A/N: So, um, things are about to get bumpy. Sorry. And just for reference, I am not trying to repeat the past specifically but trying to draw parallels instead. I am also sticking to themes that made Twisted, well twisted. Just some forewarning for you guys. My writing mojo is back.

P.S. Thank you for the well wishes. I am feeling much, much better now. It was ugly there for a while. Thank you guys for understanding and hanging in there when the updates became so sporadic. It meant a lot. Anyway, let's get on with it, lol.


Chapter Twenty Eight

Lacey yanked open the front door before Danny even had an opportunity to knock. "So how'd it go?" she demanded in lieu of a greeting. She impatiently ushered him into the foyer. "Tell me everything."

With her assistance, Danny slipped out of his jacket with a weary sigh and watched as Lacey hung it up on a nearby coat-rack. "Tara is officially out of my house as of this morning," he replied, "Of course, my dad is furious. He accused me of being on drugs again, said I was acting paranoid and delusional."

She was disappointed to hear the news but not entirely surprised. Danny had already warned her that he thought he might have some resistance from Vikram Desai, who had always proven reluctant when believing the worst about his sister. Still, Lacey ached when she thought of how Vikram's skepticism must have devastated Danny.

"Give him time, okay," she encouraged, leading him off into the living room, "We'll find the evidence to tie her to our kidnapping and, when we do, he won't have any choice but to consider that you're telling him the truth."

Despite her reassurance, Danny's expression remained lackluster and depressingly devoid of hope. However, after taking a seat on the sofa, he dutifully answered, "Maybe you're right. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks." But the lack of conviction in his tone was apparent even to his own ears. Lacey regarded him with a worried frown but knew he would evade answering if she questioned him about his feelings.

Cringing inwardly from the pity he read on her face and wanting to talk, think about anything else, Danny bounced a cursory glance around the living room, noting for the first time since he'd arrived how unnaturally quiet the house seemed. "Where's your mom?"

"She and Clara left to go shopping about twenty minutes ago," Lacey told him, "We have the house all to ourselves for a few hours."

The prospect was seductive but Danny couldn't help shifting in his seat uneasily nonetheless. "I don't know, Lace," he hedged uncomfortably, "Your mom's not too fond of me after the whole kidnapping thing. It probably wouldn't be a good idea for her to come home and find us here together like this."

"She and Clara won't be back for awhile. Trust me," Lacey reassured him, "If it makes you feel better, you can leave before they get here."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

Lacey snuggled against his side, resting her cheek against his chest. "I don't want you to go yet."

"You might change your mind about that," he warned her wryly, "I'm lousy company today."

In answer to that, Lacey pressed even closer, happily burying herself in his warmth when she felt his arms go around her tightly. "I'll risk it."

Two weeks had passed since the kidnapping and the death of Jo's baby and, since then, Danny had lived under constant media scrutiny. The gossip rags and tv tabloids couldn't get enough of the salacious story he presented to them, the young grandson of the late and great Aravinda Desai, heir apparent to the vast Desai fortune, abducted and terrorized the same week he lost his unborn child. Television crews and photographers had been camped out in front of the Desai compound ever since the news broke, waiting greedily for a glimpse of the grieving Danny Desai.

While the media had readily acknowledged the Desai family's request for privacy during their tragic, family ordeal that hadn't stopped them from speculating on Danny's past missteps, from his numerous arrests to his very public struggle with drugs and alcohol. They theorized that perhaps his relationship with Jo Masterson, the only daughter of his grandfather's personal accountant, had been responsible for his recent turnaround and newfound maturity while in the same breath implying that he might not be able to continue resisting the lure of his past vices in the wake of so much loss.

The idea that Jo would be credited with any of the changes that Danny had made on his own and by his own willpower galled Lacey greatly but what ultimately left her sleepless and anxious was the fear that there might be a thread of truth to the media's speculation. Could Danny possibly buckle under the weight of so much stress? Was he being burdened with too much? She couldn't deny that he had begun to change over the course of the ensuing weeks.

He was becoming increasingly withdrawn and moody, often snapping at her without provocation or cause. Even his appearance was beginning to show signs of weariness. His eyes were constantly plagued with dark rings of exhaustion, his clothing was often wrinkled and disheveled. It was as if he had stopped caring about himself altogether. However, whenever Lacey tried to mention that or get him to talk about his feelings at all, the conversation would inevitably degenerate into an angry exchange or he would simply shut down altogether. Lacey told herself again and again that it wasn't her that Danny was frustrated with but the situation in general. Nevertheless, it was difficult not to take his bad temper personally especially when it always seemed to be directed at her.

But she had to be patient, she reminded herself. Danny hadn't had an easy time of it. Whether Jo's child was his or not, he was still grieving for the baby as if his own. He had pinned his hopes on that child, had been determined to give the baby a better childhood than the one he had known. He had grown invested and now that the baby was dead, he was feeling lost in his purpose. In addition to that, he was dealing with constant strain at home, being at odds with his father over Tara. His dissatisfaction and hopelessness only grew even more because it seemed that Tara was getting away with her crimes.

The quest to locate their kidnapper had been heavily hampered when the cabin where they had been held was reduced to little more than a smoking ash heap, taking whatever evidence it had housed with it. The fire had been ruled as arson but no suspects had come to the fore. The one person who might have been able to shed some light, the man who had taken them in the first place, had simply vanished into the ether. No information had been gathered about his identity or his whereabouts. As a result, the investigation into their abduction had grown stagnant due to a lack of new leads. Danny was steadfastly convinced that his aunt was trying to kill him but he had nothing at all to offer as proof. It was little wonder he walked around in a state of perpetual anger. He had to feel quite powerless these days.

Given all of that, she hadn't dared to bring up her suspicions about Archie to him. He was already dealing with enough. She didn't need to add her morbid theories about Archie and Jo and how they might be setting out to deliberately ruin his life and cause him pain. He wasn't ready to hear about that. Even she wasn't ready to face the idea that she and Danny might not have been brought back together to make the life together they had once been denied but rather to allow Archie to exact revenge against them based on his perception of their crimes against him. If that was true, Lacey thought, the gods, if they even existed, were indeed a cruel bunch.

Her heart aching with sympathy for Danny and heavy with fear for him as well, Lacey reached over to sift her fingertips lightly through the curling hair at his temple. "What do you want to do?" she asked him softly.

"What can I do?" he muttered unhappily, "He's always going to take her side over mine. That's the way it's always been since I can remember."

"Does it honestly think you'd accuse her for no reason?"

"He doesn't think it's 'no reason,'" Danny replied, "He thinks I'm accusing her out of spite, because I hate her. As far as my dad is concerned, I'm the screw-up and Tara is the angel who can do no wrong."

"But why? I don't get it!"

"She's his sister," Danny said, as if that were explanation enough.

"So what? You're his son," Lacey pointed out tartly, "Why is he willing to give Tara the benefit of the doubt but not you?"

Danny shook his head, discerning exactly where Lacey was heading with that argument. "You don't understand," he told her, "My father's childhood wasn't anywhere close to ideal. My grandfather was not a good or nice man. He made his children's lives hell. According to my father, Tara protected him when they were growing up. She took the beatings and the verbal abuse so he wouldn't have to."

"So, he feels like he owes her something," Lacey surmised softly.

"He feels like he owes her everything."

"I suppose you would understand that better than most, wouldn't you?" she muttered, surprised by the level of bitterness that colored her tone.

Danny blinked at her, stunned by that fact as well. "What are you saying?"

Lacey opened her mouth to answer him but then, at the last moment, thought better of bringing up her irritation with him over his inexplicable loyalty to Jo, past and present versions, and snapped her mouth shut instead. "Nothing," she mumbled with a sigh, "I'm just being moody. That's all." Hoping to lessen the sting of her earlier words, she leaned forward to peck a kiss to his lips only to rear back from him a second later with a startled frown. "Have you been drinking?"

He ducked his head a little sheepishly, acutely aware of the censure in her tone. "A little bit," he told her, "It was only a few beers, Lace. That's all."

"But it's ten o'clock in the morning!" she protested.

Danny shrugged. "It's happy hour somewhere."

"And you drove over here?" Lacey went on, clearly horrified.

"It's not like I'm drunk or anything!" he flared in self-defense, "I had like three or four beers. That's nothing to me." When she continued to stare at him like a fork-tongued demon, Danny's defensive walls became even higher. "Stop looking at me like that! Geez! I know better than to drive drunk, Lacey! Give me some freaking credit, okay! My morning was complete hell! I needed something to take the edge off! It's not like I'm stumbling over my own feet or anything!"

"That's not the point! Danny, you can't get behind the wheel after you've been drinking! What if you'd gotten into a car accident?"

"But I didn't, okay!"

"This time!" she flung back.

"God, Lace," he grunted, "Are you going to lecture me now too?"

Wanting to avoid yet another fight with him, Lacey swallowed down her consternation and said as calmly as she could, "I'm not trying to lecture you. I'm concerned, okay. I don't want you using alcohol as a crutch to deal with your problems."

He scoffed under his breath. "And now you're head-shrinking me!"

"I'm not doing that either! I'm worried about you!"

"Why? Because I had a few drinks?" he cried incredulously.

"No! Because you've been acting weird ever since we came back to Green Grove!"

"My son died!" he flared angrily, "Sorry if I'm not getting over that fast enough for you!"

Lacey snapped to attention with a wounded gasp. "That's not what I said," she bit out in a furious hiss, "Don't put words in my mouth!"

"Then stop riding my back!" he muttered in irritation, "God, you're worse than Jo!"

"What about her?" Lacey asked, suddenly bristling with suspicion, "Have you been talking to her or something? Have you seen her?"

"God, not this again!"

"Yes, this again," Lacey snapped, "Have you been in contact with her or not?"

"Yeah, actually, I have!"

Danny flinched at her hurt expression, his features flickering with guilt. He felt awful having caused her pain but, at the same time, he resented her because it seemed to him that he had been placed in an untenable situation. It was as if Lacey believed that his showing kindness to Jo meant that he was choosing Jo over her and that wasn't remotely the case. Unfortunately, he couldn't simply cut Jo out of his life, not after all that had happened, no matter how much Lacey might expect it. And because he knew that and he knew the disappointment that knowledge would cause Lacey, Danny became defensive because it was easier to be angry at her than it was to concede her fears.

Lacey slipped from the sofa then, her slender frame tense with rage and fear. "I thought we talked about this, Danny," she uttered with surprising calm, "We agreed that you shouldn't trust Jo because you don't know what her motives are. We agreed you wouldn't make yourself vulnerable to her."

He whispered her name in a soft, expulsion of breath, not speaking again until she met his eyes. "Jo and I lost a baby together."

"It's not the first time," she pointed out stonily.

Danny looked away, his expression distant and cold. "This isn't like back then."

"How do you know?" Lacey challenged, "You never had a paternity test! You don't have one shred of proof that baby was yours! For all you know, Jo could be lying to you about everything!"

"Does that even matter anymore?"

Lacey was surprised that her head didn't pop off and orbit the living room with that question. "What do you mean?" she cried incredulously, "Of course it matters!"

"Why does it?" Danny challenged maddeningly, "The baby is dead, Lacey. We've had his funeral and he's been buried. And do you know what name is on his headstone? Daniel Aran Desai II. Does his paternity really matter at this point? Why can't we leave it alone?"

"Because Jo is still using that baby to manipulate you!" Lacey retorted angrily, "That's why we can't leave it alone! You're playing right into her hands, Danny!"

His expression became shuttered with denial. "No. I think you're wrong. I think you're accusing Jo based purely on your experiences with her in the past and that's not fair to her! What Ankhesenamun did back then was indefensible but, Lacey, that happened over three thousand years ago. You can't keep punishing Jo for the past."

"I'm not doing that!" Lacey denied hotly, "And I'm not punishing her! Everything I feel about her is based on what I know now, what I learned in this life! Jo didn't even know me two minutes before she was trying to manipulate me and warn me away from you! It's the same m.o. she used back then! She hasn't changed at all!"

"And what the hell do you think she has to gain, huh?" Danny snapped in exasperation, "You can't say that she's after my money. She moved out of the house right after Danny's funeral! She hasn't made a single pass at me either, so you can't accuse her of trying to get into my bed. So what is it then?"

"Are you really this blind?" Lacey seethed.

"Lace, come on. Be reasonable about this," he replied in a persuasive tone, his anger subdued for the moment, "Back then, I was a pharaoh with an entire kingdom at stake! Back then, she was acting to protect our bloodline and our family's dynasty! What motive do you think she could possibly have for lying to me now?"

"Danny, don't you see? All of that stuff about dynasties and bloodlines was a convenient excuse for her, even back then," she uttered in conviction, "This has always been about your affection and your attention. Ankhesenamun didn't want to share you then and she doesn't want to share you now."

"It's not a contest, Lacey!"

"Well, it sure as hell feels like it!"

"I love you. That's always been true and it will always be true!"

"But you trust her," she pointed out sadly, "She still has your loyalty and that's what scares me the most because she's dangerous, Danny. She's as dangerous as she's ever been."

"She just lost a baby. She's not thinking about hurting me or you."

"You see, that's where you're wrong," Lacey scoffed sadly, "Ankhesenamun was at her most deadly after her last miscarriage. She tried to kill me twice and she succeeded the second time. If you think that I'm ever going to forget that then you're out of your mind!"

"It was a different life, a different time and with different circumstances."

"Not so different with both her and Ka hanging around here, now is it?"

"Ka?" Danny's brow scrunched in confusion. "What the hell does he have to do with this?"

"Haven't you figured it out yet, Khaten?" she grated impatiently, "Archie is Ka!"

Lacey regretted the words almost the instant they left her lips, long before she glimpsed Danny's stricken expression. She hadn't meant to blurt the truth out to him that way, hadn't meant to burden him with it at all but now that the words had been spoken out loud there was no taking them back. Lacey swallowed thickly, her entire body trembling with expended adrenaline as she waited for Danny to respond.

"Wha...why would you say that?" he asked in a hoarse whisper when he found his voice.

"Because it's true," she replied quietly, "Don't tell me you can't feel it too."

"No," he mumbled, shaking his head, "You're wrong. You have to be wrong."

"I had a hard time believing it at first too," she admitted, "But the way he talks about Jo, the loyalty he has for her..." She trailed off into silence as she tried to formulate her thoughts, voice them in a way that Danny could comprehend. "I know that I didn't know him as well as you did or even at all. But I do remember how Ka and Ankhesenamun held each other when he was dying on the throne room floor. The way he looked at her was the way Archie looked when he was talking about Jo."

Danny averted his eyes with a rough swallow, as something occurred to him, something that had been niggling at him for weeks now, something he had steadfastly ignored until that very moment. "When we were in the treatment room with Jo after the delivery," he recounted in a wooden tone, "He and I had a fight about him hanging around so much. I told him that he was insinuating himself into a situation where he didn't belong. I remember having this familiar sense at the time, this weird moment...like we'd had that same argument before, only in another lifetime."

Overwhelmed, Lacey sank back down beside him on the sofa. "So you have felt it too?"

He jerked a nod. "Yeah, I've felt it. With him. With my father." He looked at her with glassy eyes. "With Tara."

"Tara?"

"What if I told you that sometimes I think my aunt Tara might be the high priest Amun?"

Lacey shrank back from his words, cringing at the very thought. "No. No way..."

"It's not a certainty but sometimes I can't shake the feeling." His eyes took a far off look as he continued, "I murdered him just hours before he could execute a coup against me. He resented me, felt that I had stolen Egypt from him even though Egypt was rightfully mine...just the way Tara feels like I stole Desai Corp. from her." He shivered with the implications.

But then, just as soon as he had voiced the hypothesis aloud, Danny quickly began scrambling to explain it away. "But who knows? Maybe I'm only seeing what I want to see. With everything that's been happening with her lately, maybe I'm just being paranoid."

"What if you're not?" Lacey considered shakily, "What if you're right?"

"I don't want to be right," he mumbled.

"But what if?"

"That would mean that the gods have brought that murderous traitor back into my life and I can only imagine that it's for one reason, because they mean for me to die," he uttered, "...all over again."

"No, Danny..." Lacey protested again, "That can't be the reason."

"What other explanation is there? Why else would we be living this nightmare again?" he cried, "Only this time it's a slightly different version."

"I don't know."

Danny tipped his head back and closed his eyes, causing tears to leak from the corners of his lashes. "I don't want to believe this is my destiny again. I can't believe it!"

"You need to talk to Jo," Lacey urged him fervently, "You need to find out the truth."

His eyes snapped open at that, wild with denial. "No. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to accuse her of being a liar based on things that happened in the past!"

"Then don't accuse her of that! But, at least, confront her about the baby! You deserve that much!"

He set his jaw firmly. "I'm not going to do that either."

Lacey checked the impulse to throttle him on the spot. "Danny, you can't do this! You can't just bury your head in the sand!" she cried, "Neither of us can afford to be in denial here! What if Jo has known all along who you were? What if everyone has known? What if this is all a set up to destroy you?"

"No! Just drop it!" he said, his countenance suddenly remote and hostile, "I don't want to talk about it anymore!"

She gaped at him as if he'd just sprouted a horn in the middle of his forehead. "You've got to be kidding me!"

"What do you want me to do, Lacey? Just accept that Jo and Archie are out to destroy my life? That I have no control over anything that happens to me?"

"I'd be happy if you'd even consider the possibility that you're being threatened!"

"Maybe I just don't see things the way you do!"

"Or maybe you just like being blind!"

"Oh, screw you, Lacey! You have no idea what's between Jo, Archie and me or the kind of history we share so would you just stop meddling and mind your own business!"

That outburst did what nothing else had succeeded in doing, it rendered Lacey speechless. It wasn't the first time he had lashed out at her recently but, for some reason, this particular time hurt worse than all the others...maybe because she knew he was making a conscious choice to live in denial. Without another word, she scooted to the opposite end of the sofa and drew her knees up to her chest, fighting back tears. Danny regarded her with a mournful, sideways glance.

"I'm sorry," he said gruffly after a few moments, "I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. I didn't mean it."

"Maybe you should just go," she replied in a tight voice, "You were right. You are lousy company." A little stung by her rejection, Danny inched his way closer to her. But when he tried to touch her, she flinched away from his hand with an angry glower. "I said go!"

"Lacey, please," he pleaded with her hoarsely. He rested his forehead against her stiffened shoulder when she didn't respond. "Please don't give up on me too. You're all I have. You're everything. I can't lose you." He blinked at her with large, beseeching eyes. "Don't be mad at me. Please."

Despite her resolve, Lacey felt tears of remorse slip down her cheeks. "Don't you get that I'm only trying to protect you?" she whispered, "I don't want us to lose each other again either."

He kissed her shoulder apologetically, nuzzling there. "I know that..." he mumbled into her skin. He tugged her into his lap, cradling her close against him to place nibbling bites to the tops of her breasts. "I know that you mean well. I'm just...I'm not ready to deal with it. Give me some time. I don't want to think about anything else right now except being here with you."

Compelled by the sweetness of his words and his touch, Lacey drew him into her body and allowed him to soothe her resentment and hurt with tender kisses. She let herself be seduced by his warmth and his love and her own desperate need to be close to him. And, in the end, she let him gather her closer and undress her and touch and kiss her in all the intimate places that he knew best. She held onto him tightly as he thrust himself inside of her again and again, burying her face in his damp shoulder as he gasped out broken "I love you's" against her ear. And after they rode the crest of their tandem orgasm together, she cradled his limp body against her own and gently stroked his tangled hair as he dozed lightly, all the while overcome with the portentous certainty that her world was about to fall apart.