Chapter Three

Thompson's face was truly impassive and he knew it. He'd just spent the last half an hour going over various forms of surveillance and everything said the same thing. Michael wasn't going to like it. The guy had nearly had a heart attack when his wife had to be admitted because she was still in a catatonic state of shock. This was a man who was hard to shake. Wil had seen him face down his own men as the enemy and not flinch. Wil had seen him take a beating on purpose and never beg mercy. To him Michael was tougher than nails. Michael was the solid anvil on which the nails were hammered into existence out of a hunk of hot metal. But when wifey-poo got pale the man was mush. We're talkin' Oliver-please-sir-may-I-have-some-more gruel here.

He shook his head as he pulled aside the curtain and hooked a finger at Michael "Sonny" Corinthos Jr. He paced back towards the other bed in the multiple patient room and drew the curtain around it.

"Who was it? How did they get in?" A barrage of questions and the answer to them nothing Corinthos wanted to hear.

"You're not gonna like it." Thompson wasn't going to like his reaction either/

"I already know that," e said with a hand proffered.

Taking a deep breath he embarked on telling the edgy and hostile man exactly whom he feared was to blame for the state of Mrs. Corinthos.

"How's she doing?" He nudged his head towards Carly's curtain to stall.

"They sedated her. She's sleeping. They said it's just shock. She needs time to adjust to the mental and not physical trauma she endured. Whatever. Spit it out. Was it Connie?"

"Andovartè Constantine has been no where near the building today."

"You know as well as I do that Constantine doesn't need to be there, he has people there twenty-four hours a day." Sonny was waving his hands around widely. And glaring at whatever happened upon his line of sight.

"That's true. No one, I mean no one touched or spoke to your wife, that surveillance could tell, from the moment she left the interrogation room to when you found her in stairwell E." Thompson didn't want to think of how that would settle in his skin.

Sonny just plain old didn't get it. "So, then ...what?"

"Think about it Michael. Christ man, she's had two to three large emotional shocks today. One of them being minutes before she just walked out of the room. The shock of having her husband tell her that he wasn't just you're average, run of the mill mobster but a undercover federal agent." Wil was exasperated but his face was still stone, his tone was not.

Sonny sighed and rubbed his eyes. That was a problem. "I kinda didn't get to that part."

"What? What part?" Micheal shifted uncomfortably and Wil did too. Both were now anxious and edgy.

"I didn't get a chance to tell her I was an undercover agent." He glared at Wil.

"Well, Special Agent Corinthos, what the hell did happen in that room? I left you plenty of time to give those chicks the run down of the facts before I came and got you to go after Connie's man." He placed a hand on his hip and bellowed as discreetly as possible.

"I was too busy trying to keep the peace to—"

"Get a word in edgewise? One word, three max. I'm a Fed. I'm sure they would have stopped bickering for that." Wil paced. This was getting brainless. He was a highly trained man with lots of power and he couldn't even get this man, his best friend aside from his wife, to follow orders.

"They wouldn't have heard me and I thought you'd be listening for your cue." Sonny as well began to feel a loss of control with the escalating guilt.

" i I /i was trying to make sure we didn't lose the man who was enlisting i Sonny's Angels /i in the white slave trade to pay any heed to your little family drama. If things weren't said, why did you leave with me?" Wil itched his left butt cheek. And itched to punch a wall. He hated lose ends.

"It's not a 'little family drama' it's my life."

"Wrong, agent, it's your job." Two beats fell flat and heavy on Sonny and pulsed by Wil's veins. "Did you forget that? Sonny Corinthos was a front. A cover. A very deep, very long cover, the likes of which even Donnie Brasco wouldn't have had the balls or the brains or the stupidity to pull off. Your little woman in there, that you married while using your own identity as a front to glean information and position from the mafia, is in that state of shock because you didn't break the news to her very nicely. I repeat, agent Corinthos, why did you just leave it hanging?"

Sonny, taking the verbal dressing down he felt he deserved from his superior, huffed and thought of what his gut reaction had been to Carly's snapping the credentials from his hand and reading off the fake agent's name. "She thinks, she thinks and thinks until all the details are used up and every possible, fantastic scenario has run through her brain like an old flickering movie seven to ten times. I figured she'd hit on the truth eventually and that way, when we got back I could confirm or deny certain suspensions and not have to really tell her I'd been lying our entire marriage...longer."

Thompson watched his glazed over eyes stare at the uniform, hospital tiles as he spoke. Obviously ashamed of his own gut reaction Thompson voiced his worst thought. "So you took the coward's way?"

"Yes, sir." Michael started to straighten.

"You said nothing and let the woman think herself into this condition?"

"Yes, sir."

Both of them faced off like military men one in a suit made from Italian silk, the other in one his wife bought off the rack—guessing at the proper size—from a local discount store. "I wish to hell the other one had taken it half so good as wifey-poo in there." He jerked his head towards Carly's curtain again.

Sonny's eyes and lips twitched in a tight but meant smile. "How's Brenda?"

"Well, I'm going to have my room repainted and the furniture replaced but other than that.... She oughta be sedated." He rubbed his forehead and thought of the headache she'd given him before he got off his floor and up to help his team secure Carly and Sonny's exit from the stairwell. And of the headache that was doubtlessly waiting for him when he returned.

"I have to make sure Carly's all right and then I'll come and straighten out Brenda." Both men were looking over the other's shoulder. For separate reasons ashamed of the way the day had gone.

"That's a good plan," said a rough alto dryly with a shuffle of feet and a rustle of hospital cloth. "But then again how the hell would I know what a good plan looks like."