Zander Smith layed on a small cot thinking about Emily. As soon as Emily had went inside of the gas station he was pulled from the car and stuffed in the trunk of a car before he heard the loud sound of an explosion. He prayed over and over that she was safe and still inside the gas station when the car blew up. Zander had been here for a long time. A man, one of Sorel's men came to beat the crap out of him daily and he had counted how many times he had seen the man 15 times, could it really be that long, 15 days he had been here? He knew they were slowly trying to kill him, he had, God knew, how many broken ribs, his arm hurt when he so much as breathed, his eye was swollen shut and his hand had been burned repeatedly with a lit cigarette. He had a fever most of the time and hadn't bathed the whole time. He had a pot to go to the bathroom in and one cup of water a day, he was in a living hell. He laid on his cot and imagined Emily was there, laying beside him and talking to him, he often talked back even though he knew no one was there. They fed him 'food' if you could call it that, they wee mostly scraps of already eaten food and it disgusted him, he was nothing more than an animal to them. He had been planning his escape for days now, as much as he knew there was only three men in the building they were keeping him in and today was the day, he was going to get out, he had to see Emily, she had to be alive, because if she wasn't he had no reason to live.
Zander painstakingly stood up and hid behind the door waiting to ambush his captors.He hoped to god he would be home, with Emily, soon.

He'd been dead for fifteen days, she looked at her watch, three hours and ten minutes. She grabbed the wedding band around her neck as she looked out of the airplane window. She had located Zander's mother in Chicago and that's where she was going. She had only talked to the woman once, asking her if she had a son named Alexander Smith who had left home and she had said yes. Emily informed the woman that she had something to tell her and jumped on the first flight to Chicago, she watched as the plane descended. She got out of the plane and waited for someone who looked like she could be Zander's Mother, she didn't see anyone. Finally she saw a woman standing next to a limousine asking female passerby's if they were Emily Quartermaine. 'That can't possibly be his mother.' She said to herself a she looked at the blonde haired and blue eyed woman. Emily stopped as she came up to her. "Are you Emily Quartermaine?" she asked anxiously.
"Yes, Ms. Smith?"
"Yes, that's me. Let's get home so we can talk."
Emily sat in silence with the other woman. She had yet to tell her that Zander was…gone and she dreaded it but Zander had wanted her to do this so it was exactly what she was going to do.
They stopped at a large mansion and the driver helped them out of the car. Emily followed Zander's mother into the large house and into the living room. On the mantel she saw a picture of a younger Zander and she burst out crying. Before she knew it she was sitting on the sofa with Ms. Smith's arm around her.
"I'm sorry." Whispered Emily trying to control herself.
She looked in to Ms. Smith's eyes and could see the worry in them.
"Tell me, please, what has happened to Alex?"
'Alex, that doesn't seem to suit him,' thought Emily through a haze of tears. "He…he's…" Emily couldn't find a gentle way to say it. "he was in an accident and he uh he…he didn't make it." Said she softly.
She watched as Ms. Smith buried her head in her hands and started to sob. Emily put he arms around her and they cried together, they had only known each other for an amount of twenty minutes but they had a common bond, a common grief.
After awhile the crying stopped and they wiped their tears. "Are you his wife?"
The question shocked Emily, and then she realized Ms. Smith was looking at the rings.
"No, well I mean, I might have been. I think he was planning to ask me, these are some rings he purchased. I love...loved him very much, Ms. Smith."
"Call me Jackie. How did you two meet. I want to know everything about him." She said wiping at her nose.
Emily hesitantly gave her the whole story making sure his mother believed that Zander had only dealt drugs for money and that he was the most important thing in her life. She described the funeral and the headstone and Jackie thanked her for what she did for him.
"I have some pictures and some stuff of his I want you to have." Said Emily unzipping her backpack. She pulled out an envelope of the pictures from the park that Alexis had taken for them. She then pulled out the watch that Alexis had given him and then his wallet.
Jackie opened the envelope of pictures and put her hand over her mouth as she saw him smiling for the camera. She carefully studied the one's where Emily and Zander were together and kissing. "He looks so happy with you, happier than I'd ever seen him. He looks so handsome and grown-up. Is this your mother?" she asked pointing to a picture with Alexis and Zander.
"No, that's his lawyer, Alexis, she's more like his friend though, she let him stay with her." Jackie looked through the rest of the pictures and sat them on the coffee table.
"I'm so glad you were there for my son, Emily. I hadn't seen him in two years but it means everything to me that he was happy. He was adopted you know?"
"No I didn't know, he never told me. I was adopted too, my birth mother died of cancer awhile back and she left me to a woman she had met during her cancer treatments, that's how I ended up in Port Charles."
"Zander didn't know he was adopted, I never told him, I ruined his life, after he was adopted, when he was a baby, my husband left me with nothing and since then it was a series of bad relationships, Zander tried when he was older to make me see I deserved better and finally he just left. Just last year I found out my parents, who I hadn't spoken to in twenty years had died and left me everything and that's how I got here today, I've hired at least five private detectives to look for him but they came back empty handed." She collapsed into tears again.
"I'm sorry." Said Emily putting her arm around this woman who shared her grief more than anyone. "I'm so sorry."