Chapter 35: In Fire
There was no way in hell Lucas was going to leave Sami alone with EJ. EJ was always able to make her believe that he was well-intentioned and misunderstood. Sami always ended up willing to marry EJ, or move in with EJ, or let EJ raise her children.
There was no way in hell Lucas was going to leave Sami alone with EJ. EJ was dangerous. EJ had almost killed Sami more than once. EJ was supposed to be in prison for what he had done to Allie.
There was no way in hell Lucas was going to leave Sami alone with EJ. He had spent thirteen years behind bars because for shooting EJ, but he had never been able to reap the benefits of his actions. He looked at the peephole in Allie's bedroom wall and relished the feeling of his gun.
"I see Lucas and Alicia want to stay and watch," said EJ.
"Allie," began Lucas, "go downstairs and—"
"She leaves with you or she doesn't leave," said EJ with finality.
"I told you to go, Lucas," Sami repeated. "EJ and I want to be alone, and we don't need a child hanging around."
"Mom?" whispered Allie.
Allie's voice triggered something inside Lucas. Instead of fear and rage, he felt confidence and trust. Anxiety was still there, too, and frustration, but he knew what he had to do. He couldn't take any chance of Allie getting caught in the crossfire or grabbed by one of EJ's men. Sami didn't want to take that chance either.
"Let's go, Allie."
Lucas and Allie walked silently from the house and into the sunlight. They strolled to a shopping district and planted themselves in a crowded café, just a father and a daughter enjoying a leisurely morning.
"Are they really gone?" Sami asked EJ when she could no longer hear Lucas' and Allie's footsteps. "Do you have someone waiting to stop them?"
"Why does that matter, darling? As long as they aren't here to interrupt us, who cares where they are?"
"Allie is my daughter. I don't want her to overhear any of this."
"Alicia is very impressionable," mused EJ thoughtfully. "You do know that I never really—I didn't do what she said I did."
Sami pointed at the hole in the wall. "Then why did you need that?"
EJ laughed humorlessly and released his grip on Sami. He turned away from her. Sami eyed the broad expanse of his back and clutched the gun concealed in her coat pocket. But some sixth sense whispered wait. She was sure she would get a better shot. She wanted to give Lucas and Allie as much time as possible to get away.
And on a visceral level, she wanted—needed—to hear this. If she was going to take things into her own hands, she had to be sure, not just for Lucas and her children, but for herself.
"It's really your fault," he said after a long pause.
She stroked the hidden gun with one finger and resisted the urge to go after him with her bare hands instead. "How so?" she asked neutrally.
"You were the one who first suggested it, that night when Alicia had a fever and we were bathing her, comforting her, as parents do. You left to get the baby aspirin from Gianni's room. When you came back in I was washing her legs and you insisted I was—you accused me of fondling her. The idea had never entered my head, but when you left us—"
"I was in a coma! A coma you put me in!"
EJ shrugged. "That argument was as much you as it was me, and you know that, darling. We were always so much alike, and even though that was what drew us together, sometimes we were so very… combustible."
Sami tried hard not to look at Allie's bed and give away what was concealed there.
"I did feel guilty, of course," EJ continued. "Terribly guilty. I missed you. If I hadn't had the twins, I might have given up on life."
"Tragic," said Sami drily.
"But I had to go on for our children. Your children."
"About that. Did you always know Johnny wasn't your son?"
"Gianni will always be my child. Biology doesn't matter. That's why you named our son after John Black—he wasn't your biological father, after all, but he loved you and he raised you just the same."
"But biologically!" It was getting harder and harder for Sami to contain her anger. She had never been noted for her impulse control, but now everything depended upon it. "Biologically, did you always know—"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes, it matters! What if Johnny had had a medical condition, and we had no way of knowing his family's medical history?"
"That didn't happen. If it had, yes, I would have made certain that the physicians had the correct information."
"So you knew," said Sami, and it felt like a sucker punch. She wasn't sure why she was so affected. She had believed EJ when he'd promised that their marriage of convenience would protect her family. She had believed EJ when he had told her he was paralyzed after their wedding. She had believed EJ when he had told her that he was at risk of being deported. Each time, EJ had lied and she had found herself more tightly bound to him.
"What I knew—what I knew was that I was meant to be that beautiful boy's father. I risked so much so I would have the chance. I risked ruining our friendship forever when I pushed you to consummate our love before you were ready. Unfortunately, I was unable to be present at the birth—don't worry, I forgive you, I know it wasn't your fault Lucas played that juvenile trick with the handcuffs. But when I stood in the nursery in the hospital, looking at Alicia and Gianni... it was an overwhelming feeling of pride, and fulfillment, that I never felt before or since. A nurse asked me which one was mine, and I told her 'does it matter?' It had nothing to do with DNA. I knew I loved them both."
"So why didn't you have the tests fixed for both of them?"
"It would have looked suspicious. They were tested twice before they were born, once by my father's people and once by the Hortons. Those tests showed that their biological father was Lucas. It was more expedient to let everyone believe that only Alicia was tested before they were born. I knew, and you knew, that I was meant to be Gianni's father, but I'm sure Lucas would have interfered."
Bile rose in Sami's throat. "What makes you think I knew that you were meant to be Johnny's father?"
"You didn't challenge the test. You took my word for it. You weren't even in Salem when the results came down, but you were eager to believe me because it was what you wanted. What we both wanted."
"What we both wanted," Sami echoed numbly. What if she had wanted this, somehow, subconsciously? Had she been so intrigued by EJ that she had been willing to steal a son from Lucas for the second time in her life?
"You never were able to admit what you wanted," said EJ nostalgically. "That night in the car, you preferred to call it rape rather than admit that you were attracted—"
The numbness left Sami as quickly as it had come. "God damn you, EJ!" she shouted. "YOU BASTARD, YOU RAPED ME!"
EJ circled her like a wild animal stalking its prey. "You always were deliciously beautiful when you were angry."
"Angry doesn't begin to cover it! I am furious, I am livid, I am repulsed, I am—"
EJ moved toward her. She forced herself to stand her ground. EJ placed his hands on her face. She forced herself to let him. EJ kissed her passionately. She forced herself to kiss back, all the while remembering that he had done the same thing to her precious, sensitive Allie in this very room.
Sami pulled the gun from her pocket and shot EJ in the groin.
Naturally, their kiss broke off shortly thereafter.
EJ fell to the floor with a shrieking howl of pain.
"What the fuck did you do that for?" he gasped as a dark, wet stain spread across his trousers and onto Allie's bedroom rug.
"Did I ever tell you about Alan Harris?" Sami asked.
"Do I look like I'm in the mood for a pop quiz Damn you, Samantha, yes, Alan Harris was the boy who attacked you when you were a teenager."
"When I was just a couple of years older than Allie is now. He was a lot like you."
EJ writhed on the floor. "You know I didn't rape you. That was something you said because you couldn't bring yourself to admit that you cheated on Lucas—"
"That was exactly what he said. If you didn't want it, you wouldn't have come here wearing a short skirt. You can't handle what you did, you're confused and upset, so you're pretending it's rape. That's what Alan did to me, that's what you did to me, and that's what you're doing to Allie when you say she's sensitive and impressionable and not sure what happened."
EJ lunged at Sami and made a grab at her leg. She sidestepped neatly and pointed her gun at him once more.
"Did I ever tell you about my friend Jamie?"
"Can we end this nonsense, please?"
"When Jamie and I were kids—this is around the same time Alan raped me—her father molested her. Jamie's mother blamed Jamie. She thought it was partly Jamie's fault, what her father did. She couldn't quite believe Jamie. So Jamie moved out. That was part of why at first I couldn't tell anyone what Alan had done to me, watching people not believe Jamie. I always remembered what Jamie's father did, and how her mother made it worse. So don't think for a second that I would ever take your word over my Allie's."
Sami leaned closer to survey the damage done by the bullet. "But you won't be raping anyone else, now, will you?"
"Bloody insane," EJ muttered. His face had set into tight lines of pain.
"If I am, it's what you made me."
"If you're going to kill me, get on with it."
"I will," said Sami. "But first I'm going to tell you that I did not want you to rape me, I did not want you to be Johnny's father, I did not want to marry you, and I did not want to come to England with you. You held my husband and my children over my head. You didn't give me a choice. I always chose Lucas and our children. Never you."
EJ gagged; Sami wasn't sure if it was a physical reflex or a comment on her expression of love for Lucas. "What a waste. Vibrant, beautiful, devious, and you'd rather chase that dull, judgmental clod Lucas than be with a man who appreciates everything you are."
Sami raised the gun and pointed it at EJ's heart. "Any last words?" she asked. She caught sight, once more, of the peephole. Blood roared in her ears and her vision tinged with red as she imagined Allie alone and frightened.
"I am a phoenix. I will never die. You will never be able to kill that part of me that's in you, or in Alicia, or in my Gianni. You will never be able to go back to your dull little life with Lucas without thinking of me, without remembering that—whatever you say—you did choose me over him time after time. And I'll look forward to seeing you at our reunion in hell."
"You hurt my children. No one hurts my children, EJ."
He opened his mouth to retort, never one to let someone else have the last word, but she lunged at him, held the gun to his head, and squeezed the trigger in one motion.
The gun slipped from her hand and a rush of dizziness overwhelmed her. She slid to the blood soaked floor and dragged herself as far away from the body as possible.
She didn't like blood. How she was the daughter of one doctor and the mother of another, Sami would never understand.
She tried to make herself take slow, deep breaths. "Get a grip, Sami," she said aloud. "You started this; you have to finish it."
She'd started it more than thirteen years before when she'd met EJ in the cabin and failed to drop the match.
"Why? Why did you do this to me? I mean, I actually thought we were friends. I really did care about you. Obviously you didn't care about me at all. I was just a means to an end. You just wanted to make your daddy proud. For that... for that, you raped me. You used the fact that I loved Lucas so much to force me to have sex with you. And you've been torturing me ever since. Lucas loves me. And he has forgiven me so many times. He doesn't deserve this. He doesn't deserve any of this. He is my future, my hope, and my baby's hope. And I am not gonna let you destroy that future. This is for John and my mother. This is for my Uncle Steve and my Aunt Kayla, and for Max and Stephanie and my sister Belle and Shawn and everyone else that you have tortured. I hope you burn in hell."
But she would go to hell, too, if she did this. She didn't know if the baby she was carrying had been fathered by Lucas or by EJ. She might be facing a lifetime of looking a child in the face and knowing that she had taken away his chance to know his father. She had almost done that to Will, and Will and Lucas were so close, and Will had helped Lucas grow from the brat she'd met as a teenager to the wonderful man he was now.
Lucas had been her friend, and then he had done terrible things to her, and now he had matured into a great father, fiancé, son, grandson, nephew, brother, friend…
Once she had stood over a semiconscious Lucas and wished that he would die. It would have been the biggest mistake of her life.
The match blew out.
Celeste swept around her.
"Samantha, what is taking so long?"
"I can't. Celeste, I can't do it."
"You know what this means, don't you?"
"Yes. It means he owns me now. He won. Oh, God."
God, indeed. God hadn't meant her to be a murderer.
"There was no other way," she reminded herself as all her old doubts and fears and moral codes reasserted themselves. "No other way."
She found the book of matches; it took four or five tries before she was able to light one. "They'll need to scrape what's left of you up with a spoon to get enough DNA to identify you," she told EJ's corpse without really looking at it. Despite what she'd done, she couldn't bring herself to accept that the ruined body before her was EJ, the man who had once been her friend, the man who had raised her children. "They won't notice the bullet holes."
EJ's clothing was soaked through with blood and sweat, and one match after another fizzled out.
"No gasoline in your stash, EJ?" Sami asked. "I can't just start with that stuff under the bed, I'd blow myself up, too."
Hastily, she grabbed a stack of books from Allie's shelf and ripped the pages from the spines. She built a small, hot fire between the body and the bed.
Then, hoping it worked, she ran.
She was a block away when she heard the explosion. She fell to her knees, not so much from force as from shock.
She remembered standing outside the smoking cabin with Aunt Kayla. "I wanted to kill Stefano, but I just couldn't do it," Kayla admitted. "I took an oath to do no harm."
She remembered sitting in a hospital room, pregnant with her twins, and whispering to her mother that she wanted to end things with the DiMeras, permanently. Marlena told her how many times she had wanted to hurt Stefano and EJ, to put an end to the suffering. "But," said Marlena, her voice laden with meaning, "we don't do that."
"God, I did it," Sami whispered. "God, I'm going to hell."
But she could take an eternity of torments, she reminded herself, if it meant that he children would be safe.
She walked the way she thought Lucas and Allie must have. Would they be waiting for her at the hotel? Had they somehow been detained?
Had they still been in the house?
Her body began to shake uncontrollably.
I can't fall apart like this, not now, she reminded herself. Not out in public, a block away. Lucas got her out. Lucas's job was to get her out, and my job was to make sure she never went back. He trusted me enough to leave and I trusted him enough to end it.
But she couldn't make herself move. Her limbs were as unresponsive as they had been when she'd emerged from the coma to enter a new world where her twins were half-grown and Lucas had grown used to her absence.
She remembered how she had focused herself throughout her grueling physical therapy.
"I love you, Allie," she said, and she pulled herself into a sitting position.
"I love you, Johnny," she said, and she stood.
"I love you, Will," she said, and she took her first step.
I love you, Lucas, she completed the thought as she tried to make herself look as normal as possible. That was no small task.
Sami was so overwhelmed by thoughts and memories and the heaviness of what she had done that she would never have seen Lucas and Allie had they not seen her. The two of them appeared from thin air—or perhaps from a café—and placed themselves beside Sami.
Allie asked the obvious question. "Where's EJ?"
"He's never going to hurt you again. Not you or anyone else."
Allie raised wide, liquid eyes to look at Sami. "Is he dead?"
Sami pulled Lucas and Allie into a hard, protective three-way hug. "Yes, Baby Girl. He's dead."
TBC