Part Five

Anthony Zacchara finished one sordid tale after another, the disappointment of his first daughter, the distance that had crept up between him and his son Johnny. "So here I was thinking all was lost. Claudia gone… Johnny turned on me… what did I have left?"

Elizabeth sat quietly in her chair, her fingers playing idly with her silverware, eating just enough to keep her mind from breaking into a thousand pieces.

"Well," Anthony continued on, "I have you."

"Me." She barely squeaked out the word.

He smiled, a bright cheerful grin that stopped her breath in her chest. "I kept asking myself after that night on Spoon Island… why I was so fixated on you." He looked her right in the eye. "Didn't you wonder the same thing?"

She didn't want to tell him that she tried to shut that part of the night out of her memories… that the rush of cold air on her ankles still gave her fits of anxiety. "Yes… I wondered about that."

"I couldn't get your face out of my mind… over and over I'd find myself thinking about you… and then one day…" he poured more wine for himself, "I opened my eyes and there was a picture of Johnny staring right at me. I closed my eyes… you. Opened them up… Johnny." He clapped his hands together. "By God, the two of you looked so alike, it had to be!"

"Looks," Elizabeth didn't know if she should argue with him or agree, she didn't want to upset him, "can be deceiving. How do you know that I… that we…"

"Don't trust my word, yet?" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He dropped it on the table between them. "Take a look for yourself."

Elizabeth reached out and opened the paper, reading it over and over as her heart sank deeper into despair.

Jason struggled to maintain a control of his temper as he stared at the wanton destruction about the Penthouse. "Did you look at the packages? What was inside of them?"

Sonny waved his hand, dismissing the anger and the questions. "It doesn't matter."

"It does matter," Jason moved around to stand in front of Sonny, his fists at his side, his eyes blazing with frustration, "it's not about Carly or the others… it's about Elizabeth."

A laugh burst from Sonny's lips. "Elizabeth? She's not part of our life."

"This isn't about the life, Sonny, this is about Elizabeth." He pushed a hand through his hair, trying to focus. "The night of the Black and White Ball… after Emily was killed Anthony Zacchara took Elizabeth out onto the castle walls and nearly made her jump." Jason felt his heart thunder in his chest as though Sonny could hear it. "We almost jumped together." The memory which he had worked hard to hide was now fresh at the front of his mind and it was fresh enough that he could almost feel her hand in his. "He knows I love her."

Sonny's snort of laughter was cruel and cold. "So just because he made you play doomed lovers on some castle parapet you think he's going to kidnap Elizabeth?" Sonny leaned forward and folded his hands together. "He's a crackpot mobster, Jason. You and I we're the real thing. We're the ones who are going to end up on top and the winners. For you to play into his little 'high school musical' is amateur hour. Where is your head, Jason?"

Jason looked around the room, strewn with pieces of paper, plastic wrappers and other things he wondered the same thing about Sonny. "I think I've finally got my head where it should be." He stood, walking a circle around the room, his eyes picking up the images of some kind of cookie wrapper, probably from the kids and the remnants of chess pieces near the fire grate. It looked worse that Christmas Morning with the kids… it was destruction, wanton destruction. Jason came to a stop in front of his oldest friend. "Sonny," he waited for the man to look up at him before he continued, "I'm going after Elizabeth, so anything you can remember about what was in those packages it would really help me here."

Leaning back into the plush cushions of his chair, Sonny crossed one leg over the other and regarded the younger man standing before him. "It was nothing, Jason… a bunch of toys and… and… candy and it was just a joke a horrible, ridiculous joke to put us on alert over… nothing." Taking a moment to gauge Jason's reaction he concluded their meeting with, "if Elizabeth is having problems with Lucky… again… do you really want to get back into that tug of war? We've got a business to run." Sonny reached into his pocket and then another one. "Where are those pills?"

Jason felt every muscle in his jaw bunch until it was painful enough to send sparks up along his spine. "I'm going to find Elizabeth, Sonny. Take care of the rest of it by yourself."

He left the Penthouse surprised that he'd left Sonny breathing.

Once outside the door he took a long deep breath and wrapped his mind around the problem. The packages destroyed, Elizabeth in Anthony Zacchara's hands… the next step. He had called Spinelli and Stan and had both of them working on the problem with their own skills, but he would need to talk to someone who knew Anthony Zacchara.

Heading for the elevators he decided to take a trip to see Johnny.

Elizabeth set aside the paper and took another long sip of wine. The birth certificate said it plainly. Her mother was Maria Zacchara and really deep down it made sense… Sarah had told her so very many times when they were children that Elizabeth didn't look like the rest of them… all blonde and beautiful… so she had to be adopted. Elizabeth had cried over and over about the comments, but she had almost accepted it herself. With her mother and father away in foreign countries so often, no one would have remembered if the Webbers had a third pregnancy.

"Is… is my mother alive?"

Anthony lifted his own glass and stared into the dark liquid. "I really don't know. I didn't even know she was pregnant with you… I thought she'd died and-"

"But I don't understand," she interrupted him, her mind a whirl of confused thoughts, "how did she… I mean.. how did you think she was dead and not know that she was pregnant with me?"

"I'd shot her… really I'd intended to shoot Johnny but she got in the way, it was an accident really."

"You…" Elizabeth pressed her hand to her chest to keep her beating heart from exploding, "you shot her when you were trying to shoot Johnny?"

"True," he mused, "and so I thought she was dead, but then again… your Jason shot me twice and I'm still alive." He laughed as though he'd shared a great joke, thumping his fist on the table and nearly knocking over his wine glass. "She must have hidden away, her folks perhaps, and had you."

"So," Elizabeth struggled to maintain her calm, "now that we've had our reunion, I can go home to my boys."

Anthony's smile curled his lips like a feral cat. "No… No, my dear girl, you and I have some work to do first."

Elizabeth stood. "At least let me call them and tell them I'm alright."

"No!" Anthony's open palm hit the desk with a sound thwack that said it must hurt as loud as it sounded. "You'll do as I say, Elizabeth."

She wanted to challenge him, to stare him down and ask 'or what' but she knew by the expression on his face that he wasn't going to react well and right now, while she had no clue where she was she held onto her tongue.

Elizabeth sat down in her chair.

Satisfied that she was now listening to him he gave her another smile. "Tomorrow, we begin."

"Begin?" Elizabeth had almost been too afraid to ask.

"Your lessons."

Johnny answered the door himself with a twist of a smile in one corner of his mouth. "My butler seems to be a little afraid of you." He looked over his shoulder down the corridor. "He saw you coming from the window and went straight for the bathroom." He looked at Jason thoughtfully. "I don't see a gun in your hand, is this a social call?"

Giving the younger man a look he shook his head. "I need your help."

The simple sentence seemed to shock the younger Zacchara who could only step back away from the door and murmur. "This is going to be interesting."