Chapter 6
When Sami awoke the next morning Lucas was gone. So, incidentally, was the bottle of wine. Sami silently prayed to herself that Lucas had poured the bottle out rather than drinking it. She knew how he struggled with his addiction and she tried on a daily basis to encourage his sobriety. Last night however, she had been so angry that she hadn't even stopped to think that he might be pressured into taking a drink, and now she was left feeling guilty about it. The phone rang and she picked it up to the sound of her mother's voice on the other end. "Good morning sweetie." Dr. Marlena Evans said. "Morning mom." Sami returned, trying to sound cheerful. "What's up?" Well nothing really." Her mother said. I was just wondering if we were still on for lunch today?" "Yup, one o'clock at Salem Place." Sami said checking her watch. "Great sweetie, I'll see you then." "Okey dokey mom. I'll see you later." Sami said and hung up the phone. It was nearly eleven-thirty so she quickly went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. She took her time in the shower, her mind continually returning to her fight with Lucas the previous evening. The more she thought about it the more guilty she felt. She had vowed to herself to try and be patient with Lucas and his feelings regarding Tony. After all, she had been involved in a relationship with Tony's look-alike and after everything that Andre had put her and Lucas through, she knew they both still bore the scars.
Andre had been Sami's first and last assignment as an ISA agent. At the time she had believed that he was Tony and she had become involved with him with mixed feelings. From her first encounter with Andre after he had returned to Salem to masquerade as Tony, Sami had been drawn to him. He had been everything that the men in her life were not. He was suave, debonair, confident and dangerously sexy. She'd been in love with Brandon Walker at the time and although she found herself attracted to Dimera, she hadn't pursued anything other than friendship with him. That is of course until after her affair with Brandon ended and the ISA approached her with a key assignment. At the time a mysterious assailant was murdering ISA agents and the agency had been sure that it was "Tony". Knowing Sami's close proximity to the Count they had enlisted her help in determining whether or not he was indeed the murderer. Sami had gone undercover, posing as a singer in "Tony's" Club and soon the two were involved in a steamy affair. At the same time, she found herself growing closer to Lucas, who had been there for her when she and Brandon had broken up, and whom she'd always secretly had feelings for. Sami had been torn apart for weeks between "Tony" and Lucas. She found herself falling for both men, but ultimately her feelings for Lucas had won out and the two had finally made passionate love. The only problem left then was that "Tony" was still her assignment and she feared what he might do to her and her family if she left him. But then Andre finally began showing his true colors and the agency began to close in on him. Sami finally came clean with Lucas about who she was and why she was dating Tony. She had sent Lucas and their son Will off to the country while she tied up the case, believing that "Tony" was about to be arrested and that she and Lucas would finally be free to be together. But on the evening before he was to be arrested Sami was discovered spying on him and she was tossed into a dungeon cell where she had come face to face with the real Count Dimera. Tony, it turned out, had been imprisoned for months and Sami found out that she had been sleeping instead with his twin cousin Andre. She'd been relieved at the news that the Tony, whom she had befriended the summer before, was not responsible for the murders of the ISA agents, but repulsed at well at the thought that she'd been duped into sleeping with the wrong man. Andre it seemed didn't care in the slightest that she now knew the truth, as he was obsessed with her and determined to take her away with him and make her his wife. He had threatened to kill not only Tony, but also Lucas and Will if she refused him, and she had reluctantly agreed. In the meantime she and Tony discovered that Andre was not in fact the mastermind behind the plan to destroy the ISA and Salem, but it was in fact Tony's ex-wife Kristen. Psychotic and vengeful after having spent years imprisoned in a harem, Kristen had been rescued by Andre and the two had put her plan to murder their enemies and for her to regain John Black's love, into action. As Andre and Kristen had gone off to a party in honor of Phillip Kiriakis' birthday, at which a bomb had been planted, Sami and Tony planned their escape. The duo managed to kill their guard, but set off a fire in the process, and all the while Tony had still remained chained to the wall of the cell. Finally, Phillip and Ops having sensed that something was amiss when Sami had failed to show up on "Tony's" arm for the party, had arrived and rescued them from the fiery Dimera mansion. Tony had been badly injured and Ops, Phillip and Sami had left him in the care of his manservant Bart while they had ridden off to stop the bomb from going off at the party and killing half of Salem's residents. They had arrived just in time to stop the bomb, but Andre took his cousin Lexie Carver hostage and tried to use her to escape.
With time running out to diffuse the bomb, Sami had offered herself in place of Lexie and Andre had greedily agreed. In the midst of the exchange, Lexie had unsuccessfully tried to disarm Andre and had wound up shot instead. Andre had grabbed Sami and tried to escape with her, when out of nowhere Lucas had appeared. As the guests at the party frantically tried to escape from the mansion before it exploded, Lucas went after Andre and Sami and Lucas. Andre knocked Sami unconscious when she tried to get away from him and Lucas had furiously attacked him, before the blast from the mansion had thrown them all to the ground. In the aftermath of the explosion, countless people lay dead. Among them were Lexie Carver, who had succumbed to the bullet wound that Andre had given her and Nicole Kiriakis who had been upstairs sleeping off a headache at the time of the explosion. Andre had been presumed dead, but a second explosion at the mansion had rendered the lifeless bodies that remained there unrecognizable and no one was every truly sure whether or not Andre was truly gone forever. Also missing was Kristen, who had lurked outside the party and had mysteriously disappeared after the blast. Her whereabouts were currently unknown, but Sami's stepfather John was currently tracking his former wife through Europe, much to the consternation of his current wife, Sami's mother, Marlena.
Lucas and Sami had survived the blast with only minor injuries and Sami had spent the night in the hospital with a broken leg. While she was there she had gone to visit Tony whose room was down the hall from hers. Tony was suffering from broken ribs and smoke inhalation from the fire at his mansion. After having gone through hell together, a bond had formed between the two and after comforting Tony over the loss of his sister, Lexie, the two had fallen asleep on his bed holding hands. Unfortunately Lucas had come back to the hospital in the middle of the night and had found them that way. Although Sami had explained that what she and Tony had was strictly friendship, a doubt had been planted in Lucas' mind at the sight of the two of them nestled so closely together. And that doubt had only grown over time. The fact that Sami was now Tony's partner in the club only added to Lucas' fears that he might someday lose his wife to Dimera's charms. But Sami was continually trying to bring Lucas and Tony together in the hopes that they might all be friends and Lucas would feel more secure in their relationship. Thus far, it hadn't worked and Sami was now at the end of her rope.
Sami sighed and took a last look in the mirror at her appearance. She decided to call Leine when she got back from lunch with her mother and find out what her friend had thought of Tony. She only hoped that Leine had found the Count as attractive and irresistible as most women did. If Leine and Tony hit it off and began dating, perhaps then Lucas would finally see that she and Tony were just friends and that Lucas had all of Sami's heart, forever and for always.