Chapter 10

Andrassy Estate, Vadsel, Hungary

Two weeks later

-

Charlotte Devane made her hit the target. Once and then again. Frowning. Annoyed by her daughter's inability to hit its centre.

"You're useless," her mother spat. "You can mend the broken legs of a bloody field mouse but you can't hit the core of a target if your life depended on it!"

Alex sighed, wishing she didn't have to do this. Wishing the gun wasn't in her hand. Her head hurt from the concentration and she wanted nothing more than to leave the room.

"Again," Charlotte demanded.

"Later, please," Alex pleaded.

"Now!"

Alex stared at the target in front of her, except this time it wasn't a paper cut-out. It was her father.

"No," she shook her head in panic. How could she hurt the one man she loved?

"Shoot!"

"No!"

"Alex," she heard another voice in the distance. "Alex, it's okay..darling. It's just a dream."

Alex pushed herself up on her elbow to see Dimitri looking at her with a pair of sleepy, concerned eyes.

Another nightmare.

Alex frowned and moved to sit at the rim of the bed. She noticed her hands were shaking and her head was pounding.

Dimitri reached over to touch her arm. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Alex nodded, running a hand through her hair. "I'm okay…I just need some air."

She debated opening the window, but instead she got up, and pulled out a pair of jeans and a thick, wool sweater from the closet. Dimitri yawned, as he turned on the light to check the time. "Darling, it's four am…where are you going?"

"I need to go outside, to clear my head."

"I'll come with you…"

Alex shook her head. "No…stay here. One of us should get some sleep."

Dimitri sank back into the pillow.

They were supposed to fly to Ascot tomorrow night for a race and back to Vadsel the next day, for a huge family dinner that would officially welcome Andrei into the world of the Andrassys. "I could use some sleep. Not that I'll get any if I wonder where you are."

She smiled. "Try."

"Don't go for too long," he mumbled. "Or I'll send out a search party..."

"Don't worry," she whispered, seeing him close his eyes again. The grounds of Vadsel were probably the safest place in the world to go for an early morning walk.

She felt guilty for waking him so often. For pulling him into the crazy world of her nightmares. Into the world of Charlotte Devane.

'One more thing to hate you for, Mother,' she thought bitterly, closing the bedroom door behind her.

Alex walked down the old corridor, along its plush, Persian carpet, beneath the watchful eyes of the oil portraits that hung on the panelled walls. Portraits of countless Andrassys dating back centuries.

She headed toward Andrei's room, wanting to peak inside to see if he was asleep. Alex opened the door as quietly as its heavy, wooden frame allowed, unable to make out his figure on the bed inside. She took a couple of steps into the room and saw that the blanket was tossed aside and that the bed was empty.

'Damn it,' she cursed in the darkness. He'd already tried to run away once, two days ago. It was a half-hearted attempt Alex thought, in hindsight, more of a challenge to see how far he could get than a genuine desire to flee. Or at least, that's what she told herself. He had taken Dimitri's favourite horse, Maritsa, and ridden her to the nearest village, where the local police had found him wandering the streets with the horse the next day, and promptly delivered him back to Vadsel.

To say the last two weeks had been a supreme test of her patience would have been an understatement.

At Dimitri's insistence they enrolled Andrei at the same private school that had educated generations of Andrassys, only to have him suspended on the fourth day for stealing his teacher's diamond bracelet.

Alex had then spent only minutes speaking to the teacher, before making the decision of taking him out of the school and putting him into a nearby public school. That decision caused another major argument with Dimitri, who wasn't entirely convinced that Andrei should be the first Marick in history to attend public school.

"How can you just pull him out of that school without so much as discussing it with me?"

She'd given him a sly smile. "I don't know? The same way you adopted him without asking me?"

"Funny."

"His teacher is a horrible, arrogant woman, who looks at him with so much disdain, it's no wonder he doesn't respect her. I wouldn't either."

"He stole her diamond bracelet! Can you blame her?"

"Andrei's been plucked from the only home he's known for the last seven years, where no matter what else was lacking, at least he had the respect of his fellow orphans."

Dimitri had sighed. "Respect? He led a bunch of delinquents into doing all kinds of mischief!"

She'd ignored his admonition. "And, now…now he's in a school with eleven and twelve year olds, because he needs to catch up. He's confused and angry and he needs a teacher who understands that, not a teacher who looks at him like he's a lost cause. He's fifteen, Dimitri! He's almost an adult. He's frustrated."

'Frustrating indeed,' Alex thought, staring into the empty room. 'Where in the world could you have gone in the middle of the night?'

She left the room and ran down the grand staircase of the estate, towards the front door. She'd try and find him herself before waking Dimitri again. She pulled a jacket and flashlight out of the closet near the entrance and made her way outside, heading towards the stables.

After so many years of living in the noisy heart of London, the complete darkness and utter silence of nights in the countryside still awed her. Tonight was a crystal clear night. Thousands of stars swirled in the sky above her and the moon shone bright enough for her to see the outline of the stables in the distance.

The air was getting colder, its Fall crispness more reminiscent of winter than summer now.

"Andrei!" she called out, entering the stables.

To both their surprise, Dimitri and Alex discovered that Andrei loved horses as much as they did and that he was a surprisingly capable rider. His family were Roma horse traders and he rode often before being brought to the orphanage.

"Andrei!" she repeated, hearing the sound of horses shuffling their legs in the pens as she walked along the stalls. It was cool in the stables and drafts of wind wafted through cracks in the wooden structure. Alex was about to call his name a third time, when she spotted him lying asleep in a corner, atop a small mound of hay.

She squatted next to him, nudging him gently. "Andrei…"

He woke up with a jump, panicking and muttering something in Romanian.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."

He said nothing at first, staring at her in the darkness, his breathing rapid and shallow, matching the fear in his eyes. "Not you…you don't scare me," he corrected her, as if wanting to make sure she knew that anyone as unthreatening as her wasn't about to frighten him. "I have a dream, that's why."

Alex sat down next to him. "Bad dream? It's okay…I know, they're miserable aren't they?'

Andrei said nothing, shivering in the cold.

"What are you doing here anyway? You don't have to sleep in the stables you know." She chuckled. "If you really hate the Mickey Mouse wallpaper we can take it down."

Her words elicited a smile from Andrei. "Is okay. Mickey Mouse is okay."

This time it was Alex who said nothing.

"Why you are here?" he asked her.

She shrugged, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was worried about his whereabouts. He'd been too much of a troublemaker for that these past two weeks. "Same reason as you maybe. Bad dream."

His grey eyes widened in the darkness, shining next to the light of the flashlights. "What do you dream?"

"About my mother."

"Do you love your mother?" he asked, out of nowhere. "You look sad."

The question jarred her. Alex shook her head. "No." For the first time since meeting him, she felt a genuine bond with the boy.

Andrei eyed her. "I believe you," he told her. "I know when people lie." He paused, adding, "Me too. My mother, she doesn't love me, and I don't love her."

"Fair enough." Alex ran her fingers through his wavy hair. The more she got to know him the more she was starting to appreciate his honesty. "So you want to tell me what you're doing here?"

"I want to ride the horse in the morning."

"You have school in the morning," she reminded him.

"I hate school. I'm not a child."

Alex sighed. She could have sworn she had this argument with him less than twenty-four hours ago. "I know you're not a child…but you have to finish school and you're behind as it is. It's important."

"I hate it."

"I'll make you a deal. You go to school for the next week and behave yourself and, as soon as the sun comes up, we'll ride any horse you want?"

Andrei squinted, trying to read her eyes. "Any horse?"

"Any horse."

"The black one…in the end stall."

Alex smiled. Tempus Fugit. Of course. What other horse would one demand given the chance to ride any?

"Alright. We can ride him."

Andrei laughed. "You are lying. Nobody can ride him. He is wild."

Alex raised her eyebrows in amusement. "How do you know that?"

"I try." He held pulled back the sleeve of his sweater to show her a large, ugly bruise, still red and sore.

Alex grimaced. "Oh Andrei, why didn't you tell me? I would have fixed that up for you."

"See I try. And me, I can ride every horse," he boasted.

"I told you not to take the horses out without asking. You could have hurt yourself…" She gave him a mildly angry look. "Or worse, you could have hurt the horses."

"Nobody can ride that horse."

"We'll ride him when the sun comes up," Alex repeated.

"You are lying," Andrei insisted. "Nobody can ride him. I never see Dimitri or Jozsef take him out. Maybe my mother she could ride him. She is the best rider I know. But maybe not her either."

"Trust me," she said, seeing the doubt in his eyes. "He's my horse. He hasn't had any other riders since I broke him. He's like you. Stubborn. But maybe it's about time he got used to someone else riding him."

"I don't believe you."

Alex yawned, glancing at her watch; "You can believe me in a couple of hours." She stood up and held out her arm to him. "Let's go back to the house until then. It's freezing in here."

Andrei shook his head. "No. I want to stay here."

Alex sighed. "Fine. I'll get some blankets from the tack room and stay with you then. That way we'll both smell like horse tomorrow. " She paused. "If you don't mind, that is."

He stared at her, unsure what to say. "It's okay," he decided.

She came back with two wool blankets and threw one at him. "Get some sleep before sunrise or else you'll fall asleep in your class."

She turned off the flashlight, before lying down on the hay-covered ground next to him.

Andrei eyed her in the darkness, thinking her presence would annoy him, but somehow it didn't. She didn't treat him like the women at the orphange and he liked that.

He kept staring at her in the shadows, waiting until she fell asleep before closing his own eyes, trying to remember if his mother had ever done that; had ever fallen asleep next to him.

He felt a bitter tear well up in his eyes when he realized she never did. And never would.

Paris, France

"Tell me something," Faison asked Jan. "Why are you so eager to move to Brussels?"

Jan pressed his lips into a thin line. "Getting you away from Anna Devane would be good for your powers of concentration and good for business, that's why. I can't understand why you insist on staying in Paris. She is off-limits. I certainly thought the baby would make her even less appealing to you."

Faison snickered. "If I didn't know you so well, I would say that you have a personal motive for wanting to leave Paris so desperately."

Jan frowned. They were sitting at the corner table in a small restaurant called Les Deux Renards. The Two Foxes. 'How apropos,' he thought holding a glass of white Bordeaux next to his lips and taking a silent sip.

They were awaiting a buyer for a high-tech gadget that Faison had obtained illegally from one of his CIA sources. Jan wasn't sure what it was, some sort of tracking device that a member of the Russian mafia was apparently willing to pay big dollars for.

Gadgets and high-tech toys were Faison's passion; they didn't interest Jan at all. How could one compare an object made of micro fibres, wires and computer chips, to the grandeur of an oil painting or to the beauty of a perfect diamond?

"The baby changes nothing," Faison pointed out, bringing him back to the topic at hand. "Why would it?"

"The baby means there is another man in the picture," he replied. "Not that getting close to her is an option anyway."

"I know about Dr. David Hayward. He doesn't change anything either." Faison observed the tuxedo clad waiter as he set down their appetizers. Warm terrine of foie gras and quail, perched atop a paper-thin slice of French baguette. He nodded approvingly and paused until the waiter left before resuming his conversation.

"Shouldn't we wait until Ivan…?" Jan started.

Faison scowled and picked up his silver cutlery. "He's late. If he's remotely interested in what I have to offer he should be glad we had the courtesy not to leave, never mind waiting for him to dine with us." He took a bite of the terrine, obviously enjoying its pungent flavour. "As for Anna, tell me Jan what do you think is her one weakness? The one thing that could make her realize that I mean that much more to her than she could ever imagine?"

Jan shrugged his shoulders, hating that the conversation was taking this turn again. "I don't know. What?"

"Think."

"Her daughter. It's the only thing she has left, isn't it? Her daughter and the child she's expecting."

Faison nodded, continuing. "Robin is ill. You know that, don't you?"

"She is HIV positive. That I know."

Faison used a white cotton napkin to wipe a smidgeon of quail from his lips. "There is a chance that Robin's HIV may one day become full blown AIDS and she could subsequently die of the disease."

"I don't understand; what does all this have to do with you and Anna?"

"I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year on AIDS research. There's a laboratory in Marseilles that's funded almost single-handedly by me."

Jan nodded. Of course he knew that. He was, after all, Faison's primary accountant. But until just now he had never made the obvious connection between the research and Robin Scorpio. He'd always assumed that the research funding was no more than a tool for tax evasion. A way of laundering and legitimizing questionable funds. But now it all made so much more sense.

Jan's jaw dropped. "You want to cure AIDS to impress Anna?"

Faison laughed. "You make it sound so absurd. So far-fetched."

"It is absurd."

"Just think, Jan, if one of the scientists in my lab were to be the one to make the principal discovery leading to a cure for AIDS? Can you imagine the gratitude with which Anna would embrace me? If I were to save her daughter?"

"Of course she'd be grateful," Jan admitted. "Who wouldn't?"

Faison finished the final bite of his terrine and set down his knife and fork on the plate, indicating he wanted it removed from his sight. Immediately. The waiter caught the signal and plucked the plate from the table in one seamless movement.

"Not just gratitude, Jan. It would be the one thing in the world that would make her see me in a different light. If I could save her child."

Jan nodded, taking a bite of his appetizer. Thick, white asparagus tips drenched in a cream-coloured béarnaise sauce. "Except curing AIDS is no small feat," he mumbled with his mouth half full.

Faison propped his elbows up on the table and pressed the palms of his hands together. "You're right. But with the birth of a second child I have, in essence… a second chance."

Jan chortled, thinking surely his boss was joking. "Except there's a small problem. What if Anna gives birth to a perfectly healthy child?"

Faison frowned. "We'll see about that," he mumbled, as he saw his Russian client enter the restaurant. "We'll see."

Paris, France

"C'est parfait," Anna told the landlord with the swirling moustache, knowing already that she would take the apartment. It wasn't really. Perfect, that is. But it was close enough.

"Pas encore," the man said, smiling at her. "But it will be when you are living here."

Anna's eyes lit up in a matching smile. No one could flirt as well as the French. It was an ability they were born with. After a month of living in Paris, Anna was absolutely certain of it. Even now, almost six months into her pregnancy, she could lose track of the constant flattery she received. The French adored children and revered mothers in such an unapologetic fashion, at times it made her feel almost buoyant, in spite of her growing waistline.

"I have another couple that is interested in the apartment," he told her, trying out his English. "But if you like, it is yours."

"Thank you," Anna acknowledged, her eyes scanning it once more. "I do like it." It was small by North American standards but it had two little bedrooms and a separate dining and living area that spread out from the kitchen. It was palatial compared to her daughter's apartment.

The kitchen was the most beautiful of the rooms. It sported a marble counter top and a huge window facing a giant oak tree. The window lit up the room. Bright rays of sunshine poured through it.

'It's so charming...' Anna thought, with a smile. 'That I might have to learn to cook.'

"I will bring you the lease to sign," the landlord told her.

Anna nodded. "Please."

He scurried off and her eyes wandered to the hardwood floors leading to the bedrooms. She put a subconscious hand on her belly. The one on the right would be the baby's room. There were pencil marks on the wall, where the previous occupants had measured a child's height.

Anna ran her fingers over the highest measurement. Septembre, 2002, 113 centimetres.

"We'll do the same, baby," she thought aloud. "Except we'll use inches."

She wondered how long they'd stay here. The lease was for one year. She would stay at least that long. She'd bear the boredom of her office job for one year, she told herself. To be here, in Paris with Robin, to raise her new child.

"And then, who knows?" Maybe she'd stay in Paris longer. Or maybe she'd go back to Port Charles or transfer to London with Scotland Yard. 'Or Pine Valley even…'

She thought of David, as she did every day, wondering what he was doing. How he was doing.

It had been a while now since she last called Jackson Montgomery, and she still hadn't made any progress in solidifying the charges against David. Jackson had mentioned something about David having gone to work at Seaview hospital.

'Do you miss me nearly as much as I miss you?' she thought absentmindedly. Have you met someone else? His last phone call to Robin's apartment had been weeks ago. Every day she wanted to pick up the phone and call him. And every day, she somehow found the willpower not to. In spite of everything, in spite of the hurt, the pride, the anger, in spite of all that; she missed him.

"You do have a right to know your father," she whispered to her unborn child. "No matter how I feel about David." It was a bridge she would have to cross at some point.

"Voici, Madame."

Anna saw the landlord approach her with a sheet of paper. The lease.

She pulled out a ballpoint pen from her purse and signed it. "Merci."

"C'est un plaisir, Madame Devane."

Anna took a final look at the apartment and contentedly handed the lease back to the landlord. She'd made the right decision. Aside from being close to the Metro, and in a clean, quiet neighbourhood, the apartment had one other selling point that outweighed all that: it was a short walk from Robin's place.

It meant she could finally give her daughter some much needed breathing room, while still being close enough to keep an eye on her.

'Maybe I expected too much,' she thought, suddenly. She'd come to Paris hoping to reconnect with the same girl she remembered raising, except that Robin wasn't that girl anymore.

Robin was an adult now. A stranger. She was HIV positive and in spite of all her efforts to not show it, she was angry at her mother. Angry and disappointed.

'I don't blame you,' Anna thought. 'I wasn't there for you for such a long time. You have a right to be angry. If only you'd let it out…I'd rather you yell at me and tell me how you feel instead of keeping it bottled up inside you, thinking I don't notice.' Almost two weeks had passed since her daughter's unexpected outburst at the restaurant, yet nothing had changed. They'd both gone back exchanging neutral pleasantries during the short times they saw each other.

'You're so stubborn and stoic, sweetheart,' Anna thought, biting her lip. That part of her daughter definitely came from her father. But just as Anna had always somehow found a means around Robert's bullheadedness, she'd find a way to break through her daughter's too. However long it took.

In hindsight, it was probably for the best that she was moving out of her daughter's apartment. She needed to put some distance between them. To give Robin a chance to relax from the constant pretense. Living together the way they did was stressful for both of them and Anna wasn't sure how much longer she could keep it up either.

Compounding that tension were Robin's Fall exams. One more week and they would be over as well.

'Thank god,' Anna thought, after she said goodbye to the landlord and left the building that would be her future home. Burning the midnight oil had left Robin exhausted, even though she didn't think Anna noticed that either.

'When did my baby become so driven?' she asked herself as she headed down the street towards Robin's apartment. Becoming a doctor meant the world to her. No matter how much Anna pleaded for her to take it easy, her pleas fell on deaf ears.

She arrived back at Robin's apartment in less than twenty minutes.

"Hey, sweetie," she announced when she opened the door to her apartment. "I have good news. I signed the lease…" Anna saw Robin stumbling out of the bathroom, a hand resting on her stomach.

"Robin? Are you okay?"

Anna suddenly noticed her daughter's pallor. Not only was ghostly white but her skin had a slightly gray tint that alarmed Anna.

"Robin?" Anna ran towards her.

"Mom…"

It was the last word her daughter said before her eyes rolled back and her knees buckled underneath her.

Anna tried to catch her.

But she was too late.

Andrassy Estate, Vadsel, Hungary

Andrei watched as Alex saddled and bridled the horse, impressed that the animal didn't fight her.

Then she mounted the horse with ease, holding out her hand to Andrei. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

Andrei grinned and let her pull him up into the saddle, behind her. Unlike the day before when he attempted to ride him, Tempus Fugit was accommodating this time, making no moves to toss him from his back. The grin was stuck on his face. He couldn't believe he was about to ride this horse; the most incredible horse he'd ever seen. Yesterday, Andrei didn't think riding him was possible and today he was doing it.

Alex turned around. "Ready?"

Andrei wrapped his arms around her waist and nodded. "Yes."

The horse thundered out of the stables, as though he'd been waiting for just that. The chance to run free. To show off.

Andrei's smile was still plastered on his face as Alex guided Tempus along a barely noticeable riverside trail. Whenever the terrain flattened out, she pushed the horse to run faster, a command that Tempus enjoyed rather than just obeyed.

Andrei held onto to Alex tightly, losing track of time as he immersing himself in the ride. After they left the riverbank, they rode along the edge of a forest, at times so close to the branches above them that Andrei had to duck to avoid hitting them. Endless swirls of red, yellow and orange leaves danced in front of his eyes, blending into a dizzying array of colours.

To say Alex was an exceptional rider would have been an understatement.

Andrei could still remember riding with his mother when he was very young. Back then he'd been convinced that no one rode better than her. His mother had been the most beautiful woman he'd ever known. And no one could ride a horse like she could. Andrei could almost understand then why she gave him up. He told himself it wasn't just because her new husband didn't want to raise another man's son and his mother wouldn't protest, it was because she was so much. And he, Andrei, was barely much of anything.

Andrei knew he wasn't good looking. He was also small for his age and, although he rode well, he knew he couldn't match his mother's skils. Even with the limited wisdom of an eight year old, he understood then that someone like her couldn't possibly want him. It hurt, but it made sense. He could accept it.

But now, riding this horse, with this woman who rode as well as his mother, perhaps even better, he wondered if maybe he'd been wrong to accept it.

He closed his eyes, feeling the horse's muscles exert themselves beneath him. Watching Alex guide Tempus through the landscape, made him trust her skills completely. Blindly. It was the most marvellous feeling to ride with his eyes closed, to sense every beat of Tempus' hoofs on the ground.

Andrei wondered why she did the things she did. Why she chose to sleep with him in the stables last night. Why she insisted on bandaging his bruised arm before they went riding this morning. Why she cared whether or not he went to school.

By all accounts Andrei should have been a nothing to Alex Marick. Like he was to his own flesh and blood mother. But lately he didn't feel like nothing anymore.

Alex slowed down the horse when they approached a pond. Andrei was certain they'd been going in a circle, and yet he knew if it were it up to him to find the way back to the estate, he wouldn't be able to do it.

Alex turned around, her long hair brushing his face. "Let's take a break," she said, slowing the horse further still, into a trot.

When he came to a standstill, Andrei slipped out of the saddle, holding out his arm for Alex, who dismounted after him.

"You ride very good," he told her.

Alex smiled. "Thanks."

"You ride better than my mother," he added. He wanted her to know that.

"He's amazing, isn't he?" she pointed out, observing Tempus Fugit lowering his head by the pond.

Andrei nodded in agreement. "You are the only person who can ride him?" he asked.

"I only just broke him," she explained. "He should be fine having others ride him soon, but he's still young. He's also temperamental and he doesn't take well to others telling him what to do. He probably threw you just to make that point. Not because you didn't ride him well. If it's any comfort to you, he's done the same to me too." She smiled. "We're going to send him off to England before the winter starts. There are some excellent race training grounds there. I want to find him a jockey and start training him to race."

Andrei made no efforts to hide his disappointment at the announcement.

"I can teach you to ride him until then," she offered, as though reading his mind.

Andrei's eyes darkened. "What if I hurt him?" He was disturbed at the thought of this animal having anyone but the most exceptional rider on his back. This horse was special; he knew it after their ride. Tempus would need a special rider to match him.

Alex laughed, running a finger along Andrei's now bandaged arm. "I don't think Tempus is the one we have to worry about."

"You think he will let me ride him?"

"Sure…I think he might."

Andrei watched the horse, unable to tear his eyes off him, as Alex sat down and leaned against a tree trunk.

"It's a beautiful morning, isn't it?" she mumbled.

Andrei nodded. It was more than beautiful. The sun was now high in the sky, compared to where it had been at the beginning of their ride. The Fall colours were indescribable and the air was the freshest, cleanest air he ever breathed. As if all that wasn't testament to his luck these days, he was standing next to the most incredible horse he had ever seen.

He wondered how long his luck would last. What would he eventually have to give in exchange for all that he was getting?

Andrei squatted down and ran his hand along the morning dew that covered the grass on the ground. Then he spotted another rider approach them from the distance. "Who's that?" he asked Alex.

Alex smiled. Even before she could make out the rider's features she knew who it was simply from the way he rode.

"Dimitri."

"How he knows where to find you?"

Alex shrugged. "Maybe Jozsef told him where he thinks we went?"

Alex stood up to meet him as he approached them.

Dimitri dismounted the horse in front of them. He acknowledged Andrei with a nod in his direction. "Hi, Andrei."

Alex smiled as Dimitri put his arms around her to kiss her. Andrei observed them with curiosity, as he often did. He'd never seen a man treat a woman the way Dimitri treated his wife. He wondered whether Dimitri just happened to be unusually good natured or whether it was because she was truly special.

Either way, he couldn't help but stare each time he saw them together. They fascinated him.

"What's wrong?" he heard Alex ask him and then he caught Dimitri's grim expression.

"I just got a call from Anna. It's about Robin."