Chapter 33
The four of them stared at the heap where Maison Blanche once stood after hearing what they thought was rustling from within the smoldering ash, but when the noise stopped they turned back toward each other.
"Oh, I wish I had stopped you when I had the chance," Lexie said bitterly as she pounded on Tony's chest.
"I wish you had, too," Tony said to Lexie's surprise before hugging his grief-stricken sister. "I wish that this night my former friends Marlena and Roman had not died. And my brother, John. And even Stefano himself. But what could you have done to stop this?"
Tony released Lexie from the embrace and began pacing as he put his hand over his chin deep in tortured thought.
"That hold that Stefano had over me," Tony said finally. "That power he had over me… it was just too strong. I know I couldn't have walked away from him. I know it because it was the same for you here taking care of him all these months and abandoning your life in Salem. I couldn't have said no. Not alone with nothing but him in my life."
"Even if you knew the truth about the son he kept from you?" Lexie said crying.
"What son?" Tony asked. "What do you mean? What are you talking about?"
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Tony," Lexie said. "I should have told you, but I let my hatred for Sami get the best of me. And Stefano played on my greed and pride for Theo, too."
"What does this have to do with my son?" Tony asked, growing impatient.
"What it has to do with your son, the son of both of you," Lexie said turning toward Anna for emphasis, "is that while Sami was kept up in the attic she found a diary – Stefano's diary. And in it he explained how he kept a son from you. Sami wanted me to tell you so that you might release her and let me go, but I was so furious with her and what she had done to me in the past I wanted to see her suffer. And when Stefano heard me he promised…"
"He promised what?" Tony asked, as Lexie was too ashamed to say without further prompting.
"He promised me that Theo would inherit the DiMera legacy," Lexie said sniffling. "My son would be his heir. Not you. Or E.J. Or anyone else. Me. Lexie. The daughter he never acknowledged who was born to the woman who was never his wife would finally get to inherit her birthright as a true DiMera. Finally. It sounded so wonderful at the time the way Stefano described it."
"But this can't be," Tony said. "I can't believe it."
"Believe it," said a weak and gravelly voice behind him.
It was John, who was covered in dark soot, and joined by an equally disheveled and weary looking Marlena. They ambled slowly and gingerly toward the group. Marlena carried a bound book in her hand that she would later tell them she had guarded from the fire with her life.
To Marlena's surprise, Tony greeted her by enveloping her in a warm hug. Just as John was about to express his displeasure at this friendliness from his longtime foe, he too was gripped in the embrace of Anna.
"I'm so glad you made it out alive," Anna said. "We were so worried about you."
"You were worried about us?" John said raising his eyebrow skeptically.
"John, I don't expect you to ever forgive me," Tony said. "I don't think I'll ever forgive myself. But it is true that I am glad that you survived this. And I want you to know, brother, that I will strive to hurt you no more."
"I find that hard to believe," Marlena said coldly.
"Believe it," Lexie said firmly. "For we are all family now."
Chapter 34
Tony stared at his sister confused, but before Lexie could explain Marlena interrupted.
"Oh just because we're family Tony is going to become a model citizen, is he?" Marlena said sarcastically. "Tony once thought he shared parentage of Rex and Cassie with me not to mention how we were once friends, but that didn't stop him from hurting John over his bitterness about Kristen's love for him or hurting me when he made me think I was the Salem serial killer or…"
"Look, I know what I've done," Tony said. "And I can't undo that. I can only tell you that I regret it. All of it. But before you send me back to prison or crucify me or whatever you'd have me do as penance for my sins could you just tell me what the hell you mean when you talk of us all being family?"
Marlena said nothing but handed over the diary to Tony.
"Is this the diary you told me about, Lexie?" Tony asked, hesitating to open it.
Lexie nodded and Tony began leafing through the pages, surprised at how well they held up from the smoke and flame in Marlena's care.
"Oh, just spit it out already," Anna said frantically grabbing the diary from Tony's hands. "What is this about a son of mine and Tony's?"
Lexie sighed.
"The reason I said we're all family now is because E.J. is your son," Lexie said. "And that baby that was just born to Sami and E.J. is your grandchild."
Tony's mouth fell agape in shock while Anna squealed with delight.
"All this time…" Tony mumbled to himself quietly. "I hated him so thinking him my brother. Why I treated him no better than Stefano did me. What he must think of me when he knows."
But while Tony took the news with bittersweet melancholy, Anna was ecstatic.
"You mean I'm a grandmother? Marlena, we're grandmothers together?" Anna shrieked hugging Marlena who began to cry joyfully seeing her old friend's exuberance. "We just have to see this baby this instant. Oh, I have to hold him. I started this day without child and now I not only have a son, but a grandson?!"
Anna and Marlena were just about to open the door to the cottage where Sami and E.J. had been alone inside when John stopped them.
"Wait, Doc, I don't think that's such a good idea," John yelled as he stood in a pile of burnt debris.
"What is it, John?" Marlena asked, but John didn't answer so Marlena, Anna, Tony, Lexie and Celeste walked toward him with their eyes drifting toward the mass upon which John could not help himself from staring.
"Roman," Anna said sniffling, before turning her face away from the dead body of the man who had once been her husband and she had promised would be her husband once more and burying her tear-soaked face in Tony's shoulder.
Tony and Anna walked away from the pile while Tony tried to console Anna, but soon there was another gasp and it was Lexie's turn to cry.
"Stefano!" Marlena said, grimacing as her eyes noticed the charred body below her that she would never have even known was a person at all if not for the Phoenix ring still shining on its flame-kissed fingers.
John embraced Marlena while Lexie sobbed in Celeste's arms.
"How cruel that Stefano would have to take Sami's father from her yet again just when she was given a son," Marlena said bitterly.
"And how cruel that only in death can he finally give E.J. his true father!" Anna cried.
"So this is what the spirits had in mind with this tragedy," Celeste said to herself, for Lexie was too upset to notice her mother's ramblings. "This is the chaos and destruction that fate would have, whether the cards warned me of it or not."
Chapter 35
But inside the sanctuary of the simple cottage, the mood was anything but chaotic or destructive.
In fact, both E.J. and Sami, the troubled, misunderstood and often self-destructive souls that they were found sanity and stability in each other as they looked on the child they created.
The two of them laid in the bed facing each other with little Roman DiMera in his swaddling blanket nestled between them, forever connecting and in some ways completing both of them, whether they realized it then or not.
Despite all the drama and turmoil that waited for them outside the cottage doors and back in Salem, their minds were completely untroubled as they enjoyed the silence save for the soothing sound of Roman's sleeping sighs.
Finally, E.J. broke the quiet to share what was on his mind.
"Samantha, I just want you to know how truly sorry I am for all of this craziness I've brought into your life and all the harm my family has caused you," E.J. said quickly. "I mean, you couldn't even give birth in a hospital because of my family and that's not to mention what I did to you that…"
"Well, E.J., that's fine and good," Sami said interrupting him with a wry smile on her face, "but I have to tell you I'm not sorry, not sorry for any of it that has anything to do with us from being here in this moment together with our son right now."
"But sweetheart, I've done so much to hurt you and I haven't always been there for you or this child," E.J. said sincerely. "I don't think I'm worthy of your love and…"
"E.J., I know you may not remember this talk we had last summer when I was confiding in you about something bad I'd done to someone I thought I loved, but when I think back on it I can't help but think how right you were with what you said," Sami said.
"What'd I say?" E.J. said.
"Well you said something really insightful and beautiful that I don't think I really understood until now," Sami said.
"What was that?" he asked, with an eyebrow raised.
"That true love understands and true love forgives," Sami said with tears welling up in her eyes. "E.J., we've been through so much. We've hurt each other so much. But especially now, being with you and our child, I just need you to know that I truly love you and I truly forgive you just as I hope you do me."
"I do," E.J. said caressing her face.
"Good," Sami said with a smile. "Because know this. Listen to me, E.J. No part of me regrets loving you."
E.J. could not have been happier than he was in that moment.
…………………………………..
The End