Author Note: DAYS always seems to confuse me with their own storylines while I'm writing fan fic. In this story, Tony and EJ have acquired ownership of the Dimera Mansion, not John Brady Dimera!!!
Ch. 4 – No Foggy Piers
Tony was an incurable romantic. He loved hearing about great romances, particularly those that occurred in Salem. That is why he knew for certain that the vision of his long lost Renee was simply a brandy-induced dream. When loved ones returned from the dead, they did not arrive, shivering and out-of-breath, panting in executive offices. No, that wouldn't do at all. Such heartfelt reunions happened on foggy piers, in southern plantations or on deserted islands.
"Mr...Dimera...?" Renee gasped. "I'm sorry...to burst in on you...this way!"
For a moment, he simply stared at the woman before shaking his head in a bleary haze.
No, this was simply not how it worked.
Renee should be crying out with a heartfelt plea. Something like "Tony!? My love, oh, I've found you at last..." He almost giggled at his own melodramatic absurdity.
"But I need your help..."
Tony closed his eyes for a few moments, lying back against the large white sofa in his desk. Funny, he didn't feel intoxicated enough to be this far gone. In fact, he felt fairly sober. Tired, granted, but sober.
"Mr. Dimera?" The voice continued, not fading away into the past where it belonged. "Are you okay? You're not going to faint, are you? I'm sorry. I know this must be a huge shock for you. Do I need to get you some water or something?"
"Water?" he repeated, trying to hold back an inappropriate chuckle.
Perhaps he was hallucinating.
Stefano had succeeded in driving him insane after all. There was no other explanation for this. His mind had finally cracked, after all of the stress of starting up this company and fighting with Anna and dealing with Stefano's coma.
He felt a cool touch upon his forehead.
Tony opened his eyes, taking in the sight of the woman kneeling down beside him on the couch. She looked so sweet and concerned for him, such anxiety in those expressive brown eyes.
He had forgotten how much he had loved those eyes...
"Are you okay?" she asked frantically.
Renee was still as beautiful as ever. She had not seemed to age a day. Her raven locks were long, flowing down around the fur collar of her light brown cashmere coat.
But there was something wrong, Tony noted in his insanity.
Renee looked too...modern. Her haircut was too sharp and her shoes too much the recent style. She was distressingly different from the phantom who lived in his memory...the vision who perpetually dressed strictly in 1983 mode.
Tony realized he was not drunk or dreaming or hallucinating. The hand on his face had been very real.
This woman was very real.
And no matter how much she looked like her, she could not possibly be Renee.
"Who are you?" he asked coldly as he sat up on the couch, having returned to his senses at last.
The woman swallowed nervously and stood up.
"I'm Phoebe Donovan."
She extended a hand out to him, but he didn't dare return the gesture of politeness.
Donovan? Tony mused. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place it. Oh, yes...
"The woman who tried to see me today?"
"Yes," she continued. "At least, that's the name I go by. Phoebe is simply a name I gave myself. You see, the truth is...I don't remember who I am. But I suspect that I may be Renee Dimera. And I was hoping that you could help me."
Tony sighed in exasperation. Even when the great almighty Phoenix was paralyzed in a mental institution, he still managed to play his games, didn't he?
"Do you work for my father? I mean..." he corrected. "That psychopath named Stefano Dimera?"
"What?!" the woman asked, confused at first. "NO! No. I've never met him. At least, I don't remember having met him. You see, I have suffered memory loss for many years, decades in fact, and..."
Tony rose to his feet and paced the floor in disgust.
"Good lord, not that old chestnut again!" he huffed. "Can't Stefano ever come up with any other ailment besides amnesia? You're boring me to tears!"
"What?" the woman asked, playing the role of the confused innocent very convincingly.
"I hate to ruin your performance..." Tony said. "But I know who you are and what you're doing. Stefano often likes to hire deadbeats, hookers and what-have-you, and turn them into clones of people from Salem."
"Hookers!" the woman cried out in outrage.
Tony continued as if she had said nothing.
"He has done this many times over the years. But I'm afraid that you will not get paid for your trouble. Your employer has suffered a stroke recently. He is paralyzed in a coma and it is extremely unlikely that he will ever come out of it. So I'm sorry but you'll have to find some other occupation."
"Occupation?" the woman stammered. "I don't understand."
"Don't you?" Tony sniped, glaring at the woman. "I am becoming so tired of women and their games!"
"This isn't a game..." she protested.
"But since you amused me for about two minutes with your very precise likeness of Renee, I will do you a favor and forget that I saw you."
"I don't work for Stefano, I swear!"
"BUT..." The word shot out violently, causing the woman before him to jump out of her skin. "If you persist in going on with this disrespectful farce to Renee's memory, I shall call the police right away."
"No!" Phoebe Donovan cried out. "Please! Dear lord, I'm already on the run now! That's why I need help!""
"Being on the run is a bit of an occupational hazard when you work for Stefano, my dear!"
"You don't understand! I..."
The woman grasped at her head with both hands as if she was agony.
Tony did not make a move for surely this was more playacting. But shrewd business sense took over. On the off-chance that she was sick, he did not need a lawsuit on his hands with a new company.
"Perhaps you should sit down..." he motioned to the couch, half-heartedly.
She did so, silent for several minutes.
For the first time since he became fully alert, Tony wondered if perhaps there was some truth in her story. He still couldn't believe that she was Renee. But he possibly could be convinced that she believed she was Renee.
"I apologize..." Phoebe Donovan said after some time. "I just get headaches sometimes...when I'm..."
The true panic in her eyes did move him.
"Listen..." He reached out to touch her hand. "I won't..."
She flinched from his touch as if he had burned her.
"Sorry."
"No, I'm sorry. I just need a minute."
Tony was truly at a loss with how to deal with this situation. He felt so helpless, like he always did when Renee would get into one of these moods...
And she seemed so like Renee right now, he realized. The way Renee had been when she had been running from the Salem Strangler, terrified and needing his help. Needing him. And he felt that need to protect her again, despite the years, despite the impossibility of it all.
"You said you were on the run?" he asked.
After a few moments, the woman seemed to recover a bit.
"Yes. I was at the Salem University Library, doing research about Renee when...I was nearly attacked by this lady and her husband!"
"Attacked?"
"Yes! Oh, what was her name? David Banning's mother..."
"You mean...Julie Williams?" Tony asked incredulously.
"YES!" Phoebe Donovan cried out, pointing at him. "And her husband..."
"Doug?"
"YES!" she nodded. "They were both completely going crazy when they saw me."
Tony nodded, trying to hold back his laughter.
"Yes, I could see how they would."
"And Julie Williams said I was trying to...oh, how did she put it? Take up where my father left off. And she threatened to call the police. So I panicked and ran and came here."
Despite how shocked and appalled Tony was by this situation, he couldn't help but be amused by the story. If it were true, he would have given a small percentage of the Dimera fortune to witness it.
"Perhaps you really are Renee," Tony said, holding back a chuckle. "I can't imagine any employee of Stefano's being so incredibly stupid."
"Call me names if you want to!" the woman yelled. "I don't care what you think about me if you'll just hear me out! I came all the way from England to find you. I don't remember anything of my past. All I remember is being taken care of, existing really, in what was a very well-furnished prison for God knows how long! And then..." Her story faltered a bit...and Tony did not miss it. "An ISA spy found me and broke me out. I saw your picture in the newspaper...and I thought that I somehow had a memory about you. And that was when I did some research...and found out about Renee."
"You can't be Renee!" Tony insisted stubbornly. "Renee is dead"
"That's what they all said about Marlena and Roman and John and Hope and Steve when they came back!" the woman continued, on a rampage. "And they were all presumed dead, most with amnesia...just like me! All part of Stefano's experiments! And I was the first one!"
Tony remained quite calm as he listened to the woman carry on. He hated to admit it, but in a crazy way, she did make sense. Stefano had proven that he could quite convincingly fake deaths over the years...even when there were bodies and burials involved. And when Renee died, that was when Stefano's true insanity really started.
Was it possible?
Mulling over the situation, he paced around a bit, unwilling to look at the woman with Renee's eyes.
"Perhaps Stefano could have saved Renee at the last minute. Perhaps he had faked her death. Lord knows, he has pulled off that trick enough times. But to imprison her for years? That I don't believe. If there's anything I know, I know that Stefano loved Renee until the end."
"He imprisoned you!"
"Ah, but I was another man's bastard," Tony answered. "Not his own flesh and blood, thus I was expendable. And even when he thought I was a true Dimera, he always thought I was a disgrace."
"Well, what about Lexie Carver?" she countered. "She was his biological daughter and she was locked up in a tunnel for a year."
"By Andre, not Stefano."
The woman sighed with frustration.
Tony almost felt sorry for Phoebe Donovan. Aside from her remarkable likeness, she did have Renee's determination. He would give her that much. And he had always admired that quality in Renee. The sleek little cat who could land on her feet and get the better of everyone. That is...until she crossed paths with Andre Dimera.
Dark memories from those bleak days came back, no matter how much he tried to deny them. Memories of being treated worse than an animal, barefoot and chained, miserable in a dungeon. All he could do was watch his loathsome cousin, Andre, taunt him as he pleased. And all he could think about was poor Renee...and how horribly she had died. Her ghost had been his only company for some time.
Tony forced the pain out of his mind, just as he had done so many times before.
"You can't be Renee," he insisted. "So I think you should go back to England...or wherever it is that you come from."
"Why are you so determined to not even give me benefit of the doubt?"
"Because your story is absurd!"
"No more absurd than any of the rest of it," she answered. "Tony, don't you want me to be alive? I thought you might at least be glad to see me. I mean, I had read that we were engaged. You loved me, didn't you?"
Tony flinched at her expression. Oh, the actress had Renee down pat. It was incredible. She even had that way of looking at him so pleadingly, melting his resistance and making him forgive her anything. God, he'd almost forgotten how she could affect him that way...
Stop it! His mind screamed. Don't be a bloody fool!
"I can only think of one other way to convince you..." she sighed.
With that, the woman set her jaw stubbornly, shrugged out of her cashmere coat and began to undo the buttons of her lilac-colored silk dress. He quickly turned away from the woman before she would completely demean herself before him. But not before he had caught a glimpse of lacy black bra against ivory skin. So like Renee...with her curves...
"This is the most bizarre attempt at seduction I've ever encountered!" he spat out furiously.
Tony could not help but feel aroused. He was only a man, made of flesh and blood, after all. And he was angry that the imposter could affect him this way.
"Get your mind out of the gutter, Mr. Dimera!" Phoebe Donovan snapped. "I have something to show you...and it isn't very sexy."
Curiosity got the better of him.
Turning to face her once more, Tony's blood ran cold at the sight before him.
"Now do you have enough proof?" she asked.
There was a long deep red scar running along her back. The scar of Andre Dimera's lethal knife!
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Phoebe shivered as she exposed her naked back to Tony Dimera, undressed to the waist except for her flimsy bra She had never expected the meeting to turn out quite this way! That was for sure. The man had just made her so darned mad that she felt compelled to shock him with the truth of who she was. How could he be so stubborn and cruel, accusing her of being a criminal and a prostitute? How could he be so cold?
For some reason, she thought Tony Dimera would be different. She didn't know what she had expected really. But it just didn't seem possible that she could feel so connected to a man who didn't seem to want to know of her existence.
And as disturbing as all of that was, Phoebe was the most upset about how she felt almost painfully attracted to this man. She had admired him in the photograph in the newspaper. But once she had seen him in the flesh, lying there upon the sofa, she had the strongest urge to beg him to hold her. She could not even stop herself from stroking his face.
She swallowed hard.
"I assure you the scar is real," she said softly. "You can even touch it if you want to."
The silence between them was thick. And Phoebe felt dizzy with anticipation that he might touch her bare skin. What in the world was she doing?
"No, I don't think so."
Phoebe sighed with relief that he had rejected her offer. It wasn't so much that she didn't trust him to be a gentleman. She just didn't trust herself, not as long as she was shaking with passion that she was completely unaccustomed to.
"I could go to a hospital and get it tested," she suggested. "Perhaps there's even a way to determine how old it is."
"Stop," he said. "Just stop..."
Tony was starting to believe her. She could hear it in his voice.
"Oh, my God..." he sighed, the enormity of the situation sinking in at last. "Maybe you are her."
With shaking hands, she put her dress back on. Her fingers were trembling so that she could barely fasten the buttons.
"Tony...I may call you that?"
"Of course."
His voice was dull as if he was in shock.
"Tony, I didn't come here to cause trouble. I just want to know who I am once and for all. You're the only one I could remember so I came to you. I was hoping that maybe...I could see some of Renee's old things. I thought maybe seeing the memories and reminders of her life would jog my memory. Do you think that would be possible?"
"Stefano has some of Renee's possessions at the mansion," Tony answered quietly.
"But you said Stefano was in a coma."
"He is," Tony nodded. "There has been a lot of legal complications with his estate. You see, he was in the process of inheriting almost all of his relatives before his stroke. But the details were never fully completed. So for the moment, I have joint access to the mansion along with my brother, Elvis."
"Elvis...?" Phoebe cracked a smile. "Oh, yes...you mean EJ Wells, the racecar driver?"
"That's the one."
"He's very popular in England."
"Is that a fact?"
"Yes."
Again, there was an awkward silence between them.
"So I may come to the mansion and look through her things?"
"I suppose, the sooner we clear up this mystery the better."
"I don't really have a clue of what else to do," Phoebe pondered. "Do you suppose they could do one of those...what do you call them? A DNA sample on me?"
Tony shrugged helplessly.
"Renee..." he stopped short, his eyes widening. "I mean, Phoebe...I've been on an island for the last 20 some-odd years. I know nothing about that sort of thing. For all I know, Renee's death...or perhaps disappearance...happened so long ago that I'm not even sure if they could do such a thing. At any rate, I am surprised that the ISA didn't perform such tests when they rescued you."
Phoebe nodded.
"It is strange that a test was never taken, isn't it?"
"Damn," Tony swore.
"What?"
"Do you ever feel like there's some clue, something that you should be picking up on, but you just can't quite piece it together?"
"All of the time," Phoebe confessed with no small humor.
"The ISA and you...there's something very strange about it."
"Maybe I should just hand myself to the police and they'll do a DNA test on me. They're looking for me anyway."
"You don't know that," Tony shook his head. "And I wouldn't advise doing such a thing. There's a serious prejudice against Dimeras in this town, as I've sure you've surmised from your run-in with Doug and Julie Williams."
"You can say that again! Do you think they'd put me in jail?"
"On what charge?" Tony joked. "Looking like a dead Dimera? No, they couldn't arrest you. But they could hound you and harass you in an effort to make you leave town. You don't want to go through all that."
Phoebe could not help but smile a little.
"Nice of you to care that much anyway."
Tony looked at her oddly.
"Your smile can still light up the world..." he said softly.
Her heart pounded at his words.
Was it possible that he not only believed her...but that he might even still have some old feelings left for her?
"What?"
"Oh, nothing..." Tony shrugged sadly.
But it wasn't nothing.
For just a moment, Tony Dimera was not the ogre that she had been arguing with for the last half hour. He had the look of a friend...maybe even a lover.
Phoebe had been too wrapped up in just trying to discover the truth about herself to contemplate what it would mean to have Tony Dimera in her life. He was obviously remembering things about her, remembering when he was her lover. But despite her attraction to him, he was still a stranger for the most part. It was all so unsettling.
"A little while ago...you called me Renee," she said. "So you do think I'm her, don't you?"
Tony sighed helplessly.
"I don't know. With Stefano, anything is possible...but I can't really believe it. This is just madness."
The moment between them was tense.
"I would like to know the truth about who I am..." Phoebe confessed. "But I'm sort of afraid too. What is it they say? Be careful what you ask for..."
Tony nodded with understanding.
"Perhaps you should just try to be happy with who you are in the present..." he suggested. "You had a life in England, you said. And a person is more than just their past."
Phoebe shook her head.
"I just feel like I don't belong anywhere. I'm just so...messed up. I don't know."
"I know how you feel," he replied. "I'm a bit messed up myself. Coming back to the real world after decades of imprisonment isn't easy. I suppose, we have both lost our pasts to Stefano Dimera, one way or the other."
Phoebe nodded.
"Yes, we have that in common. Well, I guess I should go now..."
She turned to leave his office.
"Wait!" Tony called out. "Where are you staying?"
"The Salem Inn."
"What are you going to do about Doug and Julie Williams?"
"I don't know," she shrugged. "Do you think the police might be looking for me?"
"Possibly. Look, since you're going to be there soon enough, why don't you just stay at the mansion while you do your...research?"
Phoebe was shocked at the invitation. Even though she had walked out on Shane and intended to get a divorce, there was a part of her that felt horribly guilty at the prospect of spending the night in another house with another man.
"I don't know..."
"You'd be perfectly safe there."
"Wouldn't EJ object?"
"There's plenty of room," he offered with a lazy smile, seeming more relaxed around her. "And EJ is a typical Dimera, easily won over by a pretty face."
Phoebe still had reservations. But it seemed to be an offer she couldn't refuse, under the circumstances.
"I'll be a gentleman, I promise."
"Oh, I never meant to imply that you wouldn't be. It's just that..."
Phoebe couldn't tell him about her marriage, not yet. Besides, it was silly to feel guilty about Shane when she was going to divorce him.
"Just what?" he goaded, almost teasing her now. "That's what you came to Salem for, isn't it? To get close to me? And your past?"
Phoebe began to rub her hands together nervously, feeling as if she were about to break out in a sweat.
"Yes, I guess so."
"There are plenty of secret passageways and tunnels," he whispered. "Julie Williams will never find you there."
Phoebe couldn't help but laugh.
"You can be a persuasive charmer, Tony Dimera..."
"So I've been told," he smiled.
"When you're not being an odious creep."
With that, he let out a large laugh.
"I suppose I've been called worse."
As Tony escorted her to his car, Phoebe wondered when she had picked up the ability to flirt like that. Perhaps her old personality was coming back a little bit, after all.
