Title: No Matter the Sacrifice
Fandom: General Hospital
Characters: Tracy Quartermaine
Prompt: #4 Late
Word Count: 1,641 words
Rating: PG
Summary: Dillon is late coming home from school.
Author's Notes: c. 1996 Set between the end of The City and TQ's return to GH in 1996. While Dillon should be around five, I'm playing the game of Soap Opera Aging and making him about eight.

4:58 pm, Eastern Standard Time.

Tracy paced the floor of her beautiful kitchen, gleaming and modern and for the most part, ignored by the mistress of the house. She'd sent the cook out with the nanny, along with at least two of her bodyguards, to search the neighborhood.

The rest of her staff she had calling—every friend Dillon had, every haunt he loved, anywhere he might be off to in his innocence.

Tracy, for her part, could only pace now. She'd put her staff in motion, and they knew what to do. She couldn't do what she wanted to do, which was start running to every door in the building, pounding on it, screaming "where is my kid?" to every person who answered her summons. She couldn't call her rivals, her enemies, screaching like a hysterical woman, demanding to know which of the vermin had snatched her son.

What sort of people would steal an eight year old boy to get back at his mother?

Tracy felt her stomach sink. The sort of people she worked with. The sort of people she sought out.

And why? For money? For power? She'd sought this life. She'd known what sort of snake Gino Solieto was when she picked him up. She'd known where his money came from, and she knew what she was doing when she blackmailed her late husband's partners and took the power she craved.

They said she didn't have the stomach for this kind of work.

She'd laughed at them and puffed her cigar defiantly.

They didn't know the stomach she had. They didn't know what she'd been through, and what she was capable of. And for three years, she'd set about showing them just exactly that—what Tracy Quartermaine, unfettered by such minutiae as laws and family, could do.

And it was glorious. She had everything she wanted—money, power, that charming look of fear in people's eyes when she clicked down the streets in her designer Italian shoes.

She had everything except her kid, safely home in her arms.

It was probably nothing, she told herself. Dillon wasn't used to her being home this early. That in itself would have been good for a stab of guilt to the gut, but Tracy's gut was too overworked with fear right now to notice. She trusted in her staff to get him home, safely, when school let out at 2:30, to keep him occupied, to keep him happy until she was able to get home. That's why she paid them.

None of them ever expected her to come home early today, so they didn't have the good sense to be in a panic over Dillon's failure to return.

"He sometimes goes over to a friend's house, and sometimes he forgets to tell me," the nanny, who was so fired, had told her. "Don't worry—Dillon's a resourceful kid. He doesn't need anybody to watch over him."

Tracy looked the clock. 5:10 pm, Eastern Standard Time.

She felt helpless. Tracy hated feeling helpless. She felt guilty, which she hated even more. She fought the images in her head—her beautiful little boy, her miracle baby, scared, captured, tormented by dangerous looking men in cheap suits. She fought the images that played out, scenarios of what these men would do to her son to send just the right message to the Godmother of the Solieto Crime Family.

What would they do to him?

She buried her face in her hands, pressing her fingertips against her eyelids firmly to ease the pain there. Which one had done it? Which one dared?

Who wanted her out so badly that they would take a little boy, terrify him, maybe even more?

Tracy looked at the phone. It was the one line she'd demanded they leave open, in case Dillon…or his kidnappers…tried to call. It was a tempting thing, that telephone. In just a few presses of the number pad, she could have Lila on the phone. She could have that comforting British lilt in her ear, that warmth that never went away, no matter how horribly Tracy behaved.

But what could she tell her? Lila knew nothing of Tracy's current occupation, at least not that she was aware. She couldn't just call her and say, "Mother, I need you. I'm the head of a mafia family in New York, and I think one of my enemies has snatched your grandson."

No, this was one of those things she had to do alone.

Tracy pulled a chair away from the table and sat, resting her elbows on the polished oak surface as she dropped her face in her hands again. She thought of Dillon, so sweet and trusting, a changeling baby if ever such a thing existed.

What kind of a life was she giving him? What would it do to him to grow up in this world? How long would he stay sweet, how long would he stay unspoiled? How on earth she'd managed to make it this long without destroying that boy's personality, Tracy did not know, but she doubted even Dillon's good heart could stand up forever in the face of the dark underworld in which his mother thrived.

He was a changeling. There was no way that boy could be her son, Tracy thought for the millionth time in his short life. They were yin and yang, Tracy and Dillon, his light to her darkness.

She struggled against the tears. She struggled against the pain and the guilt and the impotent rage. Suddenly, the money and the power seemed futile and childish. She wanted her baby back.

She didn't have the stomach for this business.

They had found her Achilles' heel.

They had forced her out.

Because Tracy knew in every fiber of her being that she was out. She would sell her interest to the highest bidder, sell everything she'd ever bought with this foul money, buy two tickets to Europe, and try to forget this nasty affair had ever happened.

The minute Dillon was back in her arms.

The minute her son was safe.

Dear God, let him be safe. Dear God, let him come home.

She didn't pray. She wasn't Lila, or the type of mother Lila was. She was Tracy Quartermaine, and she didn't beg—humans or gods—for anything. But now she was begging, praying for help. She wouldn't ask for absolution, and she wouldn't offer attonement.

There was no forgiveness for what she'd done. All she could hope for was mercy.

"Mom! You're home early!" Dillon ran into the kitchen, all in one piece, still carrying his knapsack from school. He was like an angel to her, a vision of faith, as he rushed to her side and threw his arms around her shoulders. "I thought you had to work."

She couldn't speak, she couldn't scold, she couldn't do anything but hold him, fiercely, against her. He felt so tiny against her, even though he was growing every single day. Even though he'd be tall, like Ned, when he was a man. She fought the tears even more, now that she knew he'd not been taken. There was no need to frighten him. There was no need for him to know what she'd been through.

"You were supposed to come home right after school," she choked out. "Where were you?"

Dillon pulled out of her embrace, a worried look on his face. He thought he'd been busted, and she could see the gears behind his eyes working, deciding between truth and a lie. "I'm sorry," he muttered, his eyes lowering. "There was a movie at the place on Houston—remember, Mama, where we used to watch Godzilla movies?" He smiled up at her hopefully, then continued when she didn't smile in response. "Well, it was showing Gamera: Super Monster and today was the last day and I had enough money and I thought I told Nanny, but I didn't…"

Tracy put up a single hand, shaking her head with a gentle smile. Her sweet, careless, innocent son. "Don't do it again," she whispered.

Dillon nodded frantically, obviously hoping this little escapade wouldn't end in punishment for him.

If he only knew—

She pulled him in for another hug, kissing his temple and brushing his hair out of his eyes. When they pulled apart, she said, "Go change out of your school clothes. Get started on your homework." He nodded and turned to leave. Before he was out of the kitchen, she added, "I was worried."

"I'm sorry, Mom," was all he said before he ran out of the kitchen, knocking into her assistant on the way out.

"Hey, the kid's back!" It was one of those obvious, stupid things that men said, and Tracy loathed him in that moment. "Ya want me to tell the guys to stop looking?"

Tracy nodded. "Fire the Nanny," she added. God, how she missed Zoe in moments like this. Zoe would never have let Dillon slip out of her fingers for a moment. Of course, Zoe probably wouldn't have continued working for her anyway, once she took over the Solieto business.

"Anton," she stopped her assistant before he left. Her stomach was clenched, her skin cold and clammy. She knew what she was about to do was a form of suicide. She knew they'd be merciless, and she'd be lucky to come out of this with the clothes on her back.

But they were right. She didn't have the stomach for this business anymore, and the sooner she got out and away from it, the better.

No matter the sacrifice.

"Call The Partners. Tell them I want to meet them in the morning. 10 o'clock."

"Yes, Mrs. Solieto," he said. "Is that all?"

"Get my accountant on the phone. I have some things I need to take care of."

The End

Written for the 100situations Challenge.