Stefan Darius Mikkosovitch Cassadine could not have gotten through his less-than-nurturing childhood in Greece without the acute ability to remain stoic, but Sam could tell it was a mask.

"I don't know why Molly acted that way just now," she admitted, having just come back from putting a sleeping Danny down in the spare playpen Alexis kept. It just didn't seem right to go back to the penthouse when she may be of some help figuring out what was going on with her normally level headed and respectful little sister. "Not that I'm condoning it, but she's not usually like that." So saying, Sam perched on the sofa arm, which caused Stefan's eyebrows to rise alarmingly.

"She's been going through a really hard time lately," Kristina added.

"I know more about teenage angst than you would believe, having raised Nikolas. There must something in the air here in Port Charles that makes young ones defiant of their elders, but that anger was aimed directly at me, a man whom she has never met."

"I'm sure it will be fine," said Kristina, ending the subject that was quickly becoming uncomfortable. "So, um…how are Nikolas and Spencer?"

Stefan made a face that clearly said he was not yet reconciled to the fact that his nephew had named the Cassadine heir after his bitter enemy. "Well, as I am sure you aware Nikolas and I have mended our acquaintance. Alexei—as his proper name is in my presence, and should have been all along—is well. He enjoys Greece immensely, and has become quite the little equestrian."

0o0o0o

While this was going on downstairs, Alexis stood knocking at Molly's bedroom door. "All right, that's it, young lady, I'm coming in." When Alexis opened the door, she found her daughter curled up in a defensive position, with her knees pulled toward her chest, and her chin resting in her lap. "Okay, Molly, care to tell me what went on down there?"

"Not really?" Molly whispered.

Alexis sighed, and came over to sit on the bed. "You're going to make me work here, aren't you? Did Stefan say anything to you? Did TJ say something to you?"

"No."

"Well, in that case, I'm not following."

"It's kind of a long story, and you may not like it."

"I've got time." Alexis promised. "And as your mother, I may not always like what you, Krissy, and Sam have to tell me, that's a given. Tell me anyway."

"One day this summer, when I was in the library at Wyndemere—"

Alexis held up her hand. "Hold on just a minute, you went to Wyndemere this summer?"

Molly nodded.

"You ditched your phone—my only means of communication with you—and took the launch to Spoon Island, alone, and without my permission?"

"Well, yeah, but I needed to be by myself a while, because I was mourning the baby we thought was Danny."

"Wyndemere is the last place you go when you want to be alone, Molly. Terrible things have happened there, criminals have hidden out…people have been murdered."

"You're talking about Emily Quartermaine, right?"

"In your lifetime, yes."

Molly shivered slightly. "Anyway, I found this journal. It was leather bound and fancy, but Mom it had some of the most awful entries."

"It probably belonged to Stavros, may he rot in Hell. This is exactly what I was talking about, darling. This is exactly why you have to be careful in that creepy, damned place. In fact, don't go out there without me again. Do you understand?"

"Mom…"

"I asked you a question, Molly!"

"Yes, I understand, but I'm not done, Mom."

"Oh God, what else? What now?"

"The journal didn't belong to Stavros, Mom, it was Stefan's."

Alexis's felt horrible. She had a pretty good idea where this was going, and her heart was breaking at the very idea that Molly had found out.

"And the awful things he said…they were all about you, Mom. How you betrayed him…how you were dead to him…he laughed at a so-called 'breakdown' that you apparently had when you came and told him you were his sister, and he wouldn't believe you. He even accused you of forging legal documents. Like you would ever do that!"

"Actually honey, I kind of did do that once upon a time. Look Moll, there are a lot of things about Stefan and I…and the whole Cassadine family dynamic, that you don't understand, and frankly I'd like to keep it that way for now."

"Well, fine," Molly huffed. "If you're going to start defending him, I'm going to bed."

It was getting late; Alexis knew she wouldn't get anywhere that night, so sighing in resignation he kissed her daughter on the top of the head, and stood up. "I hurt Stefan too," she whispered, before exiting. "As much as he hurt me, if not more. Just don't be too hard on him…for me."

0o0o0o

"How's Molly?" Sam inquired.

"She's fine for now. She's in her room, so you don't have to stay if you don't want, although I did appreciate the possible backup."

"No problem. I was a teenager too, not that long ago."

"This is a little more serious than teenage angst. I would say you have a lot of explaining to do, Stefan, but as far Molly is concerned your sixteen-year-old journal did that for you."

"What are you talking about?" Kristina asked drowsily, groaning slightly as her legs were gently removed from Sam's lap, where she had grown quite comfortable.

"That should stay between your uncle and your sister," Alexis replied, as she watched Sam gather Danny's things, and her own purse and coat. There was really no reason to spread any more ill will within the family. "Here Sam, let me help you get to the car. I have a lot of experience moving babies without waking them. Hello, precious, come here."

Stefan examined the infant in his sister's arms. "He's a fine-looking boy, but…forgive me, he doesn't have any of your features."

Sam smiled. "He definitely takes after his Morgan side."

"Morgan. Do you mean to tell me that the child was sired by Jason Morgan, Alexis?"

The smile vanished, as Sam quickly became defensive. "As a matter of fact, yes. Do you have some sort of problem with that?"

"Sam, relax." Alexis commanded, perhaps with added force due to her whisper. "Let me handle this. The child—whose name is Daniel, by the way—happens to be my grandson, Stefan, and as such I won't have you saying anything against his father, no matter how much you hated each other."

Stefan watched helplessly as Alexis followed Sam and the diaper bag out of the house. It seemed he was alienating himself with the utmost proficiency, and that had to be rectified, starting with his youngest niece.

0o0o0o

Molly was sitting in bed reading, when she heard a knock on the door her mother had kept open.

"May I come in?"

The teen accessed her uncle from out of the corner of her eye. "What will you do if I say 'no'? I don't call myself Cassadine in the first place, and I don't have a medallion so it's not like you can rip it off my neck and kick me out of the family!"

Stefan didn't flinch. "You have an admirable spirit, Molly, and I mean no patronization. If you felt the need to avenge your mother by banishing me from your room, or from the house it would only, as the American expression goes, serve me right."

"No arguments there."

"I dare to hope if you do send me away, that you will one day allow me to perhaps mitigate those of my actions that cannot be excused. Until then pleasant dreams, my little one." Stefan turned away, and made for the stairs.

"Wait," Molly called. Unlike either of her uncles, she could not keep the cold and vengeful act up for long. "You can stay, if you want."

"I will, thank you." Stefan took a seat in an overstuffed chair across from his niece's bed. For some time, each studied the other in their mutual quiet way, but after a while Stefan cleared his throat.

"Ordinarily, Nikolas frowns upon the telling of this story, but I'm sure when I inform him of the purpose to which it was put, he will find it in his heart to pardon me. Will you hear it?"

Molly shrugged. "Sure."

*"When Nikolas was six years old Helena brought a tutor to Cassadine Island for him: a young woman by the name of Dimitria. Now Dimitria was a vivacious and lively girl, bright, charming, simply a born teacher."

Molly was trying her best to look disinterested, but a sudden sound startled her into looking up. Stefan was laughing. His laugh was soft, almost as if he'd forgotten how to do it, or at least didn't do it very often, but it was nice.

"Well, Nikolas would have none of it. He was so rude to her. He disobeyed her from the very start…played horrible pranks, and made all kinds of mischief."

This was enough to draw a response from the girl. "Nikolas? You've got to be joking!"

"You think so?" Another laugh. "Oh, if you only knew what a little devil your cousin could be when he was small, so much so that I expected the woman to quit. I couldn't understand why she didn't, but you see he was testing her. He was testing her loyalty, her spirit, her staying power."

"Who won?" Molly whispered.

"She did. When Nikolas was quite sure that nothing he did would be able to drive her away, he gradually began to trust in, and learn from her, and he blossomed for it. I do believe she came to genuinely love him, and I know that he loved her. But—"

"There's a but?" Molly groaned.

Stefan nodded sadly. "But Helena soon became jealous of the bond that had formed between governess and pupil. One night, Dimitria was summoned to Helena's suite, and told—quite without warning—that her services were no longer required. She was sent under guard to pack her belongings."

"Was she at least given a chance to…you know, to say goodbye to Nikolas?"

"She was gone before morning. When Nikolas woke, they told him that she had run off with a local fellow from the nearby village during the night, and hadn't cared to so much as leave a note."

"That's…that's horrible!"

"Yes. As you can imagine, he was devastated, and very much confused, but most of all, he felt abandoned for a second time, by a woman whom I'm quite certain he considered his mother figure of sorts. Alexis loved him dearly of course, but he never saw her…she left Greece to attend Maine's Briarton Griggs Academy years before his birth, and never returned. I saw Nikolas cry one—bitterly, but then no more. He told those who asked that she displeased him, and he had her sent away. He ordered the servants to remove anything around him that reminded him of her. All the trinkets she had given him—beautiful things—were hastily banished, those around him were sternly rebuked if they even dared to mention the woman. After a while she was never spoken of at all. In effect she was as good as dead. The shell that he developed afterward was very strong, and not easily penetrated. Dimitria, he thought, had ceased to care for him, and so he ceased to care for anyone, but a chosen and very select few. His thoughts were mistaken, of course, as I learned on a business trip to Athens years later, where I ran into Dimitria at a restaurant. She was married by this time, with a young child of her own, yet she asked after Nikolas with the same obvious devotion she had always felt toward him. * Do you know why I've told you this?"

"I have an idea."

"Betrayal, Molly, however false, is most felt deeply and bitterly, when committed by those one loves most deeply. I, like Nikolas, disowned and banished your mother, as a way to deaden the dreadful pain and hurt I felt at her actions regarding Katherine Bell, which as I say does not abate my own actions by any means. My love for Alexis was buried, but still there, still strong. My love for my family—Nikolas and Alexis—is the same now, stronger in fact, because it is expanded. I now feel love for Alexei—that is to say Spencer" He spat out the name with distaste, "as well as for you and your sisters."

"Don't forget Danny."

"And Daniel. For as much as we've all hurt and betrayed one another, Nikolas and Alexis taught me what it means to love, and for that I cannot repay them. May I give you a kiss goodnight?"

Molly considered this. It would have seemed an insignificant gesture between uncle and niece, if the journal entry in question hadn't begun with an unsettling passage about "kissing his betrayer before he banished her".

"Not today, not yet."

"Fair enough, darling. Just know that I love you very much." With that, Stefan left the room, feeling as though he had said his piece. As he descended the stairs, he could just make out a whispered declaration.

"I love you too, Uncle Stefan."

Starred text taken almost in its entirety from Return of the Cassadines part 82, a YouTube video, and is the property of GH and ABC. Please review.