Chapter Five

"You... you what?" Sonny's heart had stopped. Couldn't do what? Couldn't love him? She had to love him. She was the only one who had ever come close.

"I can't. I just don't know how. I think," she laughed ironically, stunned she could think at all, "I think I just need some space, some time to process all this. It's a lot to take in. I mean..." She floundered at the thought as she had since the reality had begun to seep into her skin. "I'm not ready for this."

Her eyes were like colored glass, as vacant as he had seen them—save the stairwell. She shivered at the thought. Afraid she might relapse he began to tug at the bedclothes. "Um, ok. So..." he sighed, "you just want to, um, go home. I don't know that we'll be allowed to go right back to the penthouse. I think, ah, I think we'll have to stay here a day or two to settle things. Make sure it's safe."

Sonny was floundering as badly as Carly but because he felt his compass, the one true weight he'd measured against for so long being tugged from his grasp. Tetherless and lost as to what the turn of events could mean they fiddled and futzed avoiding contact.

Carly smirked. Safety. Sonny and safety. No wonder. "You'll make it safe. Then I want to see the kids."

Quick to appease and please, Sonny said, "I'll get a secure line set up and then we'll call. They'll be happy to hear from their mama. They miss you." Sonny caressed her face and Carly's brow furrowed. The ripples hurt him. He moved away.

"What?" Wil was ready to chew metal. If what he was hearing was true he'd have plenty of scrap metal á la Brenda Barrette to gnaw on. "Right, we're on our way."

Wil hated to do it, but he had to. Poor Michael's wife. He'd have to start thinking of her in terms of Carly now he guessed. Poor Carly, that was better, she was having her husband—who'd just come out of a major closet—ripped from her grasp for the second time today. At least he hoped his agent had come clean with the lady.

He understood what it was to keep such lies from you wife. He lied to his own on frequent occasion. There was little he could tell her about his professional world and even less that he wanted her to understand. The office high-jinx was as far as he'd let her get. So-and-so had the date from hell, What's-his-name was caught bad mouthing his director at the watering fountain by said director...the little, inconsequential shit. Stuff he could give and not hurt her with.

He'd broken the barrier between work and office frivolity only a few times. All for the same purpose.

He remembered standing in their closet. They'd been married only a few years but the life that existed for them stretched like mountains before and behind them. Craggy, but beautiful and worth climbing to the tallest summit just for the view. Their marriage had been no cakewalk but that made the sweetness of kissing her, knowing when he finally put away his job and crawled in bed she'd be there, her arms supple for him. For him and their children.

He remembered grabbing the small black overnight bag he took on his "business trips." He'd tossed it on the bed and began slamming things into it blindly. Worry, grief, fear blurred his vision with their wetness and heat. His hands trembled with their chill.

She'd come up and wrapped first her hands, then her arms, then her body around him. Shushing him, telling him to stop, to be still. To be still. She'd lulled him into the closest thing to peace he'd felt since the newscaster had reported that reputed mob don, Sonny Corinthos, had been gunned down—purportedly on his rival, Joseph Sorel's, orders—and was in the hospital in critical condition.

He'd had visions of Michael dying. Of his best friend slipping into the darkness beyond his grasp forever. He needed Michael. Michael had been the only one he could really talk to about his job in all the years since Hensley had earmarked him as his successor in the Archangel Operation.

It was the code name Hensley had given Michael's ...life. After Michael the archangel. After Michael the catholic. Hensley had put no one before his country. His wife maybe. In the end the code had been extremely appropriate. Ironic Michael always said, to be named twice after an angel and be who he was.

It was a line Wil had a hard time fighting. How does one man tell another he's the one person he looks up to most in the world? That he is an angel in a way he'd never let himself see?

This archangel could have been dying as he'd stood there, his frightened wife's arms about him. He'd cried there, or come to realize that at some point his face had become wet with tears. His body, racked with the pressure of trying to come back into control, had fought him. His wife had held him. Cooing to him as she would one of their children.

"You don't have to tell me," she'd said. "But this is about your heart Wilie, not work. Your heart belongs to me. You put it in my keeping. I won't let you down. I'll keep it safe and happy."

He'd confessed to her there. Michael could be dead. She hadn't known who Michael was. But had let him babble about how scared and weak he felt at the thought of losing his best friend, the man who had become his equal, his brother. Sons of the same greathearted patriot.

Breaking down in their bedroom had saved him from doing something so rash Michael might have been killed by his associates. He'd almost rushed to the bedside of an alleged racketeer, he, a powerful FBI man, holding the hand of a notorious mobster who was know for his aversion to speaking to Feds.

Now he had to take him from the woman whom, by all accounts, had ordered him to live. What's more the man the doctors had deemed dead...had.

"Hey, Mickey," he poked his head through the curtain, "I have a little problem I'm delegating to you...Sorry Mrs. Mickey... since you so graciously delegated her to me."

Sonny scratched his forehead. Warring with the need to fix things with Carly, the knowledge that she wanted time and space (exactly the opposite of what he had in mind), and whatever trouble Brenda was causing for Wil. "Brenda."

"That cracked-pot doesn't deserve a name." They'd had to lock her into the room. Right now he was wishing they'd restrained her as well. Maybe even dumped her into a psych ward while they were at the hospital for Michael's....Carly. She had a face now, a real voice. She wasn't just a report on his desk. She was a woman whose husband had done something most women can't understand. And if she couldn't than, in Wil's opinion, she didn't deserve her husband.

"Um, right." Carly watched him hesitate to leave her, not moving away from where he sat on the bed, knowing Brenda's crazy had to be quelled.

"Go, it'll give me a chance to call home." To speak to her glorious children.

"Um, Mrs. Mickey," Wilbur's long face serious and stoic, "you'll need to wait until a secure line is put in place. No one can know yet that you are under the Bureau's protection." He turned to Sonny. "You go sedate the hell-cat, I'll see that she gets her call."

Sonny nodded, still reluctant to leave Carly. What if ran through his head in rapid, frightening succession. Horrid futures lay in the path of leaving her alone.