Carly growls as she walks out of the hospital lab right into Luke, with Francis following close behind. He is standing across the hall from the door just looking at her. She had come to the hospital to get bloodwork done for her appointment in a few days, and of course her demented uncle pops up. In the few weeks since they've been back from their honeymoon, Luke has been a persistently annoying jackass, popping up any time she goes out. She's beginning to think the man is stalking her; it's the only thing that makes sense.
"Will you leave me alone, you crazy old man? I'm not doing this again, and definitely not here." She argues with a glare, her eyes darting around looking for any listening ears.
He just chuckles, "You're cute, thinking you get a say."
Turning to her guard, she asks, "Can't you make him leave? Or shoot him?"
"Sorry, Mrs. Morgan, no can do. He's the boss's partner." He apologizes.
Muttering under her breath, she turns and walks away from him. He simply joins her, walking beside her. "I'm serious, Caroline. She needs to know, and you need to tell her soon. I'm running out of patience, little girl. If you don't…"
She stops, and facing him, yells, "Tell her, then! If you want her to know so bad, do it. Just leave me alone!"
"It'll be a whole lot better coming from you." He counters.
"Better for who? Because it's definitely not better for me. Seems to me it's just better for you," she accuses. "Why do you want her to know so badly anyway? She doesn't want me around. Clearly. You hate me. What, you want us to start having Sunday dinners as a family? Take family pictures during the holidays to send out as Christmas cards?"
Getting in her face, he tells her in a hard voice, "You don't know what the hell you're talking about. She loves you, has since she found out she was pregnant with you. She will eventually want to have a relationship with you. I know she'll want to have a relationship with that kid."
Seeing movement at the end of the hall, she drags Luke into an empty room, closing the door with Francis moving to stand in front of it. Carly rolls her eyes at him, "Yeah, she loves me bunches. She got rid of me at the first chance and never looked back. Screw whether I was okay, she had her fancy doctor husband and her kids, the ones she chose to love and keep. So, don't sit there telling me she loves me."
"She was a kid! A kid in a really bad situation," he argues, heated. Then, more calmly, but still with an edge, "And it was the best thing for you; we were giving you a family, a mom and a dad. That's more than me and Barbara Jean ever got."
Bitterly, she snaps, "Maybe you should have done a little follow up on that. But, why would either of you bother, right? Her life is going great, why worry about her kid?"
"What, did Mommy and Daddy not give you an allowance?" He asks with anger in his voice.
"Screw you!" She runs her hands through her hair, turning away from him.
"Tell me then, what's this hellfire revenge all about? What crime did my baby sister commit that made it okay to go open season on her marriage?" He walks around, getting in her face.
"You left me with them! My Daddy," she grits out with a sarcastic edge, "was a bastard who left as soon as he could. But, not before he let me know at every turn how unwanted and worthless I was. He left us with nothing. We had to move into a trailer park, and not one of those nice family ones. No, Mama couldn't afford something like that, even working two or three jobs. No, I was left all alone while she worked herself to death in the type of place where you better watch your back. That's the better life you gave me, thank you so freaking much." Clenching her fists, she takes a deep breath. His face is troubled when she looks back at him. "It would have been really nice if you gave a damn back then. Now, it's my turn to not give a damn."
She turns to leave, furious, but stops, standing in front of the door facing away as Luke challenges her, "You're not fooling anyone, Caroline. You want your mother, it's clearly written on your face. You're just scared. But, remember something, little girl, Spencers aren't cowards."
Her head bows as the words hit her like a punch to the sternum. It almost sounds like he is claiming her as a Spencer. When a tear drips down her face, she rushes out of the room like she's being chased. She's in such a rush, she doesn't see Bobbie watching as first Carly and then her brother come out of the same room. Bobbie frowns at the look on Luke's face. If she didn't know better, she'd think her brother cared about the young woman who stole her husband.
Getting into the elevator, Carly suddenly finds herself alone with Alan and her guard. His face somehow both brightens and looks intensely sad at her presence. His eyes drop to her stomach which had finally begun to show. The baby bump is obvious in the tight red maternity dress she is wearing. A look of such love and longing flashes in his eyes.
"Hello, Carly. How are you doing? Are you here for an appointment?" He asks in a gentle, friendly voice.
She can't help but be moved by his emotional reaction and kindness. With only a little annoyance leaking through, she admits, "Just some lab work. Everything is going well with the pregnancy so far. It's so textbook, I even have the cliched cravings of pickles with disgusting pairings. Everyone was horrified last night when I ate ice cream, caramel, and pickles." She gives him an impish grin, "I thought Sonny was going to kick me out, but your… Jason went and bought it for me anyway."
He laughs, "That sounds truly awful. I'm glad you're doing well and that Jason is taking good care of you." He gives her a smile, and tells her earnestly, "Congratulations on your marriage, by the way. I'm happy for you and my son."
She looks down with a little smile, "Thank you. I appreciate that." Then, she gives him a frank look, "And a little surprised, honestly. I know how your family feels about me."
He looks down with a guilty expression, but admits, "We are protective of Jason, something you understand better now, I expect. But my mother and daughter have been singing your praises. They've told me how happy you make him. That's all I want… for him to be happy… and maybe one day to have a place in his life… in your child's life."
She can see that he's pleading his case, but her loyalty to Jason has her crossing her arms and giving him a narrow look, "I trust Jason's judgment. He's told me how you treated him, and I've seen firsthand how your family disrespects him. He has every right to keep you at a distance."
He gives her a nod, with a dejected look. Softening a little, she admits, "He's happy. We're happy, excited about the baby. He's a good man," her voice takes on an edge, "You should be proud of him."
He gives her a nod as the elevator doors open. She groans as she steps off, right into Monica and Robin, who both focus on her. Francis sees the problem, and goes to stand between Carly and the women. Alan steps forward as an added barrier in front of the guard.
"Alan, get out of my way. We need to talk, young lady. Robin has been telling me how you are lying about the baby being Jason's. You are going to get a paternity test. I refuse to let you get your gold digging hands on my son." Monica speaks to Carly snidely.
"She's just a liar and a slut. I wouldn't trust anything that comes out of her mouth." Speaking to Carly through the two men, Robin threatens, "You aren't going to get away with this. I'm going to prove to Jason who you really are."
Francis forms a protective shield in front of Carly as Alan yells, "That is quite enough out of the two of you."
"Alan…" Monica begins in a hard tone.
In an equally brusque voice, he scolds, "The two of you should be ashamed of yourselves, harassing a pregnant woman at the hospital. Have you no better sense or manners than that? I will not have you verbally assaulting the mother of my grandchild."
Francis uses the distraction to get Carly away from the women, escorting her out of the hospital. As Carly escapes, she throws back a look of gratitude to Alan. He gives her the briefest smile before continuing to berate his wife and Robin.
When they are walking out of the hospital, Carly tells Francis, "I swear to God, if anyone else comes at me, shoot them. I don't care who it is."
Knowing Jason isn't due for a few hours, and needing desperately to vent, Carly heads straight into the other penthouse to see Brenda when she gets back. The second she walks in the door, however, she freezes. The room is dark despite it being the middle of the day, and Sonny is sitting on the sofa with a drink in one hand and a gun in the other. He looks rough, like he's at the end of his rope. It's obvious he's not entirely sober, and his eyes are dim and full of pain.
Cautiously, she asks, "Sonny? Are you okay?"
He lets out a bitter laugh that has absolutely no humor in it, "No. No, I'm most definitely not okay."
"Can I do anything for you? Maybe I can get someone, like Jason or Brenda."
He looks at her with broken eyes, taking in her pregnant body. With his eyes focused on her belly, he confesses, "Lily was starting to show when she was killed, the slightest little rounded belly. My child was just beginning to make its presence known. But they both got destroyed… taken because of me. Because I'm toxic. Their life snuffed out before my baby could even take its first breath."
She looks at him with sadness in her eyes, reassuring him, "Sonny… you aren't toxic. It was an awful, tragic thing that happened. But the people to blame are the people who put the bomb in the car, the ones who ordered it, not the intended victim."
"That's the problem, though, isn't it? I'm not some innocent victim. I'm the predator. But, Lily, she was an angel, sweet and kind, so excited about being a mother. Our child would have been lucky to have her as a mom. And the promise of that little life…" He smiles, with his dimple popping out, though it's a smile full of self hatred and recriminations. "That baby is probably better off not having to grow up with me as a dad. I'd probably end up screwing up my kid just as bad as my stepfather did. Hell, at least he never got me fucking killed. He might have beat the crap out of me and my mom, but he still did a better job than I…"
Carly moves to sit on the ottoman in front of him. She puts her hand on top of the hand holding the gun, wondering how she can get it from him. "Hey, any kid would be lucky to have you as a dad. I've seen how protective you are with the people you care about. I've even seen it with me and this baby. And we're Jason's. I can only imagine what it's like when it's your own family."
He picks the gun up, gesturing with it as he argues, "The world would be better if I eat a bullet, rid the world of my evil. All I do is hurt the people around me." He looks directly at her, waving the gun in her direction, though never aiming for her intentionally. It's almost absent minded, like he's forgotten it's in his hand. "You and me, we burn the whole world down around us, like human wrecking balls. What you did to your mother, what I did to Lily... maybe we're just broken. We need people like Jason to keep us steady, to keep us from destroying everything and everyone around us. People like Lily. But how do we stop ourselves from destroying them?"
"Sonny, can you put down the gun? You're making me nervous." Her eyes can't stop following its movements, praying it doesn't accidentally go off or he doesn't decide to direct it back towards himself. Visions of his blood splattered across the room keep intruding into her mind. She feels oddly both on the verge of hyperventilating and an eerie calm. She knows she has to hold it together because if anything happens to him it will destroy two of the most important people in her world. If she can just hold it together a little longer and get him through this alive, she'll take the time to properly break down later.
With another humorless smile, he tells her, "I can't do that. See, I'm debating whether I'm going to do this world a favor and rid it of this worthless excuse of a man. Why should I be allowed to go on living when my baby can't? That baby and Lily had more right to this world than I do. After all the dirty crap I've pulled…" He shakes his head.
Carly doesn't know what to do. She's the screw up, not the one who should be giving advice. "Maybe we should call Jason or Brenda. I'm not sure…"
Sonny takes a gulp of his drink and goes on like she hasn't spoken, "If you knew some of the evil I've put into the world, you'd be cheering me on."
Carly shakes her head, then stands up and goes to the door. Opening it, she tells Johnny and Francis, "Get Jason. Now."
Then, turning around she goes to stand directly in front of Sonny. Pointing her finger at him, she argues, "That's bullshit and you know it. The only thing you killing yourself accomplishes is hurting Brenda and Jason, and quite frankly me. You got a truly awful deal. Been there, felt that. But no matter what the circumstances or your past, unless you put the bomb in that car or blew it up, it's not your fault." She puts her hands on her hips. "Please give me the gun. Don't do this to Jason and Brenda, it'll kill them; don't do it to me. And, please, please, please, don't do it to yourself."
He just holds the gun away from her, but at least he's actually listening now. He looks absolutely broken, a darkness and heaviness sitting on him. "You all might be sad for awhile. But the world will be better off without my evil poison in it."
"You're wrong." She sits down on the couch beside him, turning to face him. "For the record, I have met evil. I don't know what sins you've committed, but you aren't that."
"Oh, yeah? What evil have you met?" He asks with a raised eyebrow.
She looks at him, her face serious, with the pain of remembered trauma flashing in her eyes. "Growing up in a trailer park, at least the one I did, you've got good people working hard to get by like my mom, a fair number of people who were lost to their addictions or traumas, and then, there are the abusers. As a young girl, you figure out quickly who is safe and who isn't. There were some guys, maybe in their twenties, who liked young girls. The younger the better. And depending on how drunk or high they were, they weren't too picky about consent."
Sonny is focused entirely on her now, listening as she weaves a picture of her life that sounds about as messed up as his. He knows the desperation found in places like that. He's felt that kind of desperation; hell, he's fed off that kind of desperation. The things you're willing to do, the envy that can eat you alive takes its toll on your soul.
"This one day, they almost got me. And they were high. One of them, his name was David, he had me pushed up against a trailer, his face all I could see." She shivers at the memory. "He was evil. He wanted to hurt me just because he got off on it. It wasn't that he didn't care if he hurt me, for him, that was the fun."
"How old were you?" He asks, rage leaking into his voice.
"Eleven." Her voice is matter of fact, with just a hint of bewilderment.
There's violence flashing in his eyes as he demands, "Fuck! What's his name?"
"Planning to take him out?" She gives him half a smile, "Don't worry, he's long dead. Someone slit his throat… good riddance." Sonny grunts in agreement, "Now that's someone the world is better off without. The fact that you want to stop that evil even though it never touched you personally, tells me the world needs you. Trust me, the world needs more protectors like you and Jason."
"I think Lily would disagree with your opinion of me." He studies her for a moment, then asks, "What happened? How'd you get away?"
She has a fond smile on her face as she tells him, "This guy saved me. He was an army vet who lived in the trailer they had me pinned to. He came out and beat the crap out of them. I thought he was going to kill them, he was so angry. After that day, he'd keep an eye out for me. And when the creeps were hanging around, I'd go hang out with him." She tilts her head, studying Sonny for a moment. "He struggled a bunch with depression and PTSD. But he was in this therapy program at the VA. They got him on some medication that helped him, and he would go to therapy."
Sonny gives her a wry look, "Are you telling me I need a shrink?"
She grins, "I'm as messed up as you. It seems like that would be pretty hypocritical of me. It's just… how you are feeling… he also felt that weight of losing people, that guilt that you survived when they didn't. I only saw him really bad once. He wanted to die too, maybe would have if I hadn't shown up. God, he ranted and raved at me to leave, but I knew what he'd do if I left. I have no idea what I did or what I said, maybe it was just being there, but he checked himself into a hospital the next day, and when he came back, it's like a weight had been lifted."
She sees a hint of longing flash across his face before he shakes his head. "Can you imagine the vulnerable position that would put me in? The way I stay in power is by showing an impenetrable strength. The world finds out I'm not right in the head, and it'll be used against me to hurt me and the people I care about. I can't."
She raises an eyebrow, "Sonny, with your money, you can afford to get the super discreet services. Fly some doctor down to your island. You can make it look like business or something, and nobody will know." Being entirely vulnerable, she tells him, "I know what it's like to feel like the world is spinning out. Before Jason, I felt like the world was caving in on me. It was suffocating. If there's hope of getting out from under the weight and the guilt, isn't it worth giving it a chance? It's gotta be better than killing yourself."
Sonny is suddenly lost to the thoughts in his head. She watches him for a moment, and then standing up, she makes him a glass of water. Going back she holds out her hand for his glass that still has about a finger of amber liquor swirling in the bottom. He looks at her, tilting his head. For a solid minute, he sizes her up. His eyes are sharper than they've been since she'd shown up. She doesn't shrink under his gaze, continuing to hold out her hand. Finally, he gives her a smile, with his dimple flashing, and drinks the alcohol down in a shot. Then, he hands the empty glass to her, and takes the glass of water in return. When she continues to stand there looking at his gun, he tells her in a hard voice, "I'm not giving you my gun, Carly. First of all, I don't trust that you know how to handle it, second, I wouldn't have to kill myself because your husband would do it for me. He'd never forgive me for giving his pregnant wife a gun."
"Then, will you put it down, or even better, put it away in a safe or something? You're not going to kill yourself in front of me are you? God, please don't do that. I don't think I can handle it. I have had a spectacularly shitty day that has already involved fighting with Luke, then getting accosted by both Monica and Robin, and sort of Alan. If you do that, I might end up having a breakdown. I'm honestly on the verge already."
He looks at her with an almost surprised look, seeing beyond his own pain to how scared he's making her feel. With a look of self disgust, he shakes his head, and standing, he walks to his desk putting the gun in the drawer and locking it up. "Sorry." He grabs the water, drinking a glass down quickly, and then he pours himself another one. "Now tell me about Luke, Robin, and Jason's parents. Your uncle's a pain in the ass. And he's entirely incapable of change." With a meaningful look, he adds, "For some reason, he's even more annoying when he cares."
He watches as Carly looks down at her hands. He sees the insecurity and the hope written across her face. He tells her gently, "You know, your mom came to me to search for you." Carly's eyes jump to his face, her eyes focused, "The pain she felt at having to give you up was clear. She was incredibly determined to find you, and was heartbroken when Luke told her you were dead. I know you fucked up, and you're scared of how she's going to react, but a chance at having a mom like her is worth the risk."
She tilts her head looking at him, her eyes curious, but unwilling to ask the questions burning in her gaze. She's saved by Jason bursting into the penthouse. He's expecting an emergency, instead he finds Carly and Sonny sitting calmly on the couch having a moment. "What did I miss? I got here as quickly as I could."
Sonny gives his lieutenant a serious look, "We need to talk. I think I need to take a trip, and I need you to do something for me while I'm gone." Then, he turns to Carly, "Thank you. You've saved two lives now. I won't forget this." She gives him a nod, and a smile that speaks of the beginnings of a friendship.