6.

There's no heart wrenching sob story, no life changing moment that sends her life course into unchartered territory. She can't piece together this story of abuse under her family roof even though she knows the ghosts of trauma and abuse to linger generations back, more concentrated and horrific than the last. She knows the stories. Some of them are true. Some of them are exaggerated lies. Some of them legends that never leave her ancestral country of Sweden. There's nothing dark living and breathing in her house. Her parents are the king and queen of mid-town suburbia although there's nothing pretentious about them. Her older brother is a golden haired, mischievous prince with an uncanny knack for Hide and Seek while she doesn't call herself a princess. Even now, as an adult woman, the thought makes her lip curl up in amusement. A princess? Her? Hardly. No, there's a princess four houses down he likes to tease and make miserable. Her brother is the social butterfly, craving and thriving off of attention others throw his way while she stays quiet, observes, while retreating to her father's library and reads everything voraciously. She reads, understands, feeds her growing intellect especially when it's the gothic literature of life and death she craves the most.

As her brother's circle of friends grows, hers diminishes. She doesn't know how to make friends. At least, the ones that don't reside in her books of old and the intricate diagrams in an old edition of Gray's Anatomy, or non-fiction writings of one thinker or philosopher. The literature changes the course of her life in small ways and keeps it interesting and colourful. Her dirty blonde hair looks like gold under the sunlight that streams into the spacious living room. She remembers spending her teenage years here in this house her fourth uncle-by-marriage builds and leaves to her paternal aunt after his death. She's lost count. She can't unravel it anymore, and her aunt's husbands end up dead after the words, I do, their signatures on life insurance papers seem to her as if the ink is in blood. In a way, it is, and she can't help but smile at the dark humor of it all. A black widow, they call her.

Her eyes travel over the high ceilings. The light fixtures are new. Framed pictures of faces she remembers animated and alive, others she crosses paths with at family reunions, and there's a face or two etched in her mind within the context of a funeral or two. The brown coloured sofa and sectional is the furniture she calls most. Her little body curls up in the darkness, as her aunt and whatever man amuses her make an upstairs symphony of their own. This brown seating section is where she has her first sexual experiences with a man several years her senior, another with a woman she's obsessed with – not in a stalking kind of way, but more in a way that satisfies her starving curiosity and what new quirks give her personality new shadowed facets. She discovers that hey, she's underage and can't drink but she's into kink and quite dominant that way and a little torture goes a long way, in terms of fun. Fun means a lot of things. She clears her throat, quietly, to keep a chuckle down and becomes annoyed with herself. She's not here for that. She isn't supposed to be here at all.

Hazel eyes sweep over the hallway still there and the passageways along the walls, down the basement, deep underground to the secret room she discovers by accident on a study break. While her family is back in the mid-west, she is here in the underbelly of this grand house in Las Vegas. It's as if she stumbles into caverns no one else is supposed to know about. A twisted sense of pride swells in her chest. She's made a discovery. She's a sixteen-year-old girl in college with pre-med aspirations. A teenager in a sea of adults. In a secret room in the underground of her aunt's home, it's where she discovers long buried aspirations as well.

A man is chained to the wall. He's bloody and bruised, one eye swollen shut. His one blue eye darts around and locks on her. He opens his mouth to speak, but wheezes and the force of a cough deep in his lungs forces him to his knees. Sounds like a lung has been punctured by a cracked rib. Hazel eyes document his dark hair, the dark face stubble with the hint of grey, and the pained look battling with contempt and rage.

"Help… me!" A groan, a cough, a splattering of blood on the floor. "I'll… kill you, Bonnie!"

In her adolescence, she takes in the stone brick, how big this space is. Maybe for the acoustics. Is this place soundproof? She wants to know and makes a mental note to ask Bonnie later. She watches this powerful, heavy-set man, broken. He turns that one good eye on her, pleading as he stands up with great effort. The cuff chain looks painful.

"You gotta call the police, kid. Please…" he croaks and wheezing. "Bonnie! You're dead!"

She wonders over to the wall, runs a hand along a section of it. There's rough caulking, soft insulation, and the wall seems to be framed. A mental tugging in her mind makes her glance upward. Seems like this is a little lower than a basement and just a layer above hell.

"It's soundproof," she diagnoses, matter-of-fact. "We're too far down to get back up."

"Get us… out of here," he says, straining against his pain and discomfort. He changes his tone and demeanour, almost begging. "Listen. I have a girl… Just your age. Let me go home to her."

"Why would I do that? I don't know you."

"You don't know Bonnie, either! You have no idea what shit you're playing with, kid," he spits, face contorted in pain and anger now.

If she calls the police, this man talks. Bonnie goes to jail. She loses the house she grows to love, and is sent back to Genoa City, a town that doesn't understand her. Loses the ability to continue her education. If Bonnie goes away, she loses a woman who loves her enough to understand her and her proclivities, the monsters she gets to know, the ones who peacefully co-exist with her. She loves her father, misses her big brother, and can't be around a mother she's disconnected from.

The latch twists. The door opens and that female voice she is accustomed to – far more than her mother's if she's being honest – takes up the space in the room. Bonnie sounds happy as she steps in, locks the door because she wants to stay and Bonnie knows better than to ask. Bonnie places her hands on her shoulders a little too firmly. Yes, she's irritated but she doesn't have the mental capacity to process that. Not when her mind is racing with this.

"Good. You're awake," Bonnie says, closing the door to this underground space.

"It's not my fault my side of the family wants to protect my son, you bitch!"

"The weather is lovely today," Bonnie sighs, contentedly, ignoring the venom. She finds her fascinating, terrifying even though she, herself, isn't scared. "The sun is shining and, Joey, I tell you, as far as you can see, the desert stretches out. Blue skies and a gentle breeze that just blows just right. Just enough for a kid to fly a kite," she produces a black gun, a chill in her voice and murder in her eyes, dark as her hair. "I can't take our son to fly a kite! All you had to do was give up your parental rights but you got greedy and went for sole custody. You had one job! It's unnatural! It's wrong! I'm his mother! My little boy is supposed to be in Vegas with me, not in the trailer trash subsection of Chicago! You are no better than me! You piece of…" she clears her throat, smiling again but she observes one could slice their palm open on its edges. A thrill runs up her back at the skin being punctured, veins being cut, the dark blood welling to the surface and running over and then the intricate stitching afterwards. "He'll be crushed losing his father, but I'll help him through it as his mother. I'm going to make it all better. I'm going to show you what murder looks like…"

"You said you loved me, you crazy broad…"

A cruel cackle escapes her lips. "Oh, I do love you which is why I have to get rid of you. I'll love you more as a decomposing corpse in the desert." Bonnie's eyes flick over to her and asks her to come, really look at this man in front of her. "I don't think you've properly been introduced to my niece, have you?"

The man says nothing.

"I said, have you?" Bonnie repeats, with a slight growl and fires a shot to the thigh. A dark red stain blooms, staining the dark denim of his dirty, worn jeans. That bullet is small enough to nick the femoral artery, not damage it. Death can still occur, but it will be painful and slow, which is most likely what Aunt Bonnie is going for. "Answer me, Joe. You're not disrespecting my niece, are you?"

His skin turns white.

He's shaking, trembling involuntarily.

Shock from the blood loss. She thinks blood pressure may be dropping. She can't tell.

"N—no. Can't say I have…"

Aunt Bonnie smiles brightly. "Good. Joey Stinnett, meet my sixteen-year-old niece, Diana Hellstrom," she introduces as if it's a family cookout, a warm visit to a house she's supposed to be comfortable.

Diana feels a cold, heavy gun being slid into her grasp. Her thumb knows to cock the gun. Her pointer finger knows to rest on the trigger. Diana should experience terror, panic even disgust and physical nausea. She doesn't.

Oh, Zack is her younger cousin. Another son Aunt Bonnie has, but really doesn't. Seems to be a pattern stemming from her aunt's string of affairs and failed marriages. She experiences a de-tangling of who the key players are. Assess that there's no chance of this man getting help. If he does, he talks, and she loses her stability. When she loses her stability, it means Diana has to put her impulses on a leash and her bad habits in a box to be locked away.

"I know, sweetheart," Bonnie whispers behind her in her ear. "You have…tendencies most are scared of. They don't understand it and won't. Your mind is wired differently, but it's a beautiful mind," she fingers her hair, "for a beautiful girl. Let me help you, Diana."

"How?"

The beasts in her mind start to rouse themselves from a slumber hard to comprehend, even with her intellect. It's hard for a girl who is so intellectually ahead of a curve, her teachers can't place her anywhere. She skips so many grades that at 14, she graduates from Walnut Grove Academy with a glowing academic record, it's almost blinding. She's the youngest graduate from that school to date. It doesn't matter to her if that distinction is remembered or not. Diana asks to live with her Aunt Bonnie in Nevada. It's where she is granted admission for university and thrives there in a manner that leaves her fulfilled. Free.

"You're fearless. I see clearly what you can do, what you want to do. So…embrace it."

Diana looks at her target, raises her arm to level the gun to hit the fatal shots because Gray's Anatomy doesn't lie to her. Bodies are different on the outside, but placement is always the same internally. She closes an eye to adjust her vision and prepares her stance to absorb the recoil from the crack of the shot. The bullet exits the chamber, and finds a spot in the middle of the head. His head snaps back, his eyes roll back into his head as he collapses, a river of blood streams out and Diana takes a step to realize pieces of skull bone and brain matter litter the corpse like glass and glitter.

Diana gives the gun back to Aunt Bonnie, suggests dismemberment and soaking the pieces in acid as the best method of disposal because of course, she has people for this. She calmly says she has an essay to continue writing for her professor and retreats. She follows the path back up to the surface, the normal looking part of the house. She goes upstairs to her room, and leaves her work and research on the desk.

There's a physiological reaction – a rush, a release of oxytocin and endorphins – from the metallic smell of blood more than anything. Blood only smells of metal due to iron. It's powerful and intense. It's the closest Diana will come to wrestling with her body and her mind. She needs a release. An air pocket to give her lungs a chance to expand and constrict with every inhale and exhale.

The solution isn't complex at all. It's as simple as leaving the house to have sex with the neighbour's seventeen-year-old virgin son for the next couple hours. Eric's not her type of her guy and she expect nothing from him. Doesn't want anything from him except what he will have no choice but he will inevitably give her. She's just selfish, and this boy ready and willing underneath her, will be another warm body for her to dissect and break.

Diana stands in the living room of the house, and touches a framed photo of her father, JT and her as children. JT grins into the camera, while she does not. Sounds about right. She remembers her mother chastising her about only smiling when she reads. Diana Alice, please get your nose out of that book and into the world more. You have such a pretty smile. Wish we'd see it more on that soft face.

Diana. Her father says her name comes from an ancient Roman goddess of the moon, the hunt and fertility. She's conceived on a full moon and born on another one, nine months later. You're my moon child. Your mother may not understand why you're so internal. I do, he says. Her mother most likely agrees because she's one of the 750 million viewers tuned into a young Lady Diana Spencer marrying Charles, Prince of Wales on a warm July in 1981.

That, and her mother may fawn over the British royal family just a tad. JT calls her Alice while she's in utero, he tells her the day she leaves for Nevada and ultimately for college, because it's the only name she responds to in the belly and well, there's Alice In Wonderland. JT is the only one who still calls her Alice as a nickname, she recalls with nostalgia for the brother she has then and the nephew she does have now. Reed.

Her name is full of binaries and ironies that sprinkle her whole life. Diana, the Roman goddess of the moon and the hunt. She who swears to protect in life in a shroud of white and steals it in another of black. Diana Alice, the girl who is named after a princess who dies young and a girl who tumbles into an abyss of the strange.

Diana Alice Hellstrom, the woman who is both a protector and predator.

Just depends on the situation and the context, she supposes.

An old clock ticks.

"Bonnie!" she calls, her voice echoing. Diana is about to go looking for her eccentric, yet dangerous woman who has a hand in raising her, but the woman turns a corner from the kitchen, carrying a black and silver urn. "There you are."

"Yes, Diana. Here I am," Bonnie replies, her voice taking on a gravelly tone from years of smoking. She mounts the urn on a spot on her mantle. "Just had to take care of Zack here," she taps the surface, and presses a soft kiss to it. "Roman hung himself in prison and saved me the trouble of ordering him killed. Proactive. Owen and I are estranged with good reason. He's got a good life, happily married and I have grandbabies. Three of them," she recounts, more to herself and Diana lets her. Grief is tricky. "Derek is content to be a nomad, always running, my traveller, but this kid…" she touches the urn. "My last one. Zachary was mine. He wasn't into college even though he went, but his business aptitude and potential," she recounts, tears in her eyes, "was limitless. Damn, that kid was hungry."

"I… I'm sorry, I didn't know him."

Diana only knows this cousin of hers through news reports of a sex ring being dismantled, one that nestles within the bowels of Newman Enterprises, takes up ad space in Brash and Sassy's online presence and calls itself Designer Date. She hears this sex ring is a financial success and a behemoth of moving parts until one girl goes rogue and her cousin snaps.

"Life is funny that way, isn't it?"

Diana grows pensive. "Perhaps…" she touches the silver moon-shaped pendant that rests flat against her chest, fingering its crescent form. It's a celestial object that hangs in the sky, the one thing that triggers mythical lycanthropy and makes humans beasts, and for her, is the shape of the grim reaper's scythe. Bonnie wipes at her eyes as Diana remembers Reed will be back in New Hampshire next week and hasn't stoked the fridge for his weekend visits.

"Shit… Bonnie, I have to get home. Why am I here?"

"Right," she claps her hands. "I was getting to that, and then I had to clean Zack's urn…" she trails off, and waves a hand, dismissively. "It doesn't matter anymore. Come with me."

Bonnie's dark eyes glitter with child-like anticipation, and Diana has no choice to follow this woman down in the darkness again. Years wear this place down. Time warrants it to be upgraded and inspires her to have a shadowed room just like this in her own house on a hill, overlooking her city, the hospital more prominent. Diana looks at Bonnie with careful curiosity. That familiar shiver finds itself slithering by her back, coiling itself around the column of her spine. The latch is the same. She closes her eyes for a brief moment, remembering the turns and number of clicks it took to get to the inside. She opens her eyes, resting her forehead against the cool door before turning the latch and locks.

"I'm not fond of guns."

Bonnie nods, placing the black semi-automatic with silencer in her palm and closes the fingers over the handle. "I know, which is why everything else is at your disposal."

"What am I working with and who's in there?"

"Long story short, I need this girl dead. Her name is Kimberley Lewis. She helped one of the girls involved in my boy's business get away after killing him," Bonnie explains with an undertone of venom and grief. Diana listens intently. She can't help it. She can't control it any more than she can control her dominant and recessive genes. Diana can't control the euphoric rush she gets as a child when she kills a dog JT and his friends love by beating it with a shovel until it howls and whimpers no more. While JT mourns that neighbourhood pet, she buries herself in the world of Where the Wild Things Are. She doesn't understand why that dog dying is sad. Isn't death part of life? Besides, Brittany Hodges will get another one. She has a lot of nice, shiny things.

As an adult, Diana understands all she wants is quiet. Solitude is still very valuable to her.

"Designer Date?"

"Mhm. Online dating thing…" Bonnie nods, absentmindedly. "This girl was far too easy because she's not my target."

"Why do you have her then? Go with your intended target."

"Nah," Bonnie smirks. "Kimberley helped transport a girl across with the border to Canada. That young girl has a life in Canada, although I'm pinpointing where at the moment. I need this girl in here," she glances at the door with the familiar latches, "dead to shake that sense of security. You're a good doctor, sweetheart. You heal people, and you've studied to give life to people. But you also have a gift. Tommy understands what his head will allow. Your mother fears it," she continues, tone uncharacteristically soft, "but with me, you're free to love your darkness and let it love you back."

"Have you heard from my…dad?"

She means to ask of her mother too, but it never quite crosses her mind for many reasons.

Bonnie's mouth sets into a frown, deep lines etched into a forever youthful face. "I had a conversation with your dad a few days ago. He asked me about Jeffrey Todd," she begins, and sighs, shakes her head. She's the only one to refer to her brother by both names and he hates it. Always does. He never corrects her, though. "He doesn't want to know the how, and the why. Just that he's alive. The boy is fine. He's physically fine despite looking a little rough. When you're running, it comes with the territory. He's rather intense and insistent on handling his business. Something behind the eyes didn't sit right with me. He said it was too loud and begged me to turn the noise down or go."

"Noise?"

"Yeah. He…said his head hurt, and he needed to be quiet so he could think."

Diana narrows her eyes, "Think about what?" She recalls requesting his medical records and by virtue of being a blood relative, Genoa City Memorial fax them to her. She sifts through every medical thing, every mystery solved by appointments and maintained by specialists. Electrocuted with resulting skin burns and tachycardia managed by medication, according to his cardiologist.

"I…don't know."

Diana rubs her temple, teetering in between silent concern and a steady building annoyance. JT needs those beta blockers to steady his racing heart. He needs them. Diana seethes, while hoping the medication gets to that checkpoint toward the basement of that abandoned church on the edges of Twin Lakes.

"Did your guys make sure he got his medications?"

"Of course," Bonnie's face turns serious. She almost looks offended. "He's my nephew. Jeffrey Todd is already playing dead and the kid is good. I'm…impressed. Way too twisted for my taste, but the boy is talented. I have to admit. I don't need Tommy and Martha realized their kid is dead for real because his heart went screwy and stopped," she continues. "I volunteered to stash him away safe from that joke of a police department Genoa City has. He's way too close to Genoa City for my liking. He said he had unfinished business and I backed off. Tommy has to play the grieving father, and moved closer with Martha to DC to help out with DJ and Becca. You, however," Bonnie pins her with a glare, "are here to finish what Zack started… or end it. Matter of perspective, my dear."

There's the shadow of a smirk of many secrets on her lips.

A sex ring that collapses on itself digitally is not a concern of hers. Diana sees enough patients who carry the scars of sex work on their bodies and minds. She's detached enough to order a rape kit, refer a social worker, request the collaboration of a psychiatrist who puts the really suicidal ones in a 72-hour hold. The ones with the combination of stimulants and depressants coursing through the highways of veins and arteries beneath the skin are her favourite ones because they are already at the brink. Either they die or they slowly manage to live. This one, she recalls vividly. There's a fluttering at her swan like neck, stark contrast to the track marks in her arms. She slurs out a name. Three messy syllables. The carotid pulse right by the carotid artery races and her eyes are two green pools of vacancy. Please, Doctor, she whimpers, kill me. Kill me. Kill me—

She croaks out an apology to someone named Craig, says Kimmie fucked up as coherently as she can. Then the seizing begins and Diana is reminded. She's in the white area. The white halls. The white lab coat. She's the protector today. Do no harm.

Soon, the predator whispers. Soon.

Diana glares, and asks slowly to temper the anger, runs a hand through her blonde freshly cut bob.

"What does knowing whether my brother's alive or not have to do with Zack?"

"They don't," Bonnie answers, with a cool shrug. "Not directly. It was just your father confiding in me. He wanted to know how to deal with grief as a parent and whatnot. Suddenly, here I was, tracking this girl down until she was brought here kicking and screaming. All she did tell me was there was twenty dollars in payment involved and she said nothing else. I swear on Zack's soul, I almost snapped her jaw. If she wasn't going to use it to talk, then she didn't need to have it at all," Bonnie says, frustrated and huffs. She goes into the back pocket of her jeans, and brandishes a shiny, silver scalpel. "Your weapon of trade or the weapon of efficiency. It's up to you."

Diana takes the scalpel from her aunt's grasp, and examines it from handle to blade.

Her hazel eyes lock with Bonnie's. In her aunt's eyes, is a command. An order she can't refuse.

In Diana's eyes comes the question: do it for Zack or yourself?

Bonnie reaches out, and touches her face with the back of hand.

"Take care of her, Diana," Bonnie orders softly, eyes hard like stone and as dark as black onyx. "Slit her throat if it helps you."

Diana breaks the stalemate first. She always breaks it first.

"I'm sorry, Zack was killed."

Bonnie's lips are in a tight line of tension while she exudes an air of calm Diana, for once, finds maddening. She sighs, lifting a shoulder with an off-handed shrug. "Thank you, but that boy knew the risks. He killed himself, babe."

The older woman walks away until she disappears, leaving Diana to open the underground door and the door to her own Wonderland as she does many times before. Diana feels her hand curl around the cool handle until her nail imprint half-moons into her palms. Still, she unlocks the latch that gives her access to another person until they are not much of person – or anything at all.

She closes the door behind her and a cool, darkened hand with smoke for fingers strokes her back to soothe her. The woman is quite stunning even with her clothes tinged with dirt, her pantyhose ripped and torn. Diana takes in her auburn coloured hair as it falls in her face. Long legs, high cheekbones, full lips – even as she lays in a heap on the ground. Her eyes spy the chain on the wall with the arm cuff. Diana realizes this girl is not tied. The other ones usually are. She spies the same track marks as that disoriented sex worker. She gasps and her eyes fly open, searching around until they land on her. Diana's mind works quickly, and she makes a decision, albeit it's a quick one but she's sure it's going to work. Her plans usually do.

She pockets the scalpel quickly, and finds medical concern.

"I don't… I don't know where I am," the young woman sobs, her face pale but cheeks flushed from crying. Her eye makeup makes her look like a raccoon with nowhere to go, and her eyeliner colours her tears dark as they track downward. Her voice hitches. "Please. I've been kidnapped. I don't know why I'm here. Can you help me? I was…at work…and then someone grabbed me…"

"Okay," Diana says, understanding in her tone. She softens it just so, dulls the edges, and gives the trap as much space as it can to constrict later. This woman has hope and anticipation. It's a glimmer in the eyes, a slight octave risen, a sharp intake of breath. Maybe a prayer or two uttered to a being she does not think exists. This girl is building into a tornado of hyperventilation so Diana soothes her as does many a patient. She puts her hands on both sides of her head, the urge to squeeze until it's a ruptured mess of brain matter, blood, bone, tissue. Those eyes are wide and trusting, as they lock on hers. She's listening to Diana's instruction to breathe and count when all she wants to do to gouge those eyes out with her thumbs. "Breathe in…. One, two, three… Breathe out… Four, five, six…"

She follows and Diana removes her hand to touch her wrist. There's a small tattoo etched in black.

Feathered wings.

Her pulse taps a rhythm against the pads of her thumbs.

"Good," the doctor says, soothingly and adds a charming smile. It's effortless and yet it's all a show. It's all a performance of bedside manner and compassion without the empathy. She glances around, and swears. Diana sighs. "I'm sorry you're here. What's your name?"

"You're sorry…for me?"

"Am I not supposed to be?"

"It's not this. It's…" she trails off. "Nothing."

She looks at Diana skeptically for a few minutes and then rubs her head with a grimace.

"My head is…pounding. Do we know each other? I just feel like I've seen you…"

She pretends to think and ponder it. Of course, she knows. Kimmie. Short for Kimberley.

Not yet, Diana. Not yet.

"I don't think we have," she answers, smoothly and extends her hand. "I'm Mary."

Kimberley glances at her extended hand, and then takes it. It's a soft, clammy handshake. Kimberley becomes aware of this, apologizes and takes her hand back. A blush crosses her face, and highlights her striking cheekbones and prominent nose with its smooth bridge.

"I'm…Kimberley. My hand is gross and sweaty. Sorry."

"No problem," Diana stands, and gives Kimberley room to roam. Diana bites a smile back behind her back, aware of this scalpel in her back pocket. A lamb to the slaughter. A lamb going out to pasture. This girl is a sheep with no mythical shepherd and does indeed walk in a dark valley. She scans the area of this room she has known to be her enclave of horrors. "I'm trying to figure out how we can get out of here," she laughs, shaking her head. "I wasn't intending on coming here, but the lady who lives here is a recluse. I'm so stupid. I come down here, thinking to clean this place up. Give it a new space and you're here. This job was a mistake. I just…wanted to help my sister, you know?"

A quiet sniffle. Her eyes well with tears and have no emotional context. Just a physiological reaction.

"Your…sister?"

"Yeah. Our parents weren't around much, and my sister fell into a bad situation with a…" Diana lets her throat thicken with renewed terror. A woman wrapped up in a shroud of desperation for a sibling that lives in that space between safety and danger. Diana lets Mary experience panic for herself, extends solidarity as a fellow hostage of the underbelly of society. Mary is a good person who finds herself in a twisted situation. Diana, she comes to herself while spinning this web of deception before going in for the literal kill. "I've said too much. My mouth does this – goes when my head screams at me to shut up. I just wanted her to be okay. I just want to make enough money to get her away from that damn sex ring. Now, I'm in here," she runs a hand through her hair and exhales. "I hate confined spaces."

Kimberley grows quiet, jaw set and gaze downward.

"I hate confined spaces too…which is why I got out, and I got some girls out…"

"How?"

"I can't say, Mary. Bad people are chasing me. If I say anything to anyone, I'm dead. All the girls I've helped, they're all at risk," Kimberley says, fear across her face. There's fear, hesitation and the tiniest bit of mistrust, but Diana will handle that like she does everything "Mary, if I could get your sister out, I would. If I could get in contact with the people, I would."

"I…understand. But I'm not going to betray your confidence. I'm in the same situation as you. I have nothing to gain. But I'd sleep easier if she was out. Even in here…" she whispers, heart thudding in her chest. Mary is a mess and doesn't know tomorrow. Diana is neat and ordered, awaiting when it's time. Her picture of tomorrow is clear. "I would feel better if I could help my sister out. If you know how, I would start and do whatever it took, whatever amount…"

Kimberley turns around from her, placing a hand on the wall to steady herself. Her hand runs along the wall with an upward glance before a loud clank makes her cry out and jump.

Diana gets away from the door herself and directs a questioning glance at the door. What is happening? What game does Bonnie have her playing? Is she controlling the chessboard or she is merely a piece being moved on it? She doesn't know what's happening to her but Diana can feel her mask cracking and her patience frayed at the edges.

"What the fuck was that?"

"I don't know," Diana says, honestly. She doesn't. "This place looks worn. Could be anything. A pipe above us. You understand why we both have to get out of here now. I have ten thousand dollars. Is that enough?"

"No, Mary. It isn't. These guys won't take less than twenty. I just hope it's enough to protect her."

"Who's…her?"

A beat. A curious yet surveying glance.

"I don't want to talk anymore. I'm sorry."

"I…understand."

From her periphery, Diana watches Kimberley let her back hit a wall before curling up, knees to her chin. The young woman heaves a shaky sigh and touches the tattoo on her wrist with a trembling hand, eyes becoming wet.

Screw the original plan. Time to amend it and cut a few steps out before the time passes her by.

The mouse has been toyed with by her claws long enough. It's time.

"You've reached Dr. Diana Hellstrom. Please leave me a message and I will return your call as soon as possible."

There's the beep. A sign of questions unsaid, its answers found and tucked away in a father's heart. It doesn't matter what is true and what isn't because he loves his little girl enough. Tom remembers Diana crying when she falls off her two wheeled bike and leaves her knees bloody even as JT skateboards alongside her to make sure she never falls again. Yet she's the little girl who wanders into his upstairs study with a copy of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Diana doesn't want to be read to. It is she who wants to do the reading. A wary smile is on her face as if asking and he picks her up, and places her on his lap and she begins reading. Tom doesn't ask why she develops an interest in Crime and Punishment at 9 years old, just like he won't ask why his shovel is bent at the socket and the cutting edge is caked with dirt from the woods. He doesn't question it when he washes the shovel and the water is tinted red. He doesn't question Diana's eccentricities and detachment from the death of the Hodges family beagle. She's his baby, his youngest and only daughter and the girl who stays awake at night dancing on moonbeams. She dances farther and farther away from home and into a life of medicine and solitude in a mountainous region of New Hampshire.

Tom Hellstrom sighs, knowing that beep is coming and it's all that greets him these days. He takes strides out of where he secretly goes on one Wednesday every three months since it all unravels. If he's being honest, Tom knows it unravels long before he meets and marries Martha, long before having two children who are polar opposites but balances all parts of his soul. He knows this – this one thing – is a loose thread in a tapestry woven by hands strong has that break others because they are simply damaged themselves. Tom is not a perfect, not even a smart man despite a rewarding career in finance. Sometimes, he's not even sure he wakes up as a decent one either.

His father, Karl, is a celebrated police officer who protects and serves everyone but his own family. His mother, Mary, is a dutiful midwife with an iron will and a pretty tune ready to hum despite all of the emotional and physical hits she takes. From this union comes four children: Stephen, Tom, a stillborn baby brother christened Jeffrey and finally, and a daughter, Bonnie. Tom is the only one, he'd discover years later, to be the product of a rough marital rape roughly nine months before. Tom remembers the clap of his dad's hand flying across Mama's cheek, the way he stares at Bonnie the way a father shouldn't, and the way he undermines Stevie at every turn. But somehow, Tom feels the winds of domestic violence rattle his childhood more acutely, more intensely. You shouldn't be here, boy, his father would quietly sneer behind him as he grabs his arm with one hand and lets the other rest on the weapon holstered against his hip while in police uniform. You shouldn't be a police officer, Tom sneers back with all the venom his twelve year old self can muster.

Tom touches his head absentmindedly, tracing the indent of a scar he gets when his father goes into his blind rages and there's nothing behind his eyes. Just this force tearing the house empowered by alcohol and the stresses of his own job. PTSD, he's sure in today's context. He remembers his own head being hit against the coffee table, the sharp corner causing a gash. Tom recalls the sticky blood, Stevie punching Karl out to protect their mother and sleep off the alcohol, his mother's unusually shrill voice ordering Bonnie to get the first aid kit and medicine for headaches. He remembers his head pounding as Stevie helps him up the stairs into bed before going to sleep because it all hurts and he's so tired.

He sighs again, in the hospital waiting room.

"Hey, doodlebug," he begins, calling her the childhood nickname he crafts for her. It's for him mostly. Just to selfishly recall the baby girl who stops crying long enough to stare up at him with wide, bright yet observant eyes. Tom calls her that nickname to recall the little baby girl who sleeps in JT's lap as he rubs her back because he sees him and Martha do it. Night-night, Alice, he whispers gently and presses a light kiss to her head of blonde hair. Tom inhales, catching the light scent of medicine and sharp disinfectant. Hospitals are still so sterile. "It's Dad. You know, between your brother and mother I'm going gray a little," he emphasizes this by leaving a tiny space between his thumb and index finger, "faster than I'd like. Humor your old man and giving me a call back, day or night. Anytime," he chuckles. "You know how your mother's imagination is…" he trails off, and gets serious. "Please, Diana. I'm worried about you. Get back to me. I love you."

Tom hangs up and pockets his phone in the inner pocket of his coat before sitting down in a chair nearest to the exit and with easy access to the elevator. If there's a small chance he doesn't want to this again, he can always go and come back on another Wednesday in the next three months. There's a next time, always an even stream of blood donors ready to save life and be altruistic.

A registered nurse with purple scrubs comes bounding up towards this specific waiting room and stands at the opening. She glances at the file in her hands, stares at it for a few minutes and then locks eyes with him before her eyes breaks into an easy smile. She bounds over to him, dark ponytail of braids swinging with the gait of her bouncy walk. Her almond eyes are a shade of brown that sparkles under bright hospital lights. Tom can't still why these people look so happy to draw blood from people even if it is for his own reasons. Even if he realizes – and does for a while – that to save his children from a strict and rigid parent, he puts them in a structure free household. Maybe that's how they get here.

"Hi. Mr. Hellstrom. I'm Isobel," the nurse greets, standing in front of him. Tom stands and shakes her extended hand, firmly with a polite smile.

"Please. Call me Tom. I insist."

Isobel nods, "Alright. Tom it is."

The nurse nods for him to follow and he does.

"Your health history looks good. Any physical changes since you last donated three months ago?"

There are changes. Significant ones, ones that shift the puzzle pieces of his family members. One that leave him wandering when DJ will stop going from a little kid to a grown man to compensate for his father not being around. He's too young to have the light in his eyes disappear bit by bit. One that has Becca young enough to understand these winds picking up again, but sensitive enough to know her daddy is gone. Changes in the house of Hellstrom have Tom feeling responsible, a burden he has trained himself to bear. Tom knows Reed is on the verge of entering and seeing the world as a man but in some ways, is still a child. His grandson is one of the most empathic people he meets. He's creative, immensely talented in ways that make Tom nostalgic for his time on a theatre stage. How does he talk to a kid about to start the most important phases of his life when some unseen force presses a pause button for all of them? How does he make his grandson this when domestic abuse isn't a new concept, but something that lurks in the shadows and trickles down from one generation to the next? The talks with Mackenzie are the hardest, the most painful and when he carefully asks of Victoria, Mackenzie grows silent as her eyes well up with tears. He sees that even delicate balance of brokenness and strength in his mother many times.

Tom looks Isobel in the eye and tells the truth. No, there's nothing physically wrong with him. He eats as healthy as he can – well, he sleeps, exercises, takes walks, and much to Martha's chagrin trades things of finance for the freedom of writing a novel and a screenplay. There's a position at the community theatre open and retirement in his well-paying finance position is fine, but he will never retire from his first love of acting and its craft.

"No. No changes. You're all clear to tap into my veins."

"You have no idea how much O donors are needed," Isobel explains, setting up everything. A blood bag to hold his pint of blood. A sanitary needle. Iron-rich meal the night before and a filling breakfast with no eggs or bacon. A solid eight hours of sleep where Tom can control the barrier between his subconscious and reality when he's awake at 5am and presses a kiss to Martha's forehead before starting his day. Whatever that may be. It changes from day to day.

Isobel sits into a chair across from him as he does too. Tom knows how this process goes. The nurse busies herself with asking the right medical questions and setting him up for another round of blood donation.

"…O positive donors, like yourself, aren't universal as O negative, but it's so needed because the scope for an O positive blood types is almost as wide," Isobel explains, as she hooks the clear tube to the flat, empty blood bag ready to accept his pint. She rests his arm flat, helping him to roll up his sleeve. Isabel knows what to do and he feels fine in her capable hands. Tom almost shoots her a questioning glance because this nurse is far too happy to essentially tap his veins. "You're one of 37 percent of people who have this blood type, but it's the most common."

"Yeah? How so?"

A cool wipe of disinfectant is wiped in the crook of his elbow, over a bluish-purple vein underneath his skin. Ah. This one is always there. Part of him.

"For starters, O positive donors are the most important in that you can also donate your plasma and platelets. Platelets and plasma?" Isabel's face takes on a pensive glance, and she waves a gloved hand in a so-so motion. "A bit more tricky. Only O positive and O negative blood types can receive those."

Obedient and ready to give up what passes through it. This vein isn't like an aorta but it's reliant. What should he name this steadfast vein carrying blood with a type JT and Reed both have now? Mortimer. Perhaps Clarence. Albert after one of science's greatest minds. Ah, Tom thinks Alexander the Great Vein may be the moniker. He makes a fist, feels the tightness of the rubber tourniquet on his arm. Then there's coldness, a familiar pinch as Alexander the Great Vein gives up the goods.

"Wow," Tom says. "The body's biology is a mystery, it seems."

Isobel secures the needle, and the tube becomes crimson with his blood. It pushes its path to the bag and it's not clear anymore. In eight to ten minutes, it will be full.

"Yeah," Isobel looks up from his arm and grins. "It is, but you know," she shrugs. "All in a day's work figuring it all out. Doctors, nurses, even patients like you – we all work together to find what heals one person and what hurts the next."

Tom remembers the birth of his children, how different they are, how what hurts JT may not affect Diana. He thinks about the delicate balance he has to walk between his son and daughter when Martha simply wants to blur them. She loves one child freely, and doesn't understand the other. For the first time in decades, there's a slow building dissonance in his marriage. In eight to ten minutes, it takes this simmering resentment to boil over.

There are issues about the kids, the parenting styles, the differences in resolving issues with them, right down to letting JT host a quiet get together that turns into Billy Abbott left in the snowbank. Thank goodness for Raul Gutierrez – he's a good one, that kid. Tom and Martha are in the throes in grief that he feels is not genuine because no son to mourn. There's no wooden casket, no reason to travel to Genoa City after being gone for so long and thankfully, nothing that will make Tom dump a handful of dirt over a hole while saying goodbye. Martha argues that it's like death if she can't see him, can't know if their child is okay because he's on the run, or even know where he is before Victor Newman does. There are issues that Diana has, quirks that his daughter is bestowed with maybe because of genes, environment or both. It's wonderful to watch Diana's intellect grow, but it matures quicker than her social development. Diana is independent, powerful, and quick and sure in knowing what she wants. What she wants is to live and go to college in Nevada. University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus. Application is done with early acceptance without he or Martha ever knowing. Of course, there's Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge, and even USC in California that come calling.

Diana ultimately wears the scarlet and grey University of Las Vegas sweatshirt around the house while Tom can see JT quietly seethe before he shrugs and leaves the house to go over to Raul's house, at the end of the cul-de-sac.

Bonnie lives in Las Vegas. Bonnie. His baby sister is his wife's trigger.

The one person to set Tom and Martha off for many reasons. Bonnie is one of many factors, the symptom of an ailment only brought to the fore.

"That's one way of lookin' at it."

Isobel does a check before she stands to go. "Any questions you have for me, Tom?"

"No," Tom shakes his head, and then adds genuinely. "I hope your parents are proud of you, Isobel."

Isobel stops, offers a smile and there's a glint in her eyes.

"I appreciate that. I'll be back in a few. No strenuous activity for the next or so. Just take it easy and relax in the meantime."

"Will do," Tom affirms and settles in the chair. He sighs again, glancing upwards and starts to hope even though he is not much of a praying man. The string of his mother's rosary is the most vivid in his mind, even when other people, other things push themselves through the sacred image. "Hope, Tommy. Just hope," he says quietly as a prayer, gold wedding band glinting back at him.

It takes eight to ten minutes – the same time it takes for him to sit here and save a life he will never know – for those winds to turn into tornadoes.

A scientific mind affords her the luxury of experimenting with what works, what can be amended and what has to be discarded when the original plan fails. There are three kinds of patients in life, Diana observes after all these years in medicine. It's a typology she hones over the years by virtue of being observant and it never fails. The first kind of patient has hope against grim, terminal diagnoses, always unfailing until medicine snatches it. The second type of patient demands the diagnosis be as blunt and raw as possible – no sugarcoating, no hand-holding, no fluff behind the diagnosis. Spare the medical jargon. That is universal. The last kind of patients are the interesting ones. Diana's favourite in truth. They accept the possibilities of life if medicine says that is the case. They welcome death if those are the cards dealt. She makes those ones comfortable., instructs the nurses to every need the patient and their family have.

Diana's eyes scan through many medical directives, countless times where Do Not Resuscitate go from words on a form to the reality of what is coming.

There's the occasional lapse into a comatose state after surgery, the drop in blood pressure, a blood hemorrhage that can't be stopped even, a heart stopping and at the end of it all, the sound. A life is gone. It's long enough for Diana to hear the silent congratulations just for her. Nevertheless, she remains the one with the white shroud. She has the most power in the room and yet she's subject to the whims of the body's anatomy. It's only the same routine. The time of death is called. The nurses clear out when she instructs them with an even tone of authority and human sensitivity to notify the family of the news.

Six times Diana recalls this process. It's vivid because she makes it so. She doesn't detach herself as with most patients. No, these ones are her prizes. Her accomplishments. Her six plans with ingenuity and logic with the tiniest bit of slight of hand. It's intricate and fills her with a sense of completion, but it's false because the compulsion is never over. It's never gone. Diana will always want more and it's never enough. The high those six times is not euphoric. It's the rush of cocaine without snorting it, the high of heroin without not one needle to the vein, and orgasmic without the sex.

Diana remembers glancing down at the bodies, each cold to the touch and already hard with rigor mortis. Rigor mortis settles into the crevices of this new husk. The colour gone from the skin. Nails darkening. She can't recall their faces, but can recall how each one flatlines on her surgical table under the bright lines. There's grief, pain and devastation down the hall to the right and will be more in the morgue but it's just a silent kind of gratitude for her. Gratitude for the privilege of life, to watch it literally and figuratively leave. There's a kind of gratitude Diana has for this soul – even there is even a concept of such – escape its shelter.

However, with all experiments, there's the independent variable that causes the dependent one and vice versa. Every now and then, there's the extraneous variable. It changes the outcome originally planned. If Kimberley tells Mary what she needs to know, then she dies. The extraneous variable appears in the form of Kimberley fighting her in her semi-drugged condition. She's scrappy. She's sharp and Diana, in hindsight, knows there's a shift between the dynamic.

Mary doesn't know her way around this place and fears it. She doesn't understand the part of the house and can't undo and twist the latches and locks to freedom. She is a desperate woman, desperate to help a sibling in trouble. Now, Diana is desperate. Desperate to satisfy the craving, satisfying her compulsion, and nursing it the way she would a broken bone, a bruise she co-exists with. It's like a child she loves.

She's impressed.

The noise against is discovered to be a gun. A semi-automatic. She leaves it be.

Not today.

Kimberley fights with a frantic movement that is purposeful. The hit to Diana's lip leaves her surprised, not because of the physical hit itself but because the others don't fight her. The six can't. The other three while travelling abroad before medical school don't know who they fight. Etienne Bordeaux is her last, slitting his throat open discreetly while on the floor of a Paris nightclub. A perfect stranger. Diana doesn't forget his dark brown eyes, chiseled jaw and charm despite his attempt at English. It's easy when everyone's drunk, high, dancing or all of the above. Or, revel in the loss of their inhibitions they seem not to pay attention to the man clutching at his throat as the blood seeps through his fingers and he gurgles for breath.

Diana runs her tongue over her lip, aware of the sting and metallic taste of her own blood. She wipes the bleeding cut with a thumb and throws the scalpel through the open door before shutting it. It lands with a distant sharp clink. Hopefully, somehere in Bonnie's carotid artery. She grins at the heap of legs and hair and disheveled clothes. More so than when she lands here. Strangled sobs. Laboured breathings. That's the sign of broken ribs. A collapsed lung. Kimberley wheezes, spitting up blood that splatters on the ground.

Diana sighs, and painfully kicks Kimberley in the abdomen hard enough to hopefully cause internal bleeding that can't be fixed. Then does it again just to hear what it sounds like to hear a person break from the inside out.

Kimberley screams this time, and there's something about the anguish of the sound.

It sounds like a howl, a broken bark and a lingering whimper. In this room of blood, and broken bones, she hears that dying beagle. The howling shatters her world of Camelot, of old Russia where Tolstoy's characters love, live, lose, and eventually, die. The Hodges' family pet creates ripples in her imaginary conversations with Nietzsche, Sun Tzu and Machiavelli. The Hodges' beagle barks incessantly and muddies the pool of vapid pop culture Diana likes to stick her toe into every now and again.

"You're impressive. Stubborn. Fiery. It's admirable. The others…don't behave like you," Diana observes as if looking through a microscope and seeing this woman as a culmination of many moving emotional and psychological parts. Her family, who she loves, who loves her back just as much. She crouches down, strokes her unbloodied cheek before turning her roughly on her back. Her tone is measured, icy. "You're going to tell me the name of the girl you shoved to Canada before you choke on your blood."

Kimberley's eyes are wide. Two pools of green moss. Diana eyes her throat, and develops a curiosity about her windpipe, and how it would feel to step on it with gradual pressure until it breaks.

"You're going to tell me… The name of the girl you squirreled away… across the border. Or, Craig dies."

"Don't…"

"You're under a deadline, Kimmie. You're smart. Don't force my hand… well, my foot."

Diana kicks Kimberley in the lower abdomen one last time, and then presses the sole of her boot against the young woman's throat and yes, she finds the windpipe. She hears the frantic gasps for air. It's quiet, but all she needs for Bonnie to let her go back to New Hampshire to live her quiet, unassuming life.

Finally, Kimberley wheezes out a name in a strangled whisper.

"Thank you," Diana says, with a smirk and brings her foot down on Kimberley's throat. The crack is loud, final and as she watches the light behind this girl's eyes go out, satisfying.

Diana opens the door and Bonnie comes in, glancing at the body and then her.

"You got really creative."

She doesn't want to be down here. Not ever again.

"She's dead. She had internal damage that would have killed her anyway. Broken ribs and a collapsed lung that would have resulted in a chest infection that also would have caused her death," Diana replies. It's another expired patient, a cadaver that has been created for another cause. It's not one important to her, but a cause nonetheless. "I'd recommended you have her dismembered in a separate location from here. Cut her up in the smallest pieces possible and scattered in the Mojave Desert. If all fails, I'd seriously consider taking a layer of the wall here and sealing her into it," she adds, brushing Bonnie's hand away from her lip. Diana laughs. "You didn't count on this one being as combative, did you?"

Bonnie folds her arms, pining her with a glance between worry and being thankful she finishes the job. Diana can still hear the sharp sound the scalpel makes. She breezes past her aunt and continues toward the labyrinth that is part of her life since the age of sixteen.

"Give me the name, Diana."

Diana stops mid-step and turns around, brushing her blonde hair back.

"Of course," she relents, bending to pick up the scalpel. In one swift motion, she pins Bonnie to a wall, the silver blade at her throat. She presses at the little fluttering pulse. With a little pressure, a little incision is made and a thin line of blood wells as Bonnie takes a sharp intake of breath. "Let's make a wager, shall we? I'll tell you this name who had me kill for, and you never call me down here again."

"Diana, you're my family. My blood," she hisses, "but this will not end well for you. Drop it."

"Slitting someone's throat is enjoyable to me. Thank you for awakening that in me. But if you call me over here for anything over than a loving niece visiting her aunt, and I'll hurt you. Promise me you won't call me over here to kill anybody ever again. It's my compulsion. My quirk… it's mine. No one else's, not even yours," Diana says, grip on the scalpel tightening. "Say the words before I give you the name of your next victim."

Bonnie winces in anger but relents and grounds out the words.

"Okay. I promise. Back. Off."

Diana hands her the scalpel in a show of good faith and Bonnie nods, accepting it. She smirks, as Bonnie touches the cut to her neck, staining her fingertips a light red. It's not dark blood, therefore, it's not deep. It doesn't need stitches. It should heal underneath a nice scarf.

"Crystal Porter."

"Who?"

"Crystal Porter," she repeats, as her aunt grows silent. "Does that name mean anything to you?"

A beat passes, and there's a storm in her aunt's eyes.

She laughs, a little maniacally, and then curses loudly. "That's who…" she trails off, and swears and looks at her. "That name is more than a name to me," she says, and tilts her head towards the end, and the way to climb her way to the top. "I'll handle this one myself. Go home. Call your parents and go look out for Reed," she turns threatening and Diana almost rolls her eyes. Bonnie is scared of a lot of things underneath her bravado and the reputation of murder and mayhem that precedes her. Bonnie tucks a lock of Diana's hair behind her ear, gentle as a mother should but sounds as dangerous as any monster in the dark. Well, dangerous to others. Not her. "You pull a stunt like that again, and I'll make you pay for it."

"No, you won't," Diana rebuts, with a knowing grin. "Because I scared you. I still scare you. You admire that. For Owen's sake, you won't do anything. You love your son too much. Are we even?"

A sharp, narrow-eyed meets gaze meets hers. "We're even, Diana Alice."

"No, I'm not avoiding you, Mom…"

Diana slides the room keycard to her Vegas motel room, and lets the door close behind her. She slides off her boots, and allows her feet to be brushed by the beige carpet. She keeps her iPhone X pressed against her ear while coming out of her black shirt, one sleeve at a time while her mother rambles. Well, more unloads on her than talks. Diana sighs, taking the phone away from her ear momentarily to pull her shirt over her head. She throws it over a couch and tunes back into her mother, slowly pacing the length of the room in just her jeans and a lace bra.

"Well, I don't know what you want from me. I called Dad. He's fine. I told him, I'm fine."

She's still Doodlebug. Diana is still struck by that. Touched. Dad's the only one to touch some part of her.

"Why didn't you tell me you were fine?"

"I don't know," Diana collapses backwards into her plush, hotel bed. "Maybe because I've been in a room of other doctors for most of the day, taking in research at this conference."

"Right," her mother says, tone clipped. "You didn't visit your aunt once?"

Diana rolls her eyes, annoyance in her chest. "You had to know I would. I was raised here. My alma mater is here. I wasn't going to land in Vegas and not go. I don't know what you're asking of me. Are you asking to choose between you and Bonnie?"

"That's not…" she starts and then says more firmly and clears her throat. "You know what? I take it back. Yeah, I'm asking you to choose. Sweetheart, I'm sorry, but I'm your mother. I think I've earned the right to ask that of you."

"It's a huge ask. You know this."

"Yes, I do. It will make you resent me more than you already do, but here we are."

Diana wanders over to the bar area, grabs a crystal tumbler and pours herself a whiskey. She doesn't care about the sting the alcohol will cause her lip. If anything, it should be sanitized. Halfway up the short glass she stops, and puts the stopper back in the bottle. Her eyes flicker outside, the Las Vegas strip just opening up with its lights, grand fountains shooting water into air with precise synchronism and sounds that cause sensory overload with anyone, but in her, intrigue.

"Thank you for being honest," Diana says after a moment's silence, nursing her drink. She takes a sip, and winces from the sharp sting in her lip and the slow burning fire in her throat when she swallows. Its warmth settles in the quick pauses between her heartbeats, in her veins and burns up her to her head like a steady flame on the end of a candle. The warmth grows white hot steadily and the faintest shade of vermilion red just starts to colour Diana's peripheral vision. Another sip. Another slow burning inferno, "but I'm going to be honest in answering that because you and dad fought over how your differing parenting styles shaped both JT and me into the people we are. This is bigger than you, Mom, and if you can't see that then I don't know what to tell you. I'm not invalidating whatever issues you have with Bonnie partly because I don't understand them, but don't make her the scapegoat."

"Excuse me? Different parenting styles?"

Diana lifts in a bare shoulder in a shrug, sitting on the bed, legs casually swinging over the edge.

"I was Dad's favourite. JT was yours. I'm not mad or anything because the both of us did it too. We just related to one parent better than the other. It didn't mean I didn't love you any less, or JT's love for Dad didn't diminish. It was just the status quo," Diana explains, as honestly as she can. She's too selfish to disclose the rest. "It's how it was in the house until I didn't feel like I could breathe in Genoa City anymore. I was either JT's little sister, or Martha and Tom's daughter."

"That's not true."

"Really?" Diana questions, with a raised brow. "Why did one of your friends call me Deidra? How do you make the leap from Diana to Deidra? Dad's finance friends were always trying to talk me into dancing with their sons at these parties. He liked that I rebuffed them."

"And you're still rebuffing men…" she heard Martha mutter and for the first time in a while, has a genuine laugh come out of her because something happens here. A breakthrough. With every child JT has, there's always the question of when her time for parenthood will come. With every year of marriage that passes between her parents, there's always the subtle jab at her unmarried status or her father never knowing what it is like to walk a daughter down the aisle. She laughs, and can't quite stop it.

"See? This is what I mean. Your honesty is wonderful, Mom. I'm childless and unmarried."

"I didn't mean that…"

"Yes, you did!" Diana replies with a snap, angrily. "You didn't parent JT, didn't parent me… or maybe you parented him a little better. I figured out what life was for me. I went to medical school and still, don't know. I'll give Dad A for effort but he didn't exactly do any of the heavy lifting. But he was there. JT peaked in high school and has been spiraling ever since. Now, he's not as dead as people think and he's out there. I'm unmarried by choice. I don't have children because I have no business bringing a child into the world. I don't want that," she feigns a sarcastic kind of surprise. "There are people who don't want to live their lives pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen, Mom. Surprise! I donated my eggs anonymously in my 20s. That's the closest you'll ever get to knowing you have biological grandchildren from me out there in the world," she confesses smiling against the glass, downing the rest of her drink in one gulp. "There are women who are infertile and can't have children. Why not give what I have to someone else if I'm not going to use them? I didn't exactly have the best role model for motherhood."

"Diana Alice Hellstrom," her mother says, in a quiet kind of heartbreak. "Diana…" she repeats, voice catching. "You hate me this much? Well, it's what distance that had me watch you as lure Brittany's dog. It's that distance that had me watch you go into the shed to get Dad's shovel," her mother's voice steadily increases and leaves her momentarily stunned. No, no, no. "I watched you lure that dog into the woods…"

"Until it went quiet."

There's the idea that people who kill satisfy their need to end an animal life before trying out on human beings? Is that she thinks? Of course, she does. Too much true crime documentary and Dateline informs her mother's narrative when it's much simple than that.

"You think I killed that dog because I was bored, don't you?"

"Am I wrong?"

Diana pulls her legs into a crossed legged position, finding her level of comfort.

"Yes. I killed that dog because I was doing homework and it was too loud," she ponders, tapping her chin for a brief moment. Now, it makes sense.

Diana understands why the emotional chasm is there between mother and daughter when it's so effortless to throw herself into every and all things Jeffrey Todd Hellstrom. She isn't afflicted with some kind of deep seeded sibling related envy, and not even throwing a tantrum because of mommy issues. Every aspect of her life is planned and controlled. It is constructed that one from a young age.

The dog is a means to an end. Not an exploration into the closed doors of her psyche when she's familiar with what lies on the other side.

"You think I killed that dog because I quietly snapped. You're scared of me."

"That's not the case, and you know that."

"For once, I don't," Diana heaves a sigh, "but it doesn't matter because you can't connect with something you fear. Nobody can understand something that scares them. That's why I asked to live with Bonnie, and Dad didn't fight it. Neither did you," a wry smile falls on her lips, "because it meant you didn't have to think about all the therapy you'd put me in or all of the ways you could use pills to fix me. Ironic since I work with pills all the time…"

Her mother sighs on the other end, "I want to understand you. All of you, but it won't happen."

"I want you to understand… all of me, but you're not ready for it. Glad we had this talk. I'm tired. Contrary to popular belief, I'm too exhausted to haunt the strip. Goodbye, Mom—"

"Wait."

That one word sounds like a thunder clap in Diana's ears.

"What is it?"

Martha says firmly, "I don't know where we stand right now. All I know is that I have loved you since I found out I was pregnant with you," he voice catches, "but I will not go one day without knowing where your brother is. Tell me right now, young lady. I need to know where my boy is." And there's the thunder bolt that just about grazes some part of her.

"No," Diana throws back, defiantly. "The less you know, the better."

"That's not up to you. I'm his mother, and if I have to kill to get to my son, I will," Martha says finally. "Goodbye, Diana. I love you."

Her mother hangs up, leaving Diana with a dull ache in her head and a tension that builds again. Her eyes land on that empty glass with a few lingering amber drops of liquor. She uncrosses her legs after letting her phone sink in the folds of her hotel bed. She wanders over to pick up the short glass, turns it to look at all the places light can hide and make itself known.

She hovers the glass over the coffee table, centerpiece a bunch of beautifully placed different coloured flowers. It's plastic because there's no sweet aroma real ones give off. A dark purple calla lily. A daisy. Dark red roses. Light rose organza flowers with a saffron yellow center when it can be gold under Vegas lights. Diana smiles wistfully at the idea that she can make glitter while giving off the illusion that there's gold beneath. Isn't that what optimists do? Optimism doesn't mean you're always walking along positivity and good vibes. It means people are foolish enough to think the monsters that lurk underneath beds and stays in the shadows of closets are really not there.

Bringing the glass to eye level, Diana lets the glass slip from her grasp over the table with the fake flowers. It crashes in an explosion of jagged, glittering glass masquerading as fairy dust and magic fools chase up and down the strip.

"Idiots trapped in fallacy," she remarks to no one. A piece of glass shimmers brighter than the rest and she picks it up. The edges are jagged, the shape curved even as it rests in her palm. "How… amusing."

She undoes her jeans, stepping out of them with ease and revealing matching black underwear. Diana turns the cool piece of glass over in her hand with sharp dexterity as she goes into a drawer and slips on a long, satin black robe that feels like a second skin. She ties her robe across her body, wanting a bubble bath after a long, productive day.

Her hazel eyes turn over the piece of glass with all the ridges etched into it.

A curiosity inside of her is piqued as Diana wonders how blood fits just so in the carved ridges, instead of the streams of hotel lights or neon coloured casino ones.

Then just like that, Diana is reminded she has another role to play.

Aunt.

Her phone vibrates on the bed and her nephew's face comes up on the screen.

Diana never gets over the fact that Reed is a paradox of emotions: happy and simmering in rage no one knows the extent of, a man and child-like and in blue eyes, not like his father – it must be from his mother because Victoria Newman is a striking woman – lies a delicate balance between cautious optimism and a disillusionment she finds refreshing, truthfully. Disillusionment doesn't mean misery. It means unbound honesty that has the power to heal, destroy or both.

Reed is like just this piece of glass. Smooth, yet surrounded by edges that she hopes sharpens over time. The corner of her lips quirk upwards as she slides her finger to answer.

"Hey, Reed."

"Hey, Aunt Diana," he replies, tentatively. "I understand it could be a bad time but… can we…talk?"

"Take time out of my day to talk to you?" Diana replies, as she drags the pad of her thumb over the longest edge of this jagged glass. There's a sting, an orgasmic release of euphoria and a thin line of red that appears over the ridges of her thumbprint. Ah, success. She grins, from ear to ear. "Always. So, let's talk, Reed..."