GreyStone. Morning.
Sonny looked out of his window to Kate's house.
"You want to go back to that?," Jason said. He hadn't missed what Sonny's eyes were focused on.
"No," said Sonny. He turned away from the window and went to the bar. "No. I want to know what Claudia's up to."
"I told you, I can't get to the Island."
Sonny threw a shot glass at the wall and it shattered.
Jason continued in measured tones. "She has a doctor's appointment tomorrow. And we have people on the docks and at the hospital. She can't stay on the Island forever, Sonny."
"You know who we need?," Sonny said. "Luke Spencer. He knows that Island. He knows ways on it and around it that can't be protected."
"I tried finding Luke," Jason said.
"And?," Sonny asked.
"He's missing."
Sonny pounded his fist against the bar. Then he jerked his head up. Decision made. "Okay," he said. "Then we send our messages through Johnny."
****************************************
General Hospital. Examining room. The same morning.
Claudia sat up on the examining table, fully dressed.
There was a knock and Nikolas cracked the door open. "Can I come back yet?"
"You could've stayed the whole time," Claudia said. "But sure. I'm dressed. Come in."
Nikolas came into the room. "How was it?"
"Fine. She's just putting her report together, checking on some blood work. After she gives me the all-clear, we can go. I still can't believe you were able to change my appointment."
"The fewer people who know you are here, the better," he said.
He took a seat by the table.
"You can ask me," Claudia said.
"Ask you what?"
"How I got into this mess," she said.
"You don't have to explain anything to me."
"You're going to all this trouble to protect me, I figure you deserve to know why."
"All right," Nikolas said, "Here's what I don't understand. One of the first things you said to me was that you hated Sonny. And one of the next things you said after that was that he'd hate you too if he knew what you had done. Here's a person who was bound to hate you, and then bound to kill you. Who goes ahead and marries that person?"
"That would be me."
"Why?"
She could have pulled off the insane act with almost anyone else, but Nikolas knew her. "It was a command performance. The marriage. My father insisted."
Nikolas was going to argue, but he remembered that both Johnny and Claudia had talked realistically about Anthony killing Claudia. Nikolas could see where Claudia probably had very little choice.
"But there's more," Claudia said. Here goes nothing, she thought. "I wanted it." She quickly glanced at Nikolas, making sure he wasn't blanching. "If I hadn't done this, the Zacchara organization would be gone as soon as my father died. John still isn't ready to step up. There are years and years of my family's money and history and work in this organization. Sonny would be easier to dismantle than my father. And then I would clear the way for John when he was ready. I was saving my heritage. For John." She tried stopping there. She really did, but Nikolas was like her own personal truth serum. And so, "And then I liked the power I had once I was inside. Sonny was much more willing to involve me in the business than my father was. So there you go."
Clauda sat waiting for some kind of response, and was grateful Nikolas didn't follow up with questions about why she was sleeping with Sonny. He's probably too busy drawing parallels to his grandmother, she thought.
Instead, Nikolas was wondering how he could get her to see that a life was possible outside of all of this.
Dr. Lee entered the room, carrying Claudia's chart.
"Well?," Claudia said.
"Much improved. Blood pressure back within normal range, and you're at a good weight for this stage of pregnancy. I'm going to take you out of the high risk category, but don't take that as permission to get back into the kind of stress you had before. You can start back with light exercise. Sex is okay for now. Make sure you're sleeping enough."
Claudia slid off of the examination table. "So I'm good?"
"Not so fast," Dr. Lee said. "We're still waiting for your blood work to come back."
Claudia hopped back up on the table. Dr. Lee left.
Claudia looked at Nikolas, "I think I can take it from here."
"You sure?"
"Yeah," she answered. "You're going to miss that 10 o'clock call if you stay here much longer. I'll be fine. I'll probably end up on the launch right after yours. With your guard following me."
"He's just doing his job," Nikolas said. "All right. I'll see you back at home."
****************************************
Johnny's Garage.
"Stop hiding behind women's skirts, Johnny," Sonny said.
"If you're gonna talk to me," Johnny said, "Olivia stays."
"Olivia," Sonny warned.
"What do you need me to leave for?," Olivia asked.
"It's business," Sonny said.
"We don't talk alone anymore, Sonny. That's the deal. And when I say I want someone there, I don't mean one of your men," said Johnny, gesturing to Milo.
Sonny's phone rang. He checked the number and connected to the call. "Yeah? ... When? ... No. I'll handle it." He disconnected the call, and then turned back to Johnny. "We'll continue this conversation later."
Sonny left.
"You wanna tell me what that was about?," Olivia said.
"Leverage," Johnny said, staring into the distance.
"For what?"
"The last time Sonny held me hostage, Claudia was willing to give up anything he wanted to get me back. Sonny knows that. And he wants a lot from my sister."
Held hostage?, Olivia thought. No. Johnny must not be explaining this right.
***************************************
Port Charles docks.
The launch wasn't there when Claudia arrived at the docks. Sonny was.
Claudia quickly backed away, and one of Nikolas' security guards went to her side.
"I'm not here to bother you," Sonny said. "I just want to talk."
Claudia weighed her options. She turned to the guard. "Frisk him."
Sonny removed a gun from his shoulder holster and held it out in supplication. Then he raised his arms and submitted to the search.
When the guard was done, he took Sonny's gun and stepped back.
"Thank you," Claudia said to the guard. The guard moved away and made a phone call as he watched from a distance. Claudia turned to Sonny. "What do you want?"
"How's the baby?"
"The baby's fine."
"Right on schedule?"
"Nice try," Claudia said. "Did you think I'd deliver the date of my death to you?"
"I'm not going to hurt you, Claudia. You're carrying my child."
"And once I'm not?"
Sonny clasped his hands together. "I could never hurt the mother of my child."
"I don't know that."
"Well, I can't convince you if you stay holed up in Dracula's castle where I can't see you."
"Maybe I don't want to be convinced."
"We need each other, Claudia."
"Last I checked, only one person is carrying this baby."
"The organization is falling apart."
Claudia was silent.
Sonny continued, "The Russian shipments. I'm using a translator. But the money is late."
"What else?"
"Your Uncle Rudy is withholding the income from the arms contracts." Claudia remained silent. "He hasn't heard from you, Claudia -- it looks bad!"
"Have Dominic talk to him."
"He's gonna wonder why his niece won't get on the phone." Time to get down to brass tacks. "What are you doing, Claudia? I haven't got any divorce papers yet, and I don't think I'm gonna get 'em. Because you know if one of us goes down, both of us go down."
"I know."
"So?"
"So I need to think. Right now, I need to stay alive long enough to have my baby. And then I'll let you know."
"This can't wait five months!"
In the silence that followed, it occurred to Sonny that Claudia hadn't once raised her voice.
The launch approached the dock.
"I need some time. I'll let you know as soon as I can," said Claudia.
She nodded to the guard. He stood by Sonny as Claudia boarded the launch. As soon as she moved out of sight, the guard handed Sonny his gun back.
****************************************
The docks. Spoon Island.
Nikolas met Claudia on the pier.
"What did he want?," he asked.
"It's okay," she reassured him. "It was just business. He's getting a little desperate, since my defection makes him seem weak."
They started on the path to the guest house.
"Sonny is not ready for international dominance," she explained. "The players are unfamiliar with him. He only speaks two languages. And he hasn't really done anything."
"But he's the head of the Zacchara organization?," Nikolas said incredulously.
"Sonny has an ego that's not quite the size of your grandmother's, but it comes close. For months, he's been trumpeting the fact that he 'took down the Zacchara organization from the inside.' His takeover consisted of marrying the daughter while the son was uninterested in the business. And once inside, do you want to know what his genius maneuver was?," she asked Nikolas.
"Go on," he said.
"I told him my father shot Kate Howard. From there, the power balance of the Zacchara family shifted."
Nikolas stopped walking. "Wait. Are you telling me that the only reason Sonny has complete control over your family's organization is because you threw in with him?"
"Well, if you want to be blunt... yes."
"So why don't you just withdraw from the alliance?"
"Because that would leave everything in complete disarray. I'm a woman, Nikolas. There's no way I could take over. No matter how right I am for the job. And John doesn't want the job."
"Let me help you."
"No way." The last thing she wanted was Nikolas involved in that world. He had taken on too much already.
They reached the guest house.
"I'll be over for Spencer soon," she said, a little winded.
"I could just send him over to you."
"Hey, you know what? You could."
"And then when you're done, you could bring him back over and we could have dinner," he suggested.
"Okay."
"I mean, just you and me."
Claudia looked at him curiously. "Okay."
"I'll have the nanny bring Spencer over in an hour, if that's good for you."
"It's good for me."
"All right," he said.
She stared at his back as he left.
****************************************
General Hospital. Eighth floor Nurses Station.
Elizabeth checked through patient charts. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a black t-shirt recede into a nearby corridor. She looked up. There was Jason. He signaled to her.
Elizabeth looked around, making sure no one was watching her, and then joined Jason in the corridor.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi. I'm sorry to do this to you, but I need something."
"What is it?," she asked.
"You have a patient here. Sonny's wife. She's pregnant. I need to know how she's doing."
Jason had been re-born on the day of his accident, and sometimes Elizabeth swore it made him look like an innocent kid much younger than his years. "I don't work with that department, Jason."
"Yeah, I know. But I really need to know how the pregnancy is going."
As he waited for an answer, a sign that she would help him, she was suddenly flooded with memories of Jake's birth. Of course. Sonny wanted to be there when his child was born. He wanted to know that the baby was okay.
Elizabeth touched Jason's hand. "She's okay. You can tell Sonny the baby's fine. Right on schedule," she confided.
She didn't even have to look in a file, he thought. Something to look into.
"I should ...," Elizabeth pointed to the Nurses Station.
"Okay. Thanks. It's important."
By the time Elizabeth made her way to the Nurses Station, Jason was nowhere to be seen.
But Matt was.
He leaned over and whispered to her, "So the other night ... those IVs were for the mob, weren't they? Big saline smuggling ring?"
He looked at her with mock wide-eyed wonder. She laughed.
*****************************************
Wyndemere. Study.
Alexis paced the floor.
Nikolas entered.
"Sorry to drop by unexpectedly," said Alexis. "Is Claudia around?"
Nikolas narrowed his eyes at Alexis. "You want to speak with Claudia?"
"Yes. And no, I'm not looking to argue with her, it's just -- well, something she said the other day has been bothering me."
"What?"
"Well, to begin with, the 'pfft' sound bothered me, but that's not what I'm talking about. It's probably nothing. Is she around?"
"She's at the guest house, getting ready for Spencer," Nikolas said. "If you'd like, you can walk him over and ask her your question."
********************************************
The Guest House.
Claudia knew something was wrong when she came down the stairs, but she didn't betray an ounce of that knowledge. Instead, with every step she took, she also took inventory of what was at her disposal. Someone was looking to catch her off guard, so it was in her best interest to return the favor when they finally struck. She hoped against hope that there weren't any explosives involved. In the first place, Spencer was due here soon. And in the second place, she did not know how to disarm explosives.
So far, so good. No one had made an appearance. And she was well-dressed. That would work in her favor, Mob or no Mob.
Might as well get this over with, she thought. She went into the kitchen. No one there. She set the tea kettle to boil, and then surreptitiously checked the utensil drawer. Empty. Oh, well. She silently shut the drawer.
She quietly removed her heels, and then removed her stockings. She weighed her options, and then put her heels back on. They might come in handy later.
Then she took the broom handle and used it to swing the kitchen door open. A figure slid into view, and then lost its balance when its victim was not there. Claudia took advantage of her opponent's weakness and quickly moved in behind, using a stocking to choke her would-be attacker.
Her attacker slashed at Claudia with a knife. Surface wound. Claudia backed away, dropped the stocking, pulled a mini-revolver from her thigh holster and aimed it at her unwelcome visitor.
The visitor turned to face her.
"Oh, Grandmother, what a very big knife you have," Claudia said.
