Journeylove- There are small cliffhangers here and there, but the drama has been relatively constant and the big cliffhangers shall eventually come, oh yes. There is more drama, centered around Sonny and his lifestyle in this chapter, so look forward to that. I choose to use the problems that come with the mob instead of centering around them and placing the family aspects of Sonny on the backburner, like the show has done many times recently, thusly destroying my love of Sonny Corinthos in many ways.

Story-

Corinthos Household-

"I still don't think you made the right choice."

"Are we going to be going through this until I finally admit that you were right and I was wrong, Jason?" Sonny asked. Yes, he appreciated Jason's opinion, but there were bigger things on his mind, things that he needed to deal with that were more important. His son… his son was now, indirectly, the competition. Alcazar had some powerful allies, some who may well have been stronger than Alcazar, which meant that they were more than likely stronger than Sonny. If they came looking for Lorenzo's territory, Sonny didn't know how he was going to handle it.

"Sonny, you're worried about the kid…"

"Aren't you?"

Jason was silent for a moment, but he nodded slowly, "Yeah, I'm worried about him, too. But you should tell him, Sonny. You need to be honest with Damian, because that's all that he's ever wanted out of you. He doesn't expect much, not really. He just wants a father who will tell him when something's wrong. The last time you didn't tell him anything, you almost lost him."

"I did lose him, for a little while."

"Yeah, but you got lucky and he came back to you, after almost dying. I don't think that you'll get so lucky again." Jason realized how that sounded, and he tried to correct himself, "Look, I'm not trying to say that something is going to go wrong, I hope that it doesn't, but I'm saying you need to prepare him for this."

"This isn't his life… he wants to be a doctor. He doesn't need to worry about the things that I worry about. This would be easier if it was someone…"

"What?" Jason knew that when Sonny stopped in mid-sentence, it was either a good thing or a bad thing. "What's the matter, what are you thinking?"

"I think it just got even worse…"

"How could it get worse?"

"Elias."

"What about him?" It took a second to register who Elias was. Damian's grandfather, the man who raised him to be the young man that he had become. Sonny and Elias never really saw eye to eye, and that was expected, due to the history that they shared, but Jason didn't expect the old man to have any sort of position in their situation.

"Elias is like us, Jason," Sonny noted. "True, he was stomped out of power decades ago, but the only way you're truly out of this business is if you end up dead. Elias isn't dead, and Damian is his grandson… at the time that Damian killed Lorenzo… he didn't even have my name."

"So?"

"So, if you kill someone for me, it's still my kill, isn't it?" Sonny knew that Jason understood where he was going, but, much like Sonny, he didn't really want to think about it. It was something that just hurt too much to think about. "Damian killing Alcazar is just like Elias killing Alcazar. Damian isn't the one who now has hold of Alcazar's land… his grandfather does."

"We can't just keep quiet about this?"

Sonny shook his head, "A huge seat of power has just been usurped. Lorenzo held a lot of clout, both here in the United States, and around the world. So far nobody has done anything, but, eventually, they might. I don't know if it's going to be Armando Sandoval, or any other person who is just looking for a nice boost in power. They don't know that Damian killed Alcazar, though."

"So we're safe then. You didn't tell Armando anything, you just said that the person who killed Alcazar was under your protection. As long as nobody finds out that Damian was the one who shot Alcazar, nobody is going to think twice about coming after him or his grandfather."

"I hate this…" Sonny said, walking over to the bar and pouring himself a drink of something that he had hoped would calm his nerves. It didn't work. Out of sheer frustration for his situation, Sonny did what he was known for, and threw the drink towards the fireplace. It crashed against the wall, splattering glass and scotch, some of which hit the fire, which burned with untamed rage. "Why couldn't I have been the one to kill him? Why did it have to be my son… I didn't even think about it, Jason. I didn't even think about the fact that him doing what he did would mean what it does."

Carly came down from the bedrooms, having been up there with Leticia and Morgan. When she heard something crash against the wall, she knew that Sonny was home, and that he was upset. Usually, when he threw stuff, it was because of her, something she did. Carly had no idea if she had done anything wrong, at least recently, but she was more concerned than anything else. She asked Leticia to watch Morgan, who had been awoken by the sudden noise and was crying.

Neither Sonny nor Jason noticed her from her spot near the top of the stairs. She was actually used to it. Her best friend and her husband had a way of blocking out everyone and anyone who came into the room when they were busy thinking about something. Sometimes, it was the best time for Carly to get some insight on to what was going on with them. Although she meant well, it would usually formulate into a plan that would cause Sonny and Jason to get her ass out of the line of danger, as had happened when she went with a baseball bat to the now decimated families.

But, there were times when it was more important to act as a wife than as a woman, and Carly could see it in Sonny's eyes, there was something that was there, a burning rage that she saw only when he was at his worst. She needed to protect him. "Sonny," she said softly as she continued to walk down, "Sonny, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," Sonny said in a voice that seemed to say something more along the lines of 'nothing that you should concern yourself with.' He hoped that Carly would take the hint, but she rarely did.

Knowing that she wasn't going to get anywhere with Sonny, she turned to her best friend. "Jase?" Jason gave her the cold blank stare that he was used to. Carly knew how to work Jason, though. How to work his biggest weakness: his honesty. "You've never lied to me before, Jase. You know how much honesty means to you and I. What is it? I can see it in your face, too. You're worried about something…" that narrowed it down considerably. There were few things that worried Jason. "Oh…" she gasped as the horrible thoughts hit her mind, "it's not Michael, is it?" Michael was more than a nephew to Jason, Michael was his reason for living. People knew that, they knew that doing something to Michael would crush both Sonny and Jason, leave the entire operation in shambles.

"It's not Michael," Jason assured her.

"Then what is it?"

Jason turned his eyes towards Sonny, who could only stare at his right hand man with eyes that warned Jason to not divulge any information. Forced to pick between his two best friends, Jason made the only choice that he thought he could make at that moment, "You need to talk to Sonny about it, Carly." It wasn't a lie, as it was more Sonny's dilemma. Sonny was Damian's father, it was his right to choose who knew what was going on and who didn't. Jason would not infringe upon those rights.

"Do me a favor, all right?" Sonny asked Jason, "Check up on everyone that you can think of, see if they're making moves that we should be concerned about, and if they are, try and find a way to stop them."

"I'll see what I can do." Jason gave a cautionary glance over to Carly, one that he knew she wouldn't listen to, but he had to try anyway. Then, with nothing else for him to do, he left. If he heard anything, he would come back, but, if anything was going to happen between Sonny and Carly, it had to happen between the two of them in private. Jason was a member of the family, there was no doubt about that, but this was a matter that he did not feel comfortable with.

"All right, Sonny, Jason's gone, but that doesn't mean that you're off the hook. Don't you dare shut me out of this, Sonny. I know that something is wrong with you, I know that something is eating you up inside, and I'm your wife. You have three children that you need to think about, three children who would not be able to survive if something happened to you. Think about them for a second, would you?"

"I always think about my children, Carly," Sonny snapped back at her. "Always." He was thinking about one of them at that very moment. Damian was capable of doing anything, Sonny knew that, but he didn't want his boy doing what he was now 'supposed' to be doing. There had to be a way around it… there just had to be.

"You need to tell me what's going on, Sonny. I have a right to know."

"You don't need to know anything about this, it doesn't concern you."

Carly rolled her eyes and shook her head, "You know how you worry about Damian pushing you out of his life? You're doing the same exact thing to me that you think he's doing to you. Don't you realize what kind of person that makes you?"

"I'm doing this to protect you, to protect all of you. Don't pretend to know something that you don't understand."

"Fine," she threw her hands up, submitting the fight, Sonny won. "I just hope that this doesn't come back to bite you in the ass…"

Sonny heard her stomp up the stairs, enraged, as he thought she would be. When she was gone, Sonny looked at himself in the mirror, a small portion of it having been cracked, presumably by the impact the glass made, "So do I…"

Port Charles Police Department-

Durant had his legs up on the desk, spinning around lightly in the chair. The District Attorney's chair. It wasn't his chair, yet. But, in time, it could be. If he played his cards the way that he wanted to play them, Ric Lansing would be gone before the end of the week and everything would be just perfect for his attempts at destroying Sonny Corinthos and Jason Morgan.

Ric walked into his office after a lonely lunch. He wanted to spend it with his wife, but Elizabeth couldn't get the time off. A part of him accused Mike of running a slave labor business, but Elizabeth quickly told him that he was just being irrational. Distracted for only a moment, when he turned around to see Durant sitting in his chair, everything seemed to fade away, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Just finding a way to make a comfortable groove on the chair," Durant said as he pulled his legs down from the desk. "After all, I don't think that the current owner of this office will be around much longer."

"You don't even know what I would do to you if you tried to take away this office from me, Durant. I worked myself to the bone getting to where I am."

"No, you got lucky. That idiot Scott Baldwin ended up running away with his tail tucked between his legs and you got the spillover perks. You didn't earn this position, Lansing, it fell into your lap. Even if you did earn it, as you want to believe, I have a feeling that your big brother did something about it. He's very protective over his family…"

"Sonny would never help me do anything that would further my career…"

"Aww," Durant walked in front of Ric, standing right in front of his face, "little brother have some jealousy issues? Mama didn't love you enough?"

If it wouldn't have cost him his job, Ric would have gladly placed John Durant flat on his back with the hardest punch. While he even flashed to an imaginary image of the action taking place, he did nothing about it. "You don't have an appointment to see me, John, and, since you are not officially, under any sort of circumstances, supposed to be here, you're technically trespassing."

"Now you're just being petty."

"This coming from you?" Ric gave a soft chuckle. "What can I say? I'm a fast leaner."

"You've let so many chances to destroy your brother and everything that he stands for slip through your fingers, Lansing. If you don't think that I can make that into a case for you being taken out of this office, then you're really just too stupid to realize anything, and you shouldn't even have this office if you're that dumb. This isn't a battle that you can win."

"I'm more resourceful than you think."

"I'm sure you are… that fills me with so much terror, I'm trembling, really."

"Are you done yet?"

"Only when my name is on that desk will I be done with you, and then I'll work on your brother, and then I will be done. I just hope that the people that you care about, your wife, your nephews, don't get caught in the crossfire."

Ric heard the door shut behind him and breathed a sigh of relief. He tried not to show it, but a part of him was indeed afraid of what could happen if John Durant actually tried to do something that would take him out of the office. Ric wasn't as sympathetic to Sonny as John wanted him to believe, but, at the same time he wasn't as unsympathetic as Ric wanted John to believe. Why did John have to bump into Damian when they were in New York. On New Years Eve. Why did those two particular people have to run into each other when there were millions of other people that they could have encountered. Fate started the ball rolling, and now it was up to Ric to pick up the pieces.