What if… Sonny found out that Olivia was pregnant with his kid instead of lying to him. What happens when that boy goes missing and the lives that Sonny Corinthos is living are forced to merge into one.
Family Ties - 1
There's a picture by Sonny's bed that he doesn't talk about; if she manages to get the question out he doesn't answer her; he's never once identified the woman and young boy in the picture.
Carly gives up asking after a while, whoever the woman is, whoever the boy is; Sonny is with her and Michael now. They don't matter.
But it's still a burning question, the picture has always been there, when they shared a bed she'd look over and there'd be another woman staring back at her. A solemn expression on her face but knowing eyes.
Like she'd been where Carly had been and knew things she didn't know.
She wonders if this unnamed woman and the boy she's holding close are the reason that Sonny wouldn't marry her.
"You don't know?" she asks Jason. Jason is as close to Sonny as anyone is. He trusts Jason in ways that he's never trusted her or Brenda or anyone that's come before or will come after.
She thinks it's because Jason will pick up a gun and kill for him, with no questions asked.
"It's a woman and a kid," Jason says, he glances at the picture briefly then looks at the door.
"I'll put it back before he comes home," Carly says, she rolls her eyes. She's moved the picture before, placed it face down so she wouldn't have those faces staring at her while she was trying to nap with Michael in a big bed that she's not allowed in any more.
OF + SC = DF
Sonny normally cooks, the four of them sitting around the table and its normal simple food. A pasta, a bread, some sort of wine and a glass of juice or milk for Michael.
They're family.
They talk about inconsequential things; when Michael lets get them a word in edgewise. Michael is ten and he chatters about things going on at school and friends and who said what when and how his classes are going.
Jason doesn't normally say anything, though he'll respond to a direct query if asked by Michael or Sonny. Sonny asks questions and seems to know the answers before Michael utters them. She doesn't ask if he has people watching Michael at school, he probably does and she doesn't want to know.
OF + SC = DF
Michael is finishing up homework at the table, Sonny and Jason had disappeared to talk about things that they don't want her to know about.
She tries to not take exception; because she's not some mob moll, she's not some bimbo tramp or Brenda with a wire.
She thinks she's more then proved her faithfulness to Sonny and the life that he's chosen.
The knock at the door startles her, Sonny hadn't mentioned expecting anyone and for someone to be knocking at the door they would have had to get by the guards.
She glances in the direction of the office, sees no sign of Sonny or Jason appearing and sighs and goes to answer it herself.
Michael is looking up from his homework and she makes a face at him before she swings the door open.
The woman from the pictures is standing there. It's been raining for almost two weeks now and she's dripping water on the hallway carpet. Her eyes are red and swollen.
Max is standing behind her and Carly doesn't even know what to call the expression on his face.
The woman blinks at her and makes an effort to stand up straight, fingers going to her hair and rubbing across her eyes.
"I was looking for Sonny Corinthos?" she asks. Her voice is slightly accented, probably from somewhere down by the city or Jersey then.
A knot makes itself known in her stomach, curling up and around itself until it's a hard ball and Carly has to force herself to swallow.
"Sonny?" Carly calls, she doesn't project her voice too loudly, she almost doesn't want Sonny to hear her. The woman doesn't look dangerous, just devastated. Like her entire life is in shambles and Carly is most definitely positive that whatever else she does or doesn't know, she doesn't want this woman and whatever her problems are in her home even if it isn't exactly her home anymore.
"Mom?" Michael appears next to her and Carly loops an arm over his shoulders and leans down.
"Go up to your room, lock the door," she breathes into his ear.
Michael looks from her to the woman in the doorway to Max still standing like a worthless lump behind her.
Sonny comes out of the office, "Carly, did you need something?" he sounds annoyed and irritated all in equal measure then he stops dead in his tracks as soon as he sees the woman.
"Olivia?" he sounds disbelieving and shocked and the woman, Olivia, just sobs and crumples.
OF + SC = DF
Sonny doesn't make it to her time but Max does, his arms loop around her and she doesn't hit the ground just sags in his arms.
Carly is standing there, hand on the door and Sonny can see a thousand questions racing over her face. She thankfully doesn't ask any of them because she knows him well enough now to know that he wouldn't answer any of them anyway.
Max half carries Olivia in and Carly steps back and away, closing the door while she watches Sonny go to his knees and pull Olivia into his arms.
Olivia is sobbing, huge, desperate sobs and there's a keening noise coming from her throat.
He cups her face in his hands, presses his lips to her forehead, her skin is cold and wet and he tugs her into his arms heedless of the fact that she's drenched.
He ignores Carly's staring, ignores Jason appearing in the doorway wondering why he hasn't come back. Ignores everything but Olivia being here when she shouldn't be.
"Where's Dante?" he whispers and he can feel every muscle in her body give and she's only supported by virtue of Sonny not being able to let her go.
Olivia is supposed to be with Dante, somewhere safe while this played out however it did.
"He," her face is pressed to his shoulder and he can feel her tears soaking through the shirt he's wearing. "Someone took him, someone took our baby, Sonny," she sobs.
OF + SC = DF
It takes almost an hour, he can feel the seconds ticking away; whoever had taken his son getting further and further away from him by the moment.
He settles Olivia in his bed, gives her a pill and supports her back while she swallows it down with a glass of water.
She's mostly stopped crying but he thinks that's because the shock has finally settled in.
"Tell me what happened," he says. He sits on the edge of the bed, one hand linked with hers. He doesn't wear a wedding band, it would raise too many questions if he did; but he put the one that is around Olivia's finger there when she turned 18.
It hadn't been a shotgun wedding, but only because he'd been living with the Falconeri's for two years and he and Olivia had been married in all but name only from the moment her older brother had tracked him down, punched him in the face then told him Olivia was pregnant.
"Someone took him," she says again, her voice is dull and he cradles her against him. He doesn't need to look to see that Carly and Jason are hovering in the doorway, doesn't need to look to know that Max is waiting for instructions.
"I need a bit more then that," he says gently. Quietly.
"He…" she rubs her forehead against the line of his jaw, fingers tightening on his. "He's been unhappy, angry. We got into a fight about the guards and his ditching them when he feels like they're oppressing his freedom of movement."
"They're there for your protection, for his protection."
"I know, he knows that too," her voice breaks a little. "He just, you know that girl that we thought he was seeing? She wouldn't go out with him anymore because of the guards. And Frankie DelVecchio pretty much told him the same thing."
"I thought we agreed he wasn't going to have anything to do with the DelVecchio boy," Sonny says. He remembers a long two hour phone call where Dante insisted that they were just friends and declared that he would never, ever, in a million years forgive them if Sonny and Olivia decided that they couldn't see each other anymore.
"He's sixteen, he told us what we wanted to hear and then did the exact opposite," Olivia mutters. "You remember being sixteen, don't you?"
He does.
At sixteen he'd been in a bad place and headed towards a worse one. Until fate had stepped in, punched him in the face and announced that one broken condom had resulted in a baby and that it expected Sonny to step up to the plate and take both responsibility for his actions and be a man in doing so.
"Tell me what happened," he asks softly.
"We had a compromise, the guards would still be there, but Vito would take him to school and pick him up and it was all going okay, but then… he ditched school and his guards and we're pretty sure he was going to meet up with Frankie but…"
"But?"
"He never made it there," Olivia says. "Frankie gave up waiting on him and when school was supposed to be over he came to the garage to ask Dante what was up and…"
"When? How long?" Sonny asks. He's trying to draw up a to do list in his head. It keeps getting broken up by the fact that Dante is missing.
"Yesterday," Olivia says.
"Yesterday? And I'm just finding out about this now?"
"Everyone in the neighborhood is looking for him, there's uniforms and your guys and they're all combing the street looking for him. I didn't want… if he was just hiding out with the girl that he was apparently not seeing or that Frankie had maybe just missed him, I didn't want you to freak out and…" she starts crying again, silent tears streaking down her cheeks and he kisses her.
A soft press of his lips to hers and he wraps both arms around her. Holding her tightly to his chest, murmuring soothing nonsense in her ear, against her skin.
He can hear Carly muttering at Jason in the door and he doesn't look over, just holds Olivia until she falls into a restless sleep then repositions her on the bed. Tucking a quilt around her that her mother had made for him when he realized that he wouldn't be going home anytime soon.
He stands, steps away from the bed and turns. Carly and Jason are staring at him and he doesn't have time for the questions in their eyes, he just stalks past them and pulls out his cell phone.
Two taps for memory 6, "we've got a problem."
OF + SC = DF