Kelly's-

"I'm really surprised you picked me up from school today," Michael stated as he sat down at his favorite table in the restaurant. The one that was closest to the jukebox was easily the best table in the place, and, whenever he was there, he always made sure that he would get that table. It didn't work against him that his grandmother was the owner of the place, and that his grandfather was the cook and the person who ran it because of Bobbie's other duties with the hospital, which had to take priority. Michael understood that. It was probably why he was able to take his brother being gone as often as he was so well, because he knew that Damian, like Bobbie, was doing what he could to help people get better, to save their lives. And, if they could save just one person it was all worth it, to think that he was more important was selfish, and Michael had learned that selfish thoughts were never a good thing. God liked it when people were selfless, when they thought of others.

"Why are you so surprised, buddy?" Sonny asked.

"Because usually you have someone else do it. Sometimes its Max, sometimes Leticia, or one of the drivers, or even Damian, but hardly ever you, daddy."

"Are you saying that you don't want me to pick you up from school?"

"No way!" Michael quickly shot down the idea of his father ignoring him. "I love it when you pick me up from school, because then I can show all my friends that my daddy came to get me. People know who you are, they see your face in the papers almost all the time, or on the television. Their parents usually have them go in the other room or something, but they know what you look like. Sometimes they don't want to believe that I'm your son, that I'm just saying that I'm the son of some famous person because I want to have some of that fame all to myself. But they're silly people, they don't understand how much I love you."

Sonny chuckled, "A lot of people don't understand how much you love me, Mike." While he was all smiles and happiness, inside, Sonny was thinking about what Michael had said. He'd never really thought about it in that way, the children knowing who he was. Sonny wasn't a fool, he knew that the parents of the classmates would have a good idea of who he was, even though none of it had been proven, true or not. It took a rather big donation on his part to even keep Michael in the school once they found out that he was Sonny's child. Sonny thought all the people to be cowards. Striking at the innocent little child because they were afraid of talking to him. Foolish people. But, in the same situation, what would he do? If one of his enemies had a kid in the same school as Michael, how would he react? It was really easy to think about what a person would do if it happened, it was a lot harder to react properly when it did happen.

"How are we going to make them understand?" Michael asked, his age allowing him a certain degree of ignorance, which was also one of the core reasons why everyone tended to pull away from telling Michael too much about what was going on. They were afraid that he was going to react in the wrong way, that he would think of something as being more horrible than it was, and nobody wanted that. Not Sonny, not Carly, nobody. "Maybe I can draw a picture of all of us as a big happy family… that should show them, right?"

"It's not a bad idea, buddy, but, you know what I think would work even better?"

"What?"

"That we don't even let it bother us. The best way that we can make them understand that we care about each other, that we're just as good a family as anyone else is to keep on doing what we do any other day of the year. If the people around us choose not to believe that we care about each other, that we don't love each other just as much, if not more, than them, let them think that. We know the truth… and that's all that matters."

"That sounds like something Damian would say. You two sound a lot alike sometimes… which is funny, because he grew up without you as his daddy…"

"Your brother's a smart man, Michael, and he had good people who helped raise him because I didn't know about him." Ana, Elias, Victoria, they would all have his eternal gratitude for giving Damian the foundation that he needed to become the person that he wanted to be. It would have been so easy for the boy to fall into the same cracks that Sonny did when he was Damian's age, easier than it was for Sonny. Los Angeles was a bigger mob territory than people cared to admit. If Damian wanted to find out what was on the other side there really would be no way of stopping him.

"Do you think he'll be able to do it, daddy?" Michael asked. "Do you think he'll be able to become a doctor like Alan and Monica?" Michael knew that they were his 'true' grandparents, but, as far as he was concerned they were only that by blood. He didn't dislike them, but he certainly didn't share the connection that he had with his real family.

"I do think he will, yeah… because he wants to do something important with his life, something that will help honor his mother's memory. When someone goes through something like that, Mike, there's not really anything that will stop the person from getting what they want. They'll keep on fighting for the dream that they made as hard as they can, harder than they ever thought possible."

"Did you do something like that when your mommy died?"

Sonny looked down. How could he explain it to the boy? Could he even explain it? Not only explain it to Michael, but explain it to himself. Adella… she died without him even being there. Maybe she died because of her broken heart. "I…"

"Hey, look who it is!" Mike, who had overhead some of the conversation, quickly interjected himself to take the heat off of Sonny. "What are you two doing here?"

"I don't know," Michael replied as he got up and hugged his grandfather, "daddy picked me up from school today and we came over here. When he's like this, I just do what he tells me, because it means I get to spend some time alone with my daddy, and I don't really get to do that too much."

Mike looked over at Sonny, who was also staring at him. Though they had their differences, they were still father and son. And Sonny recognized the fact that Mike made the save that he wanted someone to make, even if he wouldn't have admitted that he wanted someone to save him. Appreciative of what had happened, Sonny gave a slight nod of his head, which Mike quickly returned.

"Grandpa… do you have any cookies?"

"Do I have any cookies?" Mike asked. "Do I have any cookies! Of course I have cookies, Michael. I always make sure to have a batch ready just in case you come in, because I know how much you love them. But, maybe you shouldn't have any, you might spoil your dinner."

Michael looked over at his father, "Can I have some? Pretty please? Pretty, pretty please?"

Sonny found that his fortitude and his healthy eating habits that he tried to instill in his child were going to be tossed out the window, but he saw nothing wrong with it. After all, how many times did he really let Michael get away with it? "Just two, all right?"

"Why don't you go and ask Elizabeth to help you. They're fresh, so they're really hot right now and I would hate for you to hurt your hands. She's in the back." Mike gently patted his grandson on the shoulder before he ran off. With the two older men alone, Mike took a seat next to his son, "This is a nice surprise. The two of you rarely come in here together. It's usually Carly or Courtney."

"I haven't been making enough time for Michael lately. Morgan's just a baby, and while it might sound mean he won't remember that much. Damian's old enough to understand that I have a lot of things that I need to take care of, especially right now, and he's on duty for the next few days anyway. But Michael… Michael's old enough to remember, but not quite old enough to understand that I have to do these things for a reason, to help protect him is just one of them."

"No matter what anyone says, or what you feel, you're a good father, Michael. You love your children more than anyone else I've ever seen. I just wish that you didn't have to fight so hard to do it, just so you could be a better example than the person that you got stuck with."

"You recognize your mistakes, Mike." Sonny believed that Mike truly did wish to atone for the sins that he had committed as a father. If Sonny would ever give Mike the chance was up in the air, but the fault now rested completely on Sonny's shoulders, not Mike's. "There are plenty of people who don't think they did anything wrong, ever. Those people are destined to go to hell."

"Is there any particular reason you came here?"

Sonny shrugged, "Michael loves it here, because you're here, because sometimes Bobbie is here. I just wanted to do something fun with my kid for the evening before I took him home. He's getting older, Mike. Soon he's going to be old enough to really understand what's going on around him…"

"You'll just have to explain to him…"

"How can I explain what I do to him?" Sonny quickly cut in. "I can't even do it with Damian, who knows, who is old enough to understand. I can't put myself up like that. I can't make it seem like I'm this horrible person… because, I don't know, maybe telling it to my children means that I've accepted it myself."

"You're not a horrible person, son."

"But I do horrible things."

"And you feel them when you do. Sonny, I'm not going to say that I wish you did something else. I'm not going to tell you that there are not times when I'm kept up late at night because I'm expecting a phone call from someone telling me that you've been arrested, or worse… but that doesn't mean that you go out and do them for the hell of it. You're not Lorenzo Alcazar. You're not a cold blooded killer. You protect what you have, what matters to you and sometimes it means doing things that you wouldn't do otherwise. People force your hand, not the other way around."

"Sounds like you're trying to convince yourself more than you're trying to convince me…"

"Maybe… on some level… I am…"

Michael came back into the room, cookies on a nice plate. "These are so good!"

Sonny looked over and smiled once more, counting the cookies. "Hey, I thought I told you that you could only have two of those. Seems like you've got four. You're old enough to do the math, Mike."

Michael laughed after he took a bite out of one of the cookies. "I got two for me, and one for each of you. Here," the child handed a cookie to his father and his grandfather. Three generations of Corinthos men enjoying the same food product. "I'm glad we came here today, daddy."

"So am I, buddy," the older man replied, a glance over to his father. "So am I."

Port Charles Docks-

Sometimes the work that needed to be done made John Durant do something that he never thought he would do otherwise. Sometimes it made him use contacts that he wished he didn't have. But, taking down Sonny Corinthos had not only become a career goal of his, it was now something completely personal. That man had taken his daughter and his grandsons into his tangled web, and John was not going to allow Sonny to continually put them in the danger zone. Sonny may have been one of the most powerful people in upstate New York, but there was always a bigger fish, and that bigger fish would not take a second glance at killing innocent women and children. If John woke up one morning and saw the headline that the Corinthos family had been slaughtered he would never forgive himself.

The cold wind brushed upon his face as he waited by the dock, seeing the many boats that moved along. Some of them no doubt belonged to Sonny. He would deal with everything that Sonny owned in time, but, for now, he needed to worry about the matter at hand. It took a lot of yanking to get the person who was going to be by his side to come into Port Charles, but when John wanted something done he did whatever was necessary to have it done. No matter the cost. It was one of his best and worst qualities.

A boat continued to tread closer and closer towards the docks, until it finally stopped in one of the spaces where the boats docked themselves. The light turned itself off and he continued to wait, seeing the figure in the quickly dying daylight walk down the small ramp that allowed entrance and exit from the barge. Before long they were staring at one another, John staring down at the person, the person staring up at him.

"Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to come into this place? I had to stop doing everything that I had planned for weeks on end, just because you called."

"Well, I guess that's the price that we pay when we owe someone, isn't it, Miss McCall?"