Chapter 29
Stefano DiMera emerged from the secret passageway behind the fireplace just as his old nemesis, Roman Brady, entered the front door of Maison Blanche.
"Just where do you think you're going old man," Roman said laughing at the sickly shell of Stefano's former self struggling to will himself across the room.
"Roman, I don't have time for this," Stefano said. "We don't have time for this. Not when Marlena and Celeste are in danger."
"Celeste is fine. I just saw her a minute ago. But as for Marlena, well she wouldn't be in danger if it wasn't for you kidnapping our daughter and holding her prisoner here, you bastard," Roman snarled.
"You think I wanted this?" Stefano asked surveying the devastation befalling the stately mansion.
"Why wouldn't I think that when your whole life has been based around you and all the DiMeras torturing us Bradys?" Roman shot back.
"Maybe so," Stefano said bitterly, "but that will not be my legacy."
"Oh just what legacy do you think a monster like you can leave behind?" Roman said moving to choke Stefano, as the heat from the fire seemed to intensify the rage he felt confronting him.
"The Bradys will finally get their peace from the DiMeras when your dear Samantha agrees to marry my E.J.," Stefano said in speech that was garbled by Roman's stranglehold.
"You think she would marry that bastard spawn of yours? The man who raped her?" Roman yelled as he tightened his grip on Stefano's throat. "Sami will marry a DiMera over my dead body."
Meanwhile, Marlena covered her mouth with the back of her left hand and coughed as she walked up the final steps toward the attic to find the diary at the edge of the room just where Sami had whispered she could find it. Marlena was just about to head back downstairs when she heard what sounded like a person moaning.
She looked closer through the smoke and realized it was a person. It was Lucas.
Marlena set the diary down and hurried over to tend him as he lay writhing on the floor with his eyes still shut.
Suddenly, John appeared at the door yelling at her to get out of the attic, but Marlena explained they were not alone.
"We can't leave Lucas here," Marlena yelled.
Marlena felt after seeing the way EJ cared for Sami in that brief moment downstairs that her daughter was bound to leave this husband for another man just as she had left Sami's father for John, but she knew Sami would still want her to help the father of her son, Will, get out of the fire alive if at all possible.
John leapt into action and smacked Lucas's face to try to bring him to consciousness. The slap worked as Lucas jumped up to his feet yelling for Sami.
"Lucas, Sami is fine," Marlena said. "She's in labor right now, but Lexie and E.J. are tending to her."
"Well, where did they go?" Lucas screamed in a shrill voice.
"Oh I don't know," Marlena said. "I think that old cottage in back maybe. Lucas, it doesn't matter, because we need to get out of this building before it burns to the ground."
"I have to get to her," he insisted as he darted downstairs and out of their sight.
Marlena and John carefully followed him down the stairs until Marlena realized she had left the diary behind. But before John could stop her she was back up the steps barreling into the heat without abandon and grabbing the diary just before a nearby flame could consume it.
"What are you doing?!" John cried. "You could have gotten yourself killed."
"This diary has the secrets to your past, John," Marlena explained. "I wanted you to finally know the truth so you could have peace of mind."
"Marlena, the past could not give me any peace of mind if it means I have to give up a future with you," John said.
Still, Marlena shoved the diary inside her blouse. She accepted John's embrace as he moved to shield her from the smoke by opening his jacket and enveloping her inside.
But just as they began their descent down the stairs the fire and heat finally brought the old mansion to its knees. Marlena and John disappeared with a swift crash into a pile of ash and rubble.
Chapter 30
Even as the pain grew sharper and increased in intensity with every breath, Sami's squinting eyes remained locked with E.J.'s as his calm, inviting face and soothing voice of encouragement offered reassuring warmth despite the frightening prospect she found herself in giving birth before the expected due date and in a strange place. Never did he stop staring at her and smiling almost to the point that it would have made her blush with self-consciousness if her face wasn't already flushed from the ordeal.
Eventually though her concentration would be broken with the faint noise of someone else in the room that she would remember was Lexie and she would hear E.J.'s voice speak to this person in a much more serious tone than when he whispered to her.
Sami didn't know what they were saying, but noticed E.J. turn his head nervously toward the window as they could hear a loud crash. Suddenly, she remembered the smoke and the flames and whispering something about a diary before everything went dark.
"My mother," she whispered as a tear streamed down her cheek.
E.J. impulsively bent down and kissed the tear away.
"She'll be all right," E.J. insisted. "Everything will be all right."
Sami was unconvinced and began panicking, even as E.J. lovingly stroked her hair and resumed attempting to help her breathe. Lexie hovered nearby with ominous warnings she whispered in his ear about Sami's dangerous blood pressure levels and it became more of a struggle to coax Sami to breathe through her sobs. E.J. began to be consumed with worry even as he tried his best to keep up the brave face for Sami.
"Samantha, I know you are worried for your mother and I am, too, my darling," E.J. said. "But right now this baby needs you, HIS mother, to breathe with me so we can bring him into this world."
He paused as his lip quivered with fear that he could lose his family before ever truly having the right to consider them that.
"I need you, Samantha," E.J. sighed.
Sami had never seen E.J. more vulnerable in that moment as she looked up at him and he turned his head and the shadows cast by the moonlight betrayed a single tear streaming down his cheek.
To E.J.'s surprise, Sami reached for his face to pull him toward her and she kissed the tear away just as he had hers before she resumed breathing steadily as the sobs melted away.
But just as Lexie told E.J. it was time for Sami to start pushing, a loud thumping noise could be heard at the door followed by the sound of someone seeming to try to ram into it to break it down.
"Sami! E.J.! Open up! I know you're in there!" a crazed man yelled.
"What in the world?" Lexie asked.
"Lucas," E.J. muttered bitterly.
"Lucas?" Sami asked delirious with pain and not remembering her husband.
"Don't worry, sweetheart," E.J. said kissing her on the forehead. "I'll take care of this and be right back before you know it. In the meantime, just do what Lexie says and you'll be O.K."
Sami writhed in pain, but did as Lexie instructed her pushing as hard as she could at the same time E.J. tended to the door.
Lucas was startled as he lunged toward the door in another attempt to ram it when to his surprise the door flung open at him sending him backward to fall on the ground.
E.J. stepped outside and shut the door behind him and blocked it with his large, though slender frame.
"I need to see Sami! What have you done to her? I need to talk to her, to see she's all right," Lucas yelled in somewhat garbled speech that E.J. thought must have been distorted by his earlier drinking or an excessive amount of smoke inhalation or both.
"That's fine, Lucas, but what Samantha needs and what her baby needs is not some crazed idiot yelling in her face as she is trying to give birth when her blood pressure is already at dangerous levels," E.J. said rationally.
"She's having the baby?" Lucas said stupidly.
"Yes," E.J. said. "And that is stressful enough without you making an appearance at the birth and injecting all of your drama about me and her into this so if you ever cared about Samantha at all I suggest you leave and I promise you that we'll all resolve this like adults after Samantha and the baby are healthy and rested and this whole ordeal is over."
"Oh, I'm gonna resolve this all right," Lucas snickered as he tried to sidestep E.J. and make a run for the door. "Sami! I'm coming for you!"
Before E.J. could think about what he was doing, his right hand clenched into a fist, he bent his elbow back and then swung his forearm forward connecting to Lucas's jaw with a fierce uppercut. Lucas's eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the ground in a heap.
"Why didn't I do this a long time ago?" E.J. laughed to himself as he shook off the tingling in his hand and stepped back inside the cottage.
Chapter 31
"Don't go, Tony," Anna said caressing his face as tears welled up in her eyes. "Marlena is already in there. And John. And Lucas. And Roman. Their lives are all in danger because of your vain attempts to save that sick, old man. And I am not going to let that monster have one more person potentially lose their life because of his evil and manipulation. Especially not when that person could be you."
As Tony looked on Anna's face he was shocked to find no trace of anger or judgment for the horrible things he'd done, but pity. He couldn't understand how she could pity him. At least not until he realized it was because she still loved him, and his eyes too began to well up with tears as he placed his hand over hers.
"Oh, Anna, what have I done?" Tony said as he felt his hardened heart begin to melt as if some spell Stefano had cast over him all these years to keep him wicked and bitter and alone just faded away with one touch from his true love.
"Yes, Tony, what have you done?" Kate screamed, shattering Tony's moment of melancholic reflection and replacing it with shame. "Where the hell is my son?"
"I don't know," Tony said honestly. "He wasn't with me when the fire started. Apparently he was upset about Sami's closeness to E.J. and started drinking and in inebriated clumsiness knocked over some candles igniting the blaze."
Anna raised one eyebrow askew as that bit about the booze seemed to confirm the gossip she had heard about her ex-son-in-law, but said nothing.
"Well what does it matter how the fire started?" Kate shrieked defensively.
"I'm truly sorry, Kate," Tony whispered before bolting toward the mansion.
But just as he was about to reach for the door inside, the building began groaning and seemed to teeter unable to support its own weight.
"Tony look out!" Anna screamed.
While Tony covered his face with his forearm in shock, Anna raced up to him and pulled him back before the flaming debris falling off the collapsing structure could strike them.
The four of them watched the flames rage and then fade until the fire began to burn itself out having consumed practically the entire mansion. While the rubble smoldered, they sat in shocked silence aside from the quiet weeping coming from Kate.
"Lucas is gone," Kate said crying. "My son is dead. Oh why did you have to bring him here, Celeste?"
Celeste frowned. She now realized that her tarot reading anticipating a fool to trigger the tower's destruction would not have come true had she not played a role in bringing Lucas to Maison Blanche. But still, something told her Lucas was not among the dead.
"Kate, I'm sorry, but we don't even know what happened to him," Celeste said. "Maybe he followed Sami out to the woodcutter's cottage."
"You think it's possible?" Kate said sniffling.
Kate removed her high heel pumps and began running across the grounds of the mansion back toward the cottage. Tony, Anna and Celeste followed behind her but at a more leisurely pace as they lacked Kate's optimistic urgency.
Trailing behind her the distance of about a football field they still heard Kate scream loud and clear when she came across the slumping figure in front of the cottage door.
"Lucas, can you hear me?" Kate asked lighting patting his cheek. "Lucas. Are you there?"
Lucas started to rouse from his unconsciousness just as Tony, Anna and Celeste made their way up to the cottage.
"Oh Lucas, you're alive! Thank God!" Kate cried. "Was it the smoke that knocked you unconscious?"
"No… it was… uhhhh… it was a… fist," Lucas groaned as he sat up, rubbing his chin.
Just then a cloud moved from in front of the moon allowing the bright light to show Lucas's face more clearly in the darkness of the night and Kate finally noticed the bruise developing along Lucas's jaw.
"Listen, Tony, I can't take any more of this," Kate turned to him and said furiously. "I want out of Mythic. Now. And if you want to keep me from pressing charges for what your crazy family did to my son or going to the SEC with what I know about your family's creative accounting practices then I suggest you pay double what our shares are worth when you buy out our stock in the company."
"You want me to buy out both of you?" Tony asked.
"Oh so if I left Mythic you were still planning on keeping Lucas as an executive vice president?" Kate scoffed.
Tony looked at the still dazed and confused idiot still rubbing his face and realized while the stock buyout would be extremely costly it would definitely be worth it to no longer have to worry about Lucas's drinking and unprofessional behavior slowing down the company.
"Well, no, I guess not," Tony said with a sigh.
"Then it's settled," Kate insisted. "I'll be in touch with you so you know where you can wire the money. Come on Lucas, we need to get out of here so we can call Billie. The last time I talked to her she said they are opening a New York branch of Countess Wilhelmina soon and I bet she would give it to us to run if we asked."
Lucas nodded, still aloof and in shock at all that had happened that night, but he allowed himself to be escorted by his mother across the grounds and toward Kate's rental car before the two of them left behind Maison Blanche and their lives in Salem for good.
Chapter 32
"I can't do this," Sami whimpered as Lexie implored her to push. "I can't."
"Oh, yes you can," E.J. said, hustling back to Sami's bedside and taking her hand in his. "You're Samantha Gene Brady. There's nothing you can't do."
Sami offered a grimacing smile in response to the flattery and began pushing with all her might.
"That's it," E.J. said, biting his lip as Sami's grip squeezed uncomfortably tight around the hand he had used to knock Lucas unconscious just a few minutes before.
But E.J. knew whatever discomfort he felt was about a million times less than what it must have been for Sami in childbirth.
"You're almost there," Lexie told her.
"You've been saying that for hours," Sami snapped and collapsed back into the bed to rest after another round of contractions passed.
"Well you've been almost there for hours," E.J. quipped with a sly grin on his face that prompted a grin from Sami even though she didn't much feel like grinning. "It'll be all right, darling. When our child is ready to meet us, he'll come."
And so the labor went on until just before dawn, when with one final push Sami's child, a son, and the first Brady-DiMera baby, was born.
The baby let out a spirited cry almost immediately and Lexie cut the umbilical cord and took him away to the sink to be cleaned while E.J. followed the babe with his eyes filled with so much joy he didn't think he could stand it, yet still he remained at Sami's bedside holding her hand.
"It's a boy," Lexie told them. "A happy and healthy boy."
Suddenly, Lexie was no longer at Maison Blanche as her thoughts drifted back to Salem and her own boy, Theo, who she had neglected far too long. But she couldn't think about that as she wrapped the newly clean baby in a towel.
"It's over?" Sami asked, somewhat delirious and completely exhausted.
E.J. laughed.
"No, darling. The fun is just beginning," E.J. said. "But your labor is most certainly over. How are you feeling?"
Sami frowned at first but then her eyes caught Lexie walking toward her carrying the swaddled child, which she then laid in her arms.
"I feel much better now," Sami said staring at the baby and then looking at his father with a smile. "Much, much better."
"Well, I think my work here is done so I'll leave you two alone while I get some fresh air," Lexie said, as she was filled with shame and regret for all the time she had missed being there for Theo as a loving mother back in Salem when all these months she thought it more important to be an obedient daughter and try to secure his legacy as a DiMera in Maison Blanche.
Lexie stifled tears as she opened the door to the cottage and stepped outside.
"So you checked and he has all ten fingers and all ten toes, right?" E.J. said, smiling but eyeing the child impatiently.
"E.J., do you want to hold him?" Sami asked with a weary sigh but a sly chuckle.
"Well, if you insist," E.J. said smiling from ear to ear.
E.J. cradled the child in his arms and then stood up gently rocking him and whispering gentle words of welcome to the world.
"Oh, he's so little. I can't believe how small he is. It's so remarkable," E.J. said turning his attention back to Sami. "Samantha, have you thought of any names for him yet – for our son?"
"Well, I have been trying to think up a good name for our son, and I'm not sure how you feel about this, but I'd like to name him after someone in my family," Sami said.
"Oh, what name were you thinking, sweetheart," E.J. asked nonchalantly.
"I want our son to be named Roman, after my father," Sami said pausing. "And DiMera, after yours."
E.J. said nothing for a moment, but just stared.
"Well, if you think that's the best thing I…" E.J. said before being interrupted.
"Look, this child is a Brady and a DiMera," Sami said flatly. "We can't ignore it. We can't ignore the way that our families have been at each other's throats for decades. But if we want this feud to stop and if we don't want this child to suffer from it the way that both of us have, I think it best we acknowledge it, so that neither family holds the other half of his blood against him."
"You're right, darling," E.J. said to Sami before turning his attention back to the child. "I'm sure you'll find out soon enough, but I just want to be the first to tell you what an amazing mother you have, Mr. Roman DiMera."
Chapter 32
Celeste walked over to the ashes of Maison Blanche and began wandering through smoldering rubble leaving Tony and Anna to sit alone with their backs to the cottage staring at the heap where the stately mansion once stood.
Anna sat with her arms folded, so that the engagement ring on her left ring finger glistened in the moonlight and caught Tony's eye.
"I wish that you wouldn't have pulled me out of the way of the fire," Tony said finally, breaking the heavy silence.
"I wish that the fire had never started in the first place, Tony," Anna said bitterly. "I wish that John and Marlena and Roman were still alive. Even Stefano, too. I wish that you had never become so much like him that this all might happen."
"Contessa, don't you think I wish all that, too?" Tony said, using his favorite pet nickname for his ex-wife.
Tony turned to look at her, yet Anna bashfully turned her head afraid that even in the darkness before the coming dawn he might see the tears dripping down her face.
"Hey," Tony said. "Look at me… as hard as I know it is for you to look at what I've become."
Tony sighed.
"If only we had never been torn apart, my love," Tony said. "I tried so hard to move on, thinking you were so happy in London. I tried to move on with Kristen and when that failed miserably I had no one. No one except Stefano…"
"But Tony I wasn't all that happy in London," Anna said, cutting him off. "I almost came back, once, but I had heard you were with Kristen and so I stayed away and tried so hard to forget you. I had heard from Carrie that you had been involved in some horrible things in Salem but I told her that couldn't be 'my Tony' and so when I heard you were released and that job came up at Countess Wilhelmina I decided to see for myself."
"And you found out I was no longer your Tony," Tony said in exasperation. "I was Stefano's Tony."
"Well what Tony are you now?" Anna asked. "Now that Stefano's gone."
"I'm not sure," he said. "Oh, Anna, I wish things were different. If only our child had lived, things could have been so very different."
"What do you mean, Tony?" Anna said touching her stomach instinctively as she was reminded once again of the grief she had never totally set aside from when a boating accident caused the miscarriage of their child so many years ago.
"Even if I wouldn't have had you all these years, I could have lived for that child instead of my own father," Tony said. "I could have been a better man for him."
But before Anna could respond the two of them were startled by the sound of a baby crying.
"Oh, thank God," Anna sighed with relief. "Her baby made it."
Tony and Anna looked at each other and knew each was thinking of their lost child, even though neither said a word.
Their silent stare was broken, however, when the door pushed open and Lexie stepped outside.
"Whew!" Lexie said wiping her brow. "I didn't think that poor child was ever going to come out. But finally that baby did and not a moment too soon, for Sami's sake and mine."
"Well, how it is it?" Anna asked cheerily. "Is it a boy or a girl?"
"It's a boy," Lexie said with a weary sigh. "A healthy and happy boy."
"That's great news, Alexandra," Celeste said with little enthusiasm as she walked toward her daughter.
Lexie looked beyond her mother to see the ash and rubble where Maison Blanche once stood.
"Oh dear," Lexie said hysterically. "The mansion is gone. It was here and now it's gone. All gone. Did everyone get out all right? Did they?"
"I'm sorry, Alexandra," Celeste said. "But Marlena and John and Roman and your father, Stefano, all were consumed by the inferno. I only wish I had given some warning sooner when my tarot told me that something like this would happen, although even the cards said only two souls would die."
And just then the four of them were startled to hear a stirring in the rubble.