"Sonny!" Jason called again, having drawn his own gun, as had all the other hoods.
"It's alright," Corinthos yelled back. "It's okay. I got it under control." He slid open the central drawer of his desk and drew out his gun, aiming it at Duke. He felt a smug satisfaction that, by walking into his office armed, Lavery had proven his suspicions correct-and given him justification to kill the man without compunction.
"Your 'friend' Mr. Corinthos and I were just discussing the fact that he sold drugs to your mother," Duke said bitterly to Robin.
Out in the warehouse, Michael urged Jason, "We have to get in there and help Dad."
"The door's locked," Jason pointed out.
"Well, shoot it open! Shoot the lock! Shoot open the door! That guy had a gun. He could kill Dad."
"Do I look like I have x-ray vision? I might hit Sonny." Or Robin, Jason thought silently, his hair standing even more on end than usual thanks to her terrified shriek. "He said it's alright," he repeated. "Everybody, just cool it."
Looking at Sonny holding his weapon on Duke, Robin tremulously pointed the Walther toward her frenemy, half disbelieving she was doing it. She was a doctor...a mother...Sonny's longtime loyal friend, she thought. But she also realized-finally and too late-that none of that would make Sonny think twice about killing her stepfather and poisoning her mother.
"C'mon, Robin. You're not gonna do this," Sonny said. "You know that."
"Stop it, Sonny!" she snapped. "You sold drugs...to my mother."
"It was business. Supply and demand, Robin. Hey, it's the American way, right?"
"To...my...mother," Robin repeated, cocking her head at him. "Would you sell them to my daughter?"
"Robin, look..."
"Would you?! You're holding a gun on my father, and you sold drugs to my mother. Would you sell drugs to Emma? To my little girl? Everyone you sell to-everyone you kill-is somebody's child, Sonny. How can you be a father, to Michael...and Morgan...and Kristina...and Dante...to any of them, doing what you do?"
"Robin, don't," Duke said quietly.
"Listen to him, sweetheart," Sonny cajoled. "You give me the gun, and no one gets hurt. We can all work this out."
"You put it down first, Sonny," Robin said tearfully.
"I'm sorry," Sonny shook his head, "but that ain't gonna happen, sweetie."
"Please don't call me 'sweetie,' " Robin said. "And I'm sorry too."
A gunshot rang out. And then another.
When they heard the gunshots, Jason, Michael, and Max had already overturned a 50-gallon drum of coffee beans and were preparing to roll it across the warehouse floor and use it as a battering ram to break into the office. The tactic proved unnecessary when the door was flung open from the inside.
"Jason!" Robin yelled. "Call 911! Get two ambulances, and the police."
The three men ran for the open doorway, Michael yelling, "No cops!" His objection turned to a panicked, "Dad!" when they saw the scene of carnage inside the office.
Duke and Sonny were both crumpled on the floor, bloodied, their bodies not far from each other. Sonny's hand was still curled around his weapon. The Walther was on the floor across the room. Robin knelt over Duke, pressing his wadded-up suit jacket against his chest. It was dark with blood.
"I need two ambulances and the cops at the Corinthos Coffee warehouse on the waterfront," Jason said into his phone in a quiet monotone. "Hurry." Max and the other remaining mobsters slipped quietly out of the room and out of the warehouse. They were not about to wait around for the cops to show up.
"Dad!" Michael yelled again, kneeling next to Sonny. "Help him!" he screamed at Robin.
"Jason, come help me put pressure here," Robin ordered. Jason did as he was told. "Hold it like this," she instructed. "Press as hard as you can." Then she moved over next to Michael, over Sonny.
As Robin attended to Sonny, Duke's eyes fluttered open, and he looked at the man bending over him. "Jason," he whispered.
"Don't talk," Jason said, his voice hard. "I've got nothing to say to you."
Duke continued. "My gun..." His eyes shifted momentarily to the Walther across the room, and Jason looked along with him. "Robin...told me...you loved her...once... If that's true..., you know...what to do, man... Before her father...and the cops...get here." They could already hear the wail of sirens growing louder.
Jason left Duke's side, picked up the Walther, and rubbed it with his black Lycra T-shirt to erase the fingerprints. He left his own in their place.
"What are you doing?!" Michael yelled angrily at him. And then at Robin, "Help him! Help my dad!"
The paramedics were rushing into the room with gurneys.
"I'm sorry," Robin said with tears in her eyes. "It's too late."
"You bitch!" Michael roared, tackling Robin and throwing her to the floor with his hands around her throat.
"Michael!" Jason yelled, jumping onto the boy. "Get off her!" He pulled Michael off Robin and then out of the office, into the warehouse, looking regretfully back at Sonny's broken body.
"Are you alright, Dr. Scorpio?" asked one of the EMTs.
"I'm fine," Robin coughed. "Help him. Help Duke."
"What the hell are you doing?" Michael asked Jason angrily. "They killed him! They killed Dad!"
"There's nothing we can do about that now," Jason said pragmatically.
"We could kill them!" Michael insisted, heedless of the cops beginning to teem into the warehouse. "We could hand them over to these pigs. Why did you even call them? What the hell's wrong with you?"
"When you were a baby," Jason said quietly, "and your mom was sick and couldn't take care of you, Robin helped me do it. For a little while, she was the closest thing you had to a mom. And one of the reasons she and I split up was because we didn't agree on what was best for you. We didn't agree, but Robin did want to do what she believed was best for you. And now I have to do what's best for her. Even if you don't agree with it. That's just the way it's gotta be."
"You're a traitor," Michael said. His voice was hard, but his eyes were heartbroken.
As two uniformed officers dropped Sonny's gun and Duke's-bearing Jason's fingerprints-into evidence bags, another two closed handcuffs around Jason's wrists and led him away.
"Morgan's story...," Dante Falconeri said to Robert Scorpio, "...it doesn't add up."
"Michael Corinthos says that Jason wasn't even in the room with them," Lucky Spencer agreed. "He claims Jason was locked out of the office, out in the warehouse, with him."
"Kid's a liar," Robert sneered. "Just like his father. 'Cause the only other person who was in that office...was my daughter."
