Chapter 49

When Alexis got up the following morning she was pleased to see that Finn was still asleep on her couch. She didn't know when the last time he had really slept was but it was clear he needed it. When there was a knock at her door she turned to answer it. "Who would be here this early," she said looking back at Finn, knowing he was often the person that showed up this early. She opened the door to see Jax standing there, "Good morning, what are you doing here?"

"Since you blow me off last night I thought I would come by and take you out for breakfast," he said as he walked in.

"I didn't blow you off, I told you there was something else I needed to deal with."

Jax noticed Finn, "And that is still on your couch, I see."

"Jax, don't start, he needed a friend. Come with me." Alexis turned and Jax followed her into the kitchen. She turned to him once the door closed behind them. "He is struggling and I'm worried about him."

"I don't see why it's your problem, Alexis."

"It's my problem because he has kept me from hitting the bottle more times than I'd like to admit. I don't think he has used but I think he's struggling and turning to me to make sure that doesn't happen."

Jax knew about her struggles, "Oh, sorry. I should have realized."

"He is trying to deal with a lot and he has found out some things that he doesn't know how to accept. I get it, he feels like everything is out of control. I'm just trying to make sure he gets through this."

Jax realized he didn't fully understand their relationship and that he shouldn't tease her about Finn. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No, I don't even know how to help him deal with what he needs to." Alexis sighed as she leaned against the counter.

"Alexis, I just don't want to see you get hurt."

"I know." She reached up and touched his shoulder, "Finn's not going to hurt me."

Finn had woken up when he heard voices talking. He had started to follow them but when he heard what Jax was saying he turned and left. Maybe he shouldn't be bothering Alexis with his problems. At least he felt rested this morning and felt he was thinking more clearly today. He would go over to Anna's and talk to her. Alexis is right that he needs more information if he is going to figure out how to move past this.

…

Their flight had gotten in late but at least she had gotten some sleep after they had arrived. Anna stretched then got out of bed, Robert was already in the shower. Anna ran her hands across her face as she started to think about all the things she wanted to ask Alex. Please let her tell them the truth, she thought, then started getting ready for the day.

As they waited for the guards to bring Alex into the visiting room Robert put his arms around her. Anna snuggled in, putting her head against his chest, "We will keep coming back until she tells us what we need." Robert just nodded and stroked her hair.

They turned when the guard came back into the room, "You can go in now."

"Thanks," Robert said then they walked into the other room, the door closing and locking behind them.

"You brought your honey again, isn't that sweet?" Alex said as they sat down across from her. "Was Finn sad when you left him for Robert?" She didn't know why they were here but she felt this was how they would expect her to act.

"Finn's more of a mess because of what you did to him!" Anna told her matter of factly.

"I might have teased him a little but come on Anna, we both know he wasn't right for you. If he was it wouldn't be this fine man sitting beside you."

"Cut the crap, Alex! We want answers," Robert cut in.

Alex sat back and folded her arms in front of her, "What kind of answers?"

"Why would you want me to believe I was Peter's mother? That I had ever let Faison touch me," Anna shivered just saying that.

Alex noticed and knew what caused it. She understood the hatred Anna had for Faison and why. They already know she was involved with the mind mapping, they know she is Peter's mother, so she said, "I couldn't have people knowing I was his mother."

"Why?" Anna asked simply.

"They would have known what I had done."

"Would they have? If you had a baby in your teens why would people have thought it was Faison's?"

"They would have figured it out," Alex insisted.

"So what if they had and who are 'they'?"

"You know who 'they' are, the WSB. Agent AD started as an underage operative that brought them information that they did eventually give some training to and that they used for some smaller missions."

"That doesn't explain why it would matter if they found out you had a child. Teens get pregnant sometimes, they wouldn't have known it happened on assignment. You went through a lot of effort to make sure no one knew about your baby, why did you do that?" Anna asked leaning on the table between them.

"To protect him."

Anna wasn't deterred by Alex's answer, she just tried a different approach. "Did you already know Valentin then? Were you the one he was upset with even then? I know I met him during training but I am starting to believe he already disliked me then. What had you done to him?"

"I would flirt with him, I think he wanted more but I didn't. It was a few years after Peter was born that I used the Anna cover to seduce him and steal information from him."

"Yeah, thanks for that. I love having corrupt men with vendetta holding grudges against me for no reason."

Alex kind of shrugged at that. "I didn't know there really was an Anna then." She sighed as she looked at her sister, "I did like him, I didn't mean to hurt him but I had to finish the assignment."

Robert sat listening to all of this, he was impressed that so far Alex seemed to be telling Anna what she wanted to know. He also felt like she was telling them the truth. Would that continue once she started asking the more important questions he wondered?

"Was it an assignment that led you to Faison that night or is what's in my head the truth?" Anna paused as she watched for Alex's reaction "Did you do it just to get ahead?"

Alex looked at Anna before she answered, there was no point denying what Anna already knows. "I wanted to be a full agent. I was desperate to get away from Charlotte. I thought the WSB was the answer to that."

"You were involved with the WSB before I was then, right?"

Alex nodded slowly, "Yes."

"So the memories in my head are mostly the truth."

"It is the truth, there were just some parts left out," Alex admitted.

Anna looked over at Robert, that was what they had been thinking. She looked back at Alex, "Alright." Anna paused as she wondered what to ask next. "Alex, I know what you did to Finn. How could you do that? To anyone."

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

"Do you really think the WSB wasn't monitoring your visits with Peter?" Robert asked. "We know you had him plant a suggestion in someone close to Anna. Someone you spent a weekend with in the Adirondacks."

Alex's jaw dropped slightly, she should have known they would be listening. What all had they figured out? What have they done to Peter because of this? "What have you done to my son?"

Anna looked at Robert and he shrugged, "What makes you think we've done something to Peter?" she asked.

"Is he alright?"

"Yeah, he's running his paper, going about his life back in Port Charles," Robert told her.

"You have really hurt a very nice man. He has no idea why any of this was done to him. He can't trust anything that he was feeling because of you. He told me it was on that weekend in the Adirondacks that he started to fall in love," Anna pointed at herself then Alex, "With you," pointing back to herself again, "pretending to be me."

"He is such a lovely man, not right for you at all but he is nice."

"Why Alex? Why did you do this?"

"To protect a secret."

"The secret's out! You had Faison's son, you stole a file from him that you handed over but you didn't hand over everything you found that night, did you?"

"We know about the bank account," Robert told her.

"How?" Then she closed her eyes, she and Peter had talked about that too. "I stole over a million dollars from the DVX, they aren't going to like that. I knew I'd be killed once they find that out."

"Are you sure it was meant to go to the DVX, not a payment to someone? Did you ever hear anything about that account after you took the information for it?"

"Charlotte told me that Faison was livid about a missing file, she didn't have to mention a payment, I knew." Alex wanted Anna to understand, "I knew it was what I had taken from him but she had no idea I was hoping to get into the WSB then."

"What were you playing at?" Robert asked. "You were what, fifteen, sixteen? What lead you to the WSB? Were you a plant for Charlotte? Were you working for the DVX as well?"

"I didn't want to do what Charlotte had been preparing me for. I wanted a way out, I needed to get away from her. I thought if I could get into the WSB they would want to know about the things Charlotte had taught me, the things she told me about." Alex put her head in her hands, "I just wanted my own life. I didn't want to be Charlotte's weapon. I wanted to be a doctor. I didn't touch the money right away but I eventually put myself through school."

Alex really wasn't holding anything back now. Anna looked at Robert and let out a small sigh. This was her sister, the woman she had first gotten to know. Robert put his arm around her, Anna leaned against him putting her head on his shoulder. "I think I would have liked this sister-in-law," he said quietly.

Alex looked up at them, there were tears in her eyes. "I never wanted to hurt you, Anna. I never wanted to hurt anyone."

"Help us now, we might be able to help you," Robert told her.

"Why did you do it? When?" Anna asked. "It feels like I have always known about him but I know I didn't. When I was married to Robert I know for a fact I knew I had never slept with Faison." Robert pulled her a little closer for a moment, she knew it was true now and to hear her reaffirm that made him happy.

"I found out that Faison was raising Peter when he was in high school. It was a chance meeting. I gave a talk at his school, after which I talked to some of the students. He told me his name and I just knew that Henrick Faison had to be my son. I asked him a few questions about himself, about his family. I didn't know how Faison had found out about him but I just knew he had to be my son."

Anna reached out and touched Alex's hand. "Why would you want me to think he was my son? I don't understand."

"I kept tabs on him after that," Alex continued. "I would show up where he was going to school, eventually he approached me to find out why. I told him what I believed and that I had never wanted his father to know about him. That I had given him up to protect him from Faison. He was angry at first but I think he came to understand that I had tried to protect him. Over time we did start to build a relationship but we hid that from Faison." Alex dropped her head forward, "I know he was working for his father but he told me he wanted a way to get away from him. I don't know what all he did, what he was involved in. I didn't want to know! I just wanted him to have a better life than becoming just like his father."

Robert handed her a tissue, "Take your time," he said as she took it.

"It was after I met you, Peter was in his mid-twenties and he told me he wanted a way to get away from his father. I hadn't touched the account since I had gotten myself on my feet. I took money out of it to help him but somehow Faison found out that he had gotten money from somewhere. He got very upset, he was threatening Peter but all he would tell him was that the money had shown up in his bank account. It was after that, that Peter told me Faison knew where it came from and that it had to be the stolen money."

"Peter told you this?" Robert asked suspiciously.

"Yes. We weren't in contact for some time then he came to me saying he missed me and hated his father. This was around the same time Dr. Cabot approached me about the mind mapping trial he was running. I agreed, then it was suggested that the memory about Peter should be one of the ones that were used. It was meant to protect him from Faison. I knew you would never have told anyone, well I thought you wouldn't. That memory was supposed to stay hidden, wanted one that we could try to hide from the person that had the memory until it was triggered."

"What do you mean by triggered?" Anna asked.

"If it had worked properly it should have stayed buried in your mind."

Anna thought about that for a moment, "Unless someone told me the details, insisting that I had had a child."

"Yeah, I guess that would have worked. Who would have known thought?"

"The man that followed you, that man that can't tell you and Anna apart because he knows you as Anna."

"Valentin," she concluded. "I told him it was me not Anna."

"That was after he had told me about Peter. That was when it hit me and I couldn't understand how I had forgotten about my child. I had to tell Robert that I had lied to him for years but that wasn't true."

"So was this a cover to protect your son or something else?" Robert asked still not fully understanding her modifies.

"It was just supposed to be an experiment, later it had to be used to protect him. Once I knew you had recalled that memory I thought you would take it to your grave not go looking for your child. I should have known that would have been what you did though."

"I hurt people by telling them I had a son, people that mean the world to me."

"Anna, I just wanted him to be safe from Faison."

"Did you know he was plotting to kill Faison? That he threatened to kill Anna."

She hung her head as she shook it. "I didn't know he would actually want his father dead. I knew he hated him but I swear I didn't know."

"What is he plotting now? I know he is still up to something," Robert said sounding very serious suddenly.

Alex started to cry, there was no holding back her tears now. "Don't hurt him, he is a good man. Underneath it all, he is good."

"But there is a lot of his father in him. Maybe he is a good man but he has done terrible things," Robert told her. Alex nodded as she wiped her tears.

Again Anna reached out and took her hand. "I think that's enough for today. Robert, we can come back tomorrow."

Alex looked up at her, "I would like to talk to you some more but would like a break."

"We're staying here for a while and we will be talking a lot while we're here," Anna told her.

"Alright."

"I want to know more about why you did what you've done." Alex just nodded. "We'll be back tomorrow," Anna said as she stood up. Robert stood up as well and turned to the door. Anna looked over at Alex, "I would love to have my sister back, maybe that's something we can work towards."

"I'd like that too."

Anna turned and Robert put his arm around her, the door opened and they stepped out of the room. Anna glanced back and saw Alex put her head in her hands again.

"Let's get back to our room, we can talk about this there," Robert suggested. Anna nodded and let him lead her out of the room.