittin' me!" She neared Alexis and stared her down. "You slept with him?" The slight defiant lift of her chin and thinning of her lips was all the answer Sam needed. Backing away from them, she stared at her with disdain. "You actually let him touch you again? How far are going to fall before you wake up, Mom?"
"Sam, don't talk to your mother that way!"
She rushed him suddenly and flashed the knife in his face. "I told you never to speak my name again!"
"Sam, please - don't hurt him!"
Sam stormed back to where Alexis stood looking confused and frightened. "I don't believe you, Mom! I don't believe you would let him near you after everything he's done to you, to our family! What's the matter with you?" She whipped on Julian as he tried to address her again, "You stay the hell out of this - I'm talking to my mother!"
Sam turned back to Alexis and continued, shoving the knife in front of her, "Do you remember this? This is the knife that son of a bitch held to your throat and threatened to kill you with!"
"He didn't mean any of that, Sam - it was complicated…"
Sam cut her off as she continued, up in her mother's face as she emphasized her next words, "This knife, Mom - not just any knife…the lousy coward used this knife that was used to cut your mother's throat! The knife that was used to inject the worst pain that was inflicted on your young life, the knife that robbed you of your mother, that took her from you…that was the knife that your beloved husband put to your throat and threatened to drain your own life with."
Sam watched her mother turn white as she shivered in place and she continued, "You know what's not complicated, Mom? It's that if it was left up to Julian, I would not be standing here right now because I'd be dead!"
She saw the color drain even more from Alexis' face and she spat, "Scout would be dead, Mom! My innocent daughter, your sweet little granddaughter would never have taken her first precious breath…because the man you can't keep your hands off of was too much of a dipshit to tell anybody the truth! He allowed someone he knew was dangerous to infiltrate our family and use you, me, and everybody else as pawns to get what she wanted. Explain the complication in that, Mom?"
"Your mother didn't…"
"Explain to me how it's complicated that you've been allowing him to use you for months and months, to take almost everything from you and still you're here now, giving him more? The law practice that was your life's work you allowed him to take from you and you make no effort to take it back! The respect of your peers and your two young daughters who saw you as a strong and formidable woman, you allowed him to taint and lessen…your young, impressionable daughters who you raised to be strong, independent individuals with minds and a will of their own, you allow them to watch a man break you, take your self worth and your self esteem and still you give him more? Molly's and Kristina's opinion of you don't matter to you anymore? What you taught them about respecting themselves and the way they allow people to treat them is now irrelevant? Because of him?" Sam pointed at Julian as the disgust dripped from her words.
Alexis fell to the bed, shaking, the tears threatening to spill as she fought to control the emotions blazing through her. She was so confused, so torn between hating and loving the man of her dreams, so eager to be able to explain what she was feeling to her unforgiving daughter but not being able to make any of it make sense. She shook her head as the whisper escaped her lips, "He's your father…he's your father."
"He is the bastard who almost killed my daughter, and the only reason I didn't let my husband put a bullet in his brain, or hunt him down and do it myself, is because he saved my son's life! As much as he did it and used him as a bargaining chip to keep Sonny from killing him, Danny would've died if he hadn't given him the transplant…but letting him live is the last thing I will ever do for Julian Jerome!"
She turned away from Alexis to look at the man standing by the bed, wishing he'd make a move so she could gut him.
"You come anywhere near anyone in my family again and it'll be the last thing you do!"
Julian tried to step to her, "You have to let me explain…my hands were tied, she would've killed you all - everybody I loved!"
"So you left us all at her mercy? You allowed my mother to open her home and herself to a dangerous woman because your hands were tied? You're a lousy coward who thinks of nobody but yourself! You use and use until there's nothing left and if you think I'm going to sit and watch you keep doing it to my mother you have another thing coming!"
"Sam, he didn't hurt me. Nothing happened that I didn't want to happen."
"Open your eyes, Mom!" The frustration was making her dizzy. "Geez, what the hell happened to you? He damaged your spirit so badly that he drove you to drink, why can't you see that?"
"I'm responsible for my own actions, Sam. I picked up a bottle, that's on me. Your father helped me to stop drinking, you have to give him that."
"He's the reason you started to drink in the first place! He cut you so low that you tried to drown yourself in alcohol just to ease the pain! He made you feel ashamed and unloved to the point where you turned away from everything you loved and everyone who loved you and almost drank yourself to death…and you think he deserves praise for pointing it out to you? Who the hell are you and what have you done with my mother?"
Alexis buried her face in her hands and sobbed openly. She had lived for her girls and devoted herself to who they would become, to guiding them towards being strong, independent women in their own right. Sam had succeeded on her own merit, but she still had two young girls to answer to but she had been so overwhelmed lately that nothing was making sense anymore. One minute she'd thought she hated the man, but then his letter explained so many things that she hadn't understood and couldn't grasp while they were happening. He had done all those awful things in the name of saving them all from a mad woman, hadn't he? "B-but the letter…"
"Sam, please! Stop badgering your mother, can't you see how much you're hurting her?"
"I told you to stay out of it!" The words were accented by the vase that she threw at his head in anger - it narrowly missed him and crashed into the wall, jolting Alexis off the bed. "You're the reason my mother is behaving like a battered woman and if you keep talking I swear I'll stick you like the pig you are and watch you bleed!"
"Stop it! Stop it, both of you!"
"I will not, Mom…not until you start acting like you have some sense left. His stupid letter was a load of hogwash that didn't explain anything - he's still a selfish user who manipulated you to throw your life away for him and he's still manipulating you now! STOP LETTING HIM!"
The knock on the door startled them all. "Police! Open up!"
Sam lifted her foot to the chair and stuck the dagger inside her boot, straightening up to her mother as she said, "Don't say anything…you are not here willingly, do you hear me?"
The next day Alexis was still feeling uneasy about the whole thing. She realized that something about the police officers who arrested Julian and led him out in cuffs didn't sit right with her, and after some deliberation she finally put her finger on it. For one thing they weren't clean cut like the cops she was used to, and the uniforms didn't fit well on two of them at all. Not only were they baggy but the un-ironed shirts had folding lines that suggested they were worn straight from the packaging. The more she thought about it, the more uneasy she became so finally she made up her mind to check it out, deciding to stop by the PCPD to pay Julian a visit.
After the police station she went to see Sam whom she found at home with Scout.
"Sam, what did you do?"
Sam closed the door behind her mother and followed her into the living room, "Hello to you too, Mom, and please keep your voice down, your granddaughter is sleeping right over there."
Alexis looked over to where she pointed at the bassinet but didn't move to the baby, instead she turned back to Sam, fidgeting. "What have you done to your father?"
Sam walked around her to peer into the bassinet checking for herself that her angel was still sleeping before taking a seat on the couch, answering cooly, "I told you to stop calling him that! That coward is nothing to me!"
Alexis took a seat facing her daughter. "It doesn't matter what you think of him, he's still your father - you can't change that."
Sam picked up the parenting magazine she'd been reading before her mother showed up, flipping calmly through the pages, "Like hell I can't! You can stay attached to the selfish bastard all you want…I have no father!"
Alexis was losing her patience with her stubborn daughter. She reached out and snatched the magazine from her, "Look at me Sam!" When she sighed and looked over she asked again, "What happened to Julian? I went to the police station and he wasn't there. They have no record of him being arrested yesterday - what did you do?"
"Something you should've done instead of coddling him, Mom - got him away from our family once and for all!"
Alexis suddenly felt dizzy as the air escaped her lungs in pants, "Oh, my God…please tell me you didn't kill your father! Sam, what did you do?"
"I didn't kill anyone…but Julian Jerome is a million miles away from here and he will not be coming back. You can forgive him and justify those horrible things all you want so you can live with letting that pig touch you, but he will never be allowed anywhere near my children, ever again!"
"Olivia is the one you should blame, she's the one who pushed you!"
"They're both to blame, Mom! I would never have gotten in that car with her if it wasn't for Julian! He allowed that woman to worm her way in as your sponsor - you introduced her to me as your friend because he allowed you to welcome her into your home, into your sobriety, knowing damn well that she wanted all of us dead and was working an angle, and you sit here defending him?"
"Sam, you're married to a man who's done worse! He even threatened your life before, how can you judge Julian so harshly when Jason is no better than him?"
Sam looked at her mother with her mouth open for a minute before she could reply, "You've got to be joking right now?" When her mother's look said no, she wasn't, Sam continued angrily, "Jason is nothing like Julian!"
She was so angry she couldn't sit still anymore, jumping up from the couch to walk the length of it hotly, "Jason would never put a knife to my throat - how can you even put them in the same category?"
She laid her hands on the back of the couch and lent down to look her mother in the eye, "What happened with Jason and me was completely different and you know it - I was out of control with anger and grief and he said those words to prevent me from doing something reckless that could hurt innocent children - he's never laid a hand on me! Jason is a million times a better man than Julian will ever be…he would not sit idly by and let some lunatic threaten his family and do nothing about it! Don't ever put my husband and that selfish weasel in the same category ever again!"
The wailing from the bassinet got Sam's attention, prodding her to go over and lift her daughter into her arms, "It's okay baby girl - Momma didn't mean to wake you with her yelling - bad Momma - it's okay, shhhh…" Rocking her daughter softly, Sam started pacing with her in her arms, calmly soothing her back to sleep.
Alexis looked at the picture they presented and she thought about what Sam had said about them both being dead and she couldn't stop the sudden dread and the pang of sadness that hit her heart. They really could both be under right now, but it wasn't Julian who did those things, it was his sister. She needed to make her stubborn daughter see that and find out what she'd done to her father. She knew she shouldn't be with him anymore but she couldn't stand the thought of something happening to him. She still loved him, despite what he didn't have the courage to do for them in the past.
"Sam, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you and Scout got hurt, I'm sorry you're so angry about all this, but you need to be reasonable. I know you can be forgiving, so why can't you forgive this?"
For a minute she wasn't sure Sam heard her, she kept walking the room and cooing her baby girl back to sleep, not paying attention to Alexis. Then she said the words that shamed Alexis again.
"Do you even realize that you've been here for twenty minutes and you haven't even looked at Scout?" Sam didn't look away from her daughter as she addressed her mother softly. "Since the minute you came through that door, all you've been focused on is Julian Jerome - you didn't even walk over to the bassinet to peek in on her, you haven't tried to hold her, you didn't even ask how she was. This precious little angel, your flesh and blood granddaughter who's here because her father will move heaven and earth to protect his family, will go to any lengths to save his little girl. Jason Morgan actually breathed life into her little chest after he delivered her at the bottom of the bridge I got tossed from because Julian couldn't bother to tell us who Liv really was, and you think he's no better than Julian."
Sam walked back over to the bassinet and laid her sleeping daughter down, tucking the blanket safely around her, then kissing her finger and touching it to her tiny little nose. "Go home, Mom. If I were you, I'd look after myself and pay attention to staying sober for yourself and your two young daughters." She turned to face her mother, "Krissy and Molly are both adults now, but they still need you. Do yourself a favor and forget about Julian Jerome and what may or may not be happening to him and concentrate on cleaning up the mess he's made of your life. Go after your license, get back to work so you can have a purpose again. Get back your fight so you can stand up for yourself and stop getting fed bullshit and call it love. Go home, Mom. I will never tell you where he is, not ever!"