Chapter 3

Late the next afternoon, Nikolas and Gia arrived in London.  There were both exhausted since the only flight they could get out of Port Charles left in the middle of the night.  A short while later, they were sitting in a cab headed for the Kensington Inn.

"Did Luke say why he didn't want you to tell Lucky about this?" Gia asked as the cab sped through the streets of London.

"No, but he was quite insistent that he didn't want Lucky to know anything."

"Maybe he was afraid it would get Lucky into more trouble or that the police were more likely to follow Lucky than you."

"Maybe," Nikolas said, "But there was something about the way Luke said not to tell Lucky that makes me think something is wrong."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, but it looks like we'll find out soon," Nikolas said as the cab pulled up in front of the Kensington Inn.  He paid the driver and they got out.  "I'll see if I can get us a room so we don't have to impose on Luke."

Gia sat down in the lobby of the small hotel.  She looked around.  This didn't seem like the kind of place Luke would choose to stay in.  That made it the perfect place, because it would be the last place that the police would think to look for him.  Gia glanced at Nikolas and saw that there were still two people in line ahead of him.  She sighed and picked up a magazine.  She flipped through it quickly, not really looking at the pages.  Finally Nikolas came over and sat down next to her.

"Were you able to get a room?" she asked.

Nikolas smiled and held up a key.  "Let's drop our stuff in our room and then go meet Luke."

Gia nodded and followed him upstairs.

***

Luke was pacing his room.  Every now and then, he stopped to glance at his watch.  He had thought that Nikolas would have been here by now.  As he paced, he thought of all the terrible things that could have happened to Laura in the past two months.  "Please don't let Helena hurt her," he whispered to himself.  He was so lost in thought that he jumped when someone knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" he asked picking up his gun from the nightstand.

"Nikolas."

Luke stuck the gun in the waistband of his pants and opened the door.  As soon as Nikolas and Gia came inside, he closed and locked the door.

"Luke, what's wrong?" Nikolas asked seeing the worried look on Luke's face.

"Your mother has been kidnapped by Helena," Luke said.

Nikolas and Gia looked at each other and sank down onto the bed in shock.

***

"Helena did this?" Laura asked.  "What did she intend to accomplish by keeping you here so long and replacing you with an imposter?"

"Revenge on Dad," Lucky said.

"But how…"

"She feels that you and Dad turned Stefan and Nikolas against her.  So she wants to get revenge on Dad in the same way, by making him think that everyone in his family has turned against him.  Since she knows that she could never make us turn against him, she is replacing us with look-alikes."

"You mean that she replaced me too?"

Lucky nodded.

"But why did she wait so long to grab me?  I mean, you've been here so long."

"Well this is her third plan.  The first was to have the fake Lucky kill Luke.  When that didn't work, she resurrected her son Stavros and devised Endgame.  That failed too.  So now she's thinks that if she can accomplish her plans to make Dad think that his family doesn't care about him that it will hurt him in the same way that you and Dad hurt her.  Then she plans to let him know that she has us so she can lure him here and…"

Lucky never got to finish because the door slammed open.  Helena walked in accompanied by three men.

Laura glanced at one of the men and knew she had seen him somewhere before.  She just couldn't remember where.  The way the man was staring at her gave her chills.

"Well it looks like my newest guest has finally awoke." Helena said with an evil smile.

"Let us go Helena!" Laura demanded.  She wasn't scared, she was angry.

"Oh I can't do that my dear, you'd miss all the fun."

"Fun?  What fun?" Laura asked.

"The fun I will have luring your beloved Luke here so I can watch him die," Helena told her with a laugh.

"You… you can't kill Luke."

"Of course I can dear.  And to make things even better you and your son here are going to be the bait."

Laura turned pale as she sank back onto the cot.