Brenda's stay in the hospital was uneventful and brief. True to her word, Dr. Meadows discontinued the IV early that afternoon, once she was certain that the cramping had stopped for several hours and that Brenda's blood profile was within normal limits. She discharged Brenda and allowed her to return home to the cottage later that evening, on the condition that she limit her activities for the next few days and that she call Dr. Meadows immediately at the first sign of any problems with the pregnancy. Dr. Meadows also told Brenda to call her office for an appointment for the following week, and they would proceed from there as to lifting the activity restrictions if everything were still fine.

Jax assured Dr. Meadows that Brenda would adhere to her instructions, and he took his watchdog duties very seriously, whisking Brenda straight to bed once they had arrived back at the cottage, despite the fact that it was barely 8:30 p.m. Brenda protested, preferring instead to stay down in the living room with the family and to talk on the phone with her friends who were calling nonstop since the news had leaked out that she was back among the living. But Jax stood firm in his opposition to that, and soon his promise to stay with her combined with her fatigue from the day's events made the argument a moot point. Brenda fell asleep less than thirty minutes after arriving home, and did not awaken again until early the following morning.

It was still dark outside when Brenda began to stir the next morning. She glanced at the fluorescent green display on the clock on the bedside table. It read: "5:23 a.m." She groaned as she realized that, once again, she had awakened at this ungodly hour. Brenda had always been a late riser, preferring high noon to daybreak as the sensible time to rise and shine. But for the past week, her body seemed to have a mind of its own, as she had unfailingly awakened before dawn each day. Yesterday had been the only exception, but that was because she had been up the entire night previous to that. Must be the baby, she thought, smiling as her hands went to her swollen abdomen. "Are you getting me ready for when you finally arrive, little one?" she wondered softly.

She heard soft snoring coming from the other side of the bed, and she carefully turned in the bed so as not to disturb Jax as he slept. She smiled at how peaceful he seemed and how like a little boy he looked, with his hair mussed and the hint of a smile on his face as he dreamed. He looked so beautiful that it took all of Brenda's willpower not to touch him, but sex was out of the question. It was one of those activities that was taboo until after her checkup next week. So Brenda merely looked but didn't touch the beautiful body that lay sleeping so peacefully beside her.

He was absolutely magnificent. So many people couldn't get past Jax's astonishingly good looks. She jokingly referred to him as her Adonis, but even that did not come close to describing how physically handsome he was. But what was really beautiful about Jax was his spirit. He was truly extraordinary inside, with the soul of an angel and the heart of a lion. He was perfect, and he would make the perfect father to their baby.

Their baby… She began to wonder about their baby. Would this child be the spitting image of its father -- with eyes the color of the clearest ocean and hair that looked like spun gold? Would it have its father's zest for life and his capacity to love and his ability to see beauty where others saw ruin? Brenda smiled as she realized that none of that mattered. All that mattered was that this child was created out of a deep and abiding love, and it would always be truly loved, no matter whether it was male or female or who it looked like or how it acted.

Unable to keep from touching him any longer, Brenda moved to gently kiss Jax's back. But she was suddenly consumed by nausea, and quickly ran to the bathroom instead, barely making it to the commode before the juice and crackers Jax had given her at bedtime made an unwelcome reappearance. "I love you, little one," Brenda whispered, as she stood hunched over the commode, heaving, "but I cannot wait until this part of having you is over and done with for good!"

She heard the bathroom door open and then Jax's sleepy voice asking, "Are you okay?" She tried to smile as she glanced over at him, but her present activity made that difficult to do. Jax looked adorable, she thought, standing there in his black, silk boxers, his hair mussed, and looking so concerned. She tried to speak to allay his fears, but her rebellious stomach had other ideas, and she continued to retch, despite the fact that there was nothing left in her stomach at this point.

Jax was at Brenda's side in a heartbeat. He couldn't believe how pale she was. "I'm calling Dr. Meadows!" Jax declared, as he put his hands on Brenda's shoulders, trying to steady her shaking body.

Brenda shook her head and straightened up as the urge to vomit was finally over. "No," she said, flushing the toilet and turning to rinse her face and hands before grabbing for her toothbrush. "I'm fine," she said as she squirted a glob of toothpaste on the toothbrush and jammed it gratefully into her mouth, eager to erase the horrid taste that remained there.

"You're not fine, Brenda! "You're sick!" Jax exploded, as he turned to head back into the bedroom to call Dr. Meadows.

"Jax!" Brenda yelled, spitting the last of the toothpaste into the sink, as she grabbed his arm. "This is just morning sickness. It's certainly nothing to disturb Dr. Meadows about at this hour! Trust me, Jax. I've had this experience many times over the past few weeks… Just ask Tom."

Jax sighed as he pulled her into his arms. "I guess I have a lot to learn about having babies, don't I? What else don't I know that Tom does?" he asked, remembering how Tom's eating regime had helped Brenda overcome her nausea at the cabin. He was suddenly resentful of the time that Tom had spent with Brenda and his help with this pregnancy.

Brenda looked at Jax, puzzled by the jealousy that tinged his tone. "Jax, Tom has sisters that have had babies. That's why he knows about pregnant women and different ways of handling problems like morning sickness. How many pregnant women have you known in your lifetime? And you certainly haven't had any experiences with pregnant sisters. It was just the luck of the draw that Tom had sisters, while you had… Jerry," she grinned at him.

"Yeah, I think that's what they call dumb luck -- or, more accurately, bad luck," Jax laughed somewhat ruefully, as he thought about Jerry and his recent exploits.

"But, no matter what, you still love him," Brenda said quietly, noticing Jax's sad smile as he thought about Jerry.

"Yeah, I still love him -- and Mum and Dad, too -- but I can never forget what they did," he said sadly.

"That's understandable," Brenda said, kissing him lightly on the cheek. "But I hope that won't prevent you from allowing them into this baby's life."

Jax pulled back from Brenda slightly and looked her squarely in the eyes. "I promise that I will never let my feelings toward Jerry or my parents color the relationship they have with this baby or with you, Brenda. That would be selfish of me."

"And you don't have a selfish bone in your body," Brenda smiled up at him, sweeping her left hand up to push some stray curls of hair out of his eyes. It was then that she noticed something was missing -- her engagement ring. "Ohmigod!" she gasped as she stepped back slightly from Jax's embrace.

"Brenda! Are you okay? Is the cramping back?" Jax's face paled as he swept her up in his arms and raced her back into the bedroom, setting her gently on the bed and quickly grabbing the phone off the cradle, intent on calling Dr. Meadows.

"No, no! It's not the baby!" Brenda insisted, lowering her head into her hands. "It's nothing like that!"

"Then what is it?" Jax asked, putting the phone back in its cradle, as Brenda started to cry. "Honey, let me help," he said, lifting her chin to look into her tear-filled eyes. It might not be the baby, but something was definitely wrong and Jax remained frightened as he waited for Brenda to speak.

"Jax…" She looked at him, then bit her lip hesitantly, stifling back a sob, "my engagement ring's gone… I don't know where it is… I'm so … sorry…!"

Brenda crumpled against Jax's chest, sobbing. Jax tightened his arms around her as he let out the breath he'd been holding, relieved that this was what had upset her. "Shh… It's okay, Brenda," he said soothingly, pushing away from her slightly so he could look her in the eyes. "Brenda, look at me. It's okay… I have the ring."

"How did you get the ring?" Brenda sniffled as Jax handed her a tissue from the bedside table.

"They sent it to me along with a note the night you were kidnapped," Jax explained quietly, as Brenda wiped her eyes.

"But they took it off my hand, and I didn't even notice until now, Jax!" Brenda cried, appalled that she hadn't noticed the missing ring before this.

"Shh… Sweetie, you had more important things to worry about than a missing ring. That ring is only an object. You kept yourself and our baby safe and that was far more important than noticing whether that ring was on your hand or not." Jax smiled at her, pulling her back into his embrace. "Besides, this way I can put the ring back on your finger when I propose to you all over again."

Brenda looked up at him, smiling through the last of her tears. "Really? You're going to propose again?"

Jax jumped up from the bed and ran over to his jeans, which he'd tossed onto the chair when he'd crawled into bed last night. He put his hand into the right front pocket of the jeans and pulled out the ring and held it up for Brenda to see as he sat back down on the bed by her. He took her left hand in his and smiled as he gazed into her eyes. "Despite the fact that I've felt married to you in my heart since the day of our wedding on the yacht --no matter what convention and the law might say -- I do want to marry you again before God and family, so that in the eyes of the world you and I are forever known as husband and wife… Ms. Brenda Barrett, would you do me the honor of becoming my legal wife?" he asked, slipping the ring onto her finger as he kissed her gently on the lips.

Brenda smiled and returned his kiss. "Mr. Jacks, I would marry you over and over and over again," she sighed, blinking back another round of tears.

"Hey! Why are you crying again?" Jax asked as he grabbed another tissue and helped her dry her tears.

"It's just these darn hormones. I seem to cry at the drop of a hat lately," she said, as she blew her nose and then leaned back on her elbows on the bed, rubbing the palms of her hands over her stomach. "This little one is definitely making his presence known."

"That he is," Jax said as he planted a tiny kiss on her stomach and then moved up to her lips. "Have I told you lately how happy you've made me with this baby?"

Brenda smiled and cupped his cheek with the palm of her hand, "And you've made me just as happy… Remember, I wasn't in on the creative process alone."

"I know." Jax smiled and kissed her again, his eyes twinkling. "Hmm…you're thirteen weeks pregnant, and it's October 11 today. That means…" he looked around for a calendar.

"I checked a calendar while I was in the hospital…" Brenda interrupted. "This baby was conceived in the middle of July -- around the time of the warehouse fire," she finished quietly, knowing that the mention of the fire would stir up painful memories of Jerry deliberately setting that fire.

Jax grew quiet as he thought back to that day. It was another example of his brother's recklessness, and it was Jax's first real hint of his family's ties to the mob. That fire had nearly killed not only him, but an innocent child, Lucas Jones, as well. How ironic to think that as a result of that near-fatal fire, this new life had been created.

"Well, if I remember that day correctly, birth control was the last thing on our minds after the fire," Jax finally said.

Brenda nodded as she put her arms around him. "Yeah, it was quite a day," she replied as she remembered how scared she was when the fire fighters told her that no one could have survived, and then how elated she was to see Jax emerge from the smoldering remains of that burned-out warehouse. "But you always say that something good invariably comes out of every bad situation," she reminded him. "And this…" she patted her stomach, "is definitely a good thing,"

Jax smiled. "Yeah, I do say that, don't I?" He snuggled closer to her, and kissed her again. "This baby is definitely a good thing -- the best, in fact. So, in a sick sort of way, I guess we have Jerry to thank for this little miracle of ours, don't we?" he laughed.

Brenda looked at him, unsure if he were really laughing or not, but his eyes were twinkling so she relaxed and laughed with him, "Jerry will probably want to take full credit for Baby Jacks here."

Jax shook his head. "Then let's hope Jerry never learns the truth about his role in this baby's beginnings. In that sick and twisted mind of his, he'd probably convince himself that his setting the warehouse fire was an honorable act after all."

"But despite everything, you still love him and you want this baby to get to know him, right?" Brenda asked as she climbed off the bed, going to the closet and grabbing a robe.

"Yeah, I do." Then he realized what Brenda was doing. "Hey! Where are you going?" Jax asked as he watched her tie the belt of the robe. He glanced over at the clock beside the bed. "It's not even 6 a.m. yet!"

"Yeah, who would have ever believed that I'd be waking up at this hour and actually staying up?" she laughed as she slipped a pair of wool socks on her feet. "But this has been happening for about a week now. I guess we can blame this on the hormones, too. Besides, I'm really hungry and all the food is downstairs."

Jax jumped up and grabbed his jeans, slipping them on as he spoke, "Why don't you get back in bed, and I'll go get us some breakfast. Dr. Meadows said you're supposed to be taking it easy for the next week, and I'm going to make sure you do."

Brenda put her hands on her hips and shook her head. "Jax, Dr. Meadows didn't mean that I couldn't do anything. She just told me to take it easy for a few days. I'm not planning to run a marathon here; I'm just walking down to the kitchen to fix us something to eat."

"You're planning to fix us something to eat? If that's the case, it would be better for the health and safety of both of us, if you stayed here and let me get the food," he grinned as he grabbed for her.

Brenda, however, skillfully dodged his advances and grabbed for one of her pillows and hit him across the head with it. "Are you disparaging my culinary skills, Mr. Jacks?" she laughed as he pulled the pillow out of her hands and wrapped his arms around her so that she couldn't move.

"What culinary skills, Mrs. Soon-To-Be-Jacks?" he laughed as she tried her best to look offended. "As I recall, you can barely boil water without scorching the pan!"

"Well, that was true at one time," she giggled, "but things have changed in the past few weeks. Tom taught me quite a bit while we were together. I helped with the meals, and I even did a little cooking on my own. And he and I are both still very much alive!" she added, wriggling out of his arms and playfully tweaking his cheeks.

The expression on Jax's face changed instantly from one of amusement to one of irritation. "Score yet another point for Tom," Jax muttered softly as he turned away, grabbing a tee shirt off the nearby chair and slipping it over his head.

"What did you say?" Brenda asked, having completely missed Jax's last comment when he turned his head.

"I said it's time to hit the kitchen," Jax replied as he pasted on a smile. "I want you to show me everything you learned in that cabin," he said as he ushered Brenda out of the bedroom. His thoughts seemed to be tumbling out of control as he began to understand Jerry's paranoia toward Tom. He hoped these were just irrational fears he was feeling, but he suddenly didn't just want to know what cooking hints Tom had passed onto Brenda -- he wanted to know everything that had happened between them while they were alone together in that cabin.

"Come on, Charlie!" Tom yelled as he took one last look around the cabin before locking it up. He still had another four weeks of vacation left, but he couldn't spend it here. This place was too full of memories of Brenda and too full of fantasies of what he had wanted for them, and those memories and fantasies were suffocating him. So now he was heading up to Port Charles to drop Brenda's things off at her place before he headed back to New York -- and back to a life without her.

Charlie bounded out the door, and Tom closed and locked it. He only wished that he could close off his memories of Brenda and lock them away so easily, but the realization hit him that no matter where he was, she would always be with him. She had indelibly etched herself into his heart and soul, and all he could do was accept it and go on from there -- or at least try to go on.

He opened the driver's side door of his car, and waited for Charlie to jump in, and then climbed in beside him, taking a long look at the cabin and the countryside surrounding it. Sometime during the night he had made the decision to sell this property, despite the fact that it had been in the family for years and he'd spent nearly every vacation since childhood here. It held a lot of history for him, but he knew he could never come back here without remembering Brenda and how much he loved her and how she'd never be his, no matter what.

Deciding to sell the family cabin hadn't been as hard as he had thought, despite the fact it was one of the few things his dad had left to him when he died. He only owned half of the place now anyway because Emma had claimed half of it in the divorce settlement. Emma had the right of first refusal on the place, but if she didn't want it, he knew one of his sisters would jump at the chance to own it. Not only did they all have great memories of this place, but also any one of them would love to own his half, if only to give Emma a hard time whenever she wanted to use the place. His ex-wife was not his favorite person, but his three sisters all hated her with a passion, and they would jump at any chance to be able to make her life miserable.

He grinned as he thought of Emma and any one of his three sisters going round and round about schedules for use of the cabin and cleaning and maintenance on the place. It might not be so bad giving up this place after all, he thought, if it meant that he could make Emma's life miserable for a while! Yes, this was definitely the right decision to part with this place now. Besides, he could use the money.

Last night, soon after he had decided to sell this place, he also decided that he was going to start enjoying life. Tomorrow he planned to empty his meager savings and go to some tropical paradise and spend the last few weeks of his vacation getting drunk and getting laid -- definitely in that order. John had always told him that all any man really needed to attract women was to look and to act like he didn't really care about either money or the women. He was taking John at his lecherous word, and he was going to put it to the test. But he had the sneaking suspicion that any woman he could be with would pale in comparison to the fantasy he had of being with Brenda. And that is why he planned to stay as drunk as possible on this vacation. With enough rum in his system, he could convince himself that any woman he was with was really his Angel.

He took a deep breath and patted Charlie on the head. Then he fastened his seatbelt, started the engine of the Taurus, and slowly backed out of the drive, saying one last good-bye to the cabin he'd loved most of his life, before setting out to say a final good-bye to the woman he knew he would love the rest of his life.

Assistant Director David Sikes sat staring out his office window on the tenth floor of the Federal Building in New York City. He had just spoken with Gwen's doctor at Sloan-Kettering, and he had assured him that things were progressing right on schedule for her bone marrow transplant. They had begun the process of destroying Gwen's own marrow several days ago. In a week or so, they would be able to infuse Gwen with the donated marrow, and, if all went well, then she would have a chance to live again. Soon he and his wife would have a new lease on their life together, and it all had been bought and paid for by sacrificing the lives of Brenda Barrett and Tom Langan. Ms. Barrett had survived her ordeal, but Agent Langan would not be so lucky. He didn't know it yet, but his life was about to crumble all around him, and there was nothing -- short of a miracle -- he could do to save himself. And Sikes knew from bitter experience that miracles were few and far between in this day and age.

He sighed wearily and opened the thick file folder, marked "Tom Langan," that lay on his desk. It had grown considerably in the past couple of days, thanks to a few doctored bank documents and phone records, as well as a few well-placed listening devices. It had helped that Marco Leone had gladly planted evidence incriminating Agent Langan in his own apartment. The search warrant of Leone's penthouse had turned up a scrap of paper bearing a list of numbers, which would soon be found to correspond with the numbers of a bank account in the Cayman Islands in the name of one Thomas James Langan. It was very fortuitous that Agent Langan had called him last night to inform him that he would be continuing his vacation, and that he would be going out of the country for a few weeks, most likely to someplace warm and tropical. He suggested that Langan try the Cayman Islands, since he and Gwen had vacationed there many winters, and Langan jumped at the choice, even asking about hotels that he might try.

As things stood now, it appeared that Langan was going to the Caymans to tap into his bank account. Langan had called and booked his ticket on a flight leaving at 10:15 tomorrow night. The agents Sikes had monitoring Langan's financial activities verified that both the plane reservations and the hotel and car reservations for the Cayman Islands had shown up on Langan's MasterCard account already. For all intents and purposes, Tom Langan appeared to be a man on the lam -- and he was. Thanks to those listening devices, Sikes knew that Langan was indeed fleeing the country, but not to outrun the long arm of the law, but rather to try to outrun the even longer arm of unrequited love.

In a way, Sikes felt sorry for Langan and what had befallen him recently. He was in love with a woman whose appearance in his life had inadvertently turned his whole world upside down. She was his for a few short weeks and then snatched back out of his life again, and then dropped back into it again, only to be used as a pawn in a much bigger game than either she or Langan knew about. But Langan's misfortune was his gain, and Sikes had used all of the consequential ties that Langan had to Ms. Barrett and to the Jacks/Leone investigation to his advantage, and now his frame of Langan was being neatly tied up in a nice, little bow. It had all been so easy. Perhaps too easy, Sikes thought, as the feeling things could still go terribly wrong niggled at the back of his mind.

The phone at the cottage began ringing at 8:00 that morning and had rung continuously until Jax finally disconnected all the phones in the house a little after 10:00. Brenda protested, not wanting to miss a single phone call from any of her friends, but Jax told her that her real friends would understand and that he would plug the phones back in again, if she promised to take a nap before lunch. Reluctantly she agreed, partly because she knew that Jax would stand firm in his threat to keep the phones unplugged forever, if need be, and partly because she was so tired she couldn't believably put up much of a protest.

She had been up less than five hours, but she felt as tired as if she had been up for more than five days. She had always been a bundle of energy, but no longer. She couldn't believe how drained she sometimes felt now that she was pregnant. She had visited several webpages that dealt with pregnancy when she was at the cabin with Tom, and they had advised that this constant fatigue that she was currently experiencing would most likely only last the first trimester. They had said that the second trimester was usually a time of renewed energy, as the body has adjusted to the changes that the pregnancy was bringing to it.

According to Dr. Meadows, Brenda was thirteen weeks pregnant, which, by all calculations meant that she was already into her second trimester, but she still wasn't feeling any surges of energy. Jax just laughed when Brenda complained about that to him as he was shooing her up to bed that morning, pointing out that he expected no less from a child of theirs than to have his own schedule. She giggled at his logic as she went up the stairs, deciding it was better to accept this fatigue as normal for her pregnancy than to worry needlessly that something was wrong. But when she awoke less than thirty minutes later, she was overcome with a new set of very real fears -- those concerning the results of the blood test she had taken the day before her accident.

Brenda walked slowly downstairs, wondering if the test results had come or if they would need to call Dr. Eckhart's office for the results. She couldn't believe that she had not thought to say something to Dr. Meadows while she was in the hospital about the possibility that she -- and, in turn, this baby -- could have the deadly gene that had taken her mother's sanity and had caused her mother to try to kill her just weeks before. But in all the excitement of realizing the baby was safe and hearing it's heartbeat for the first time, the ticking time bomb that could very well be a part of her genetic makeup had been completely forgotten -- until now.

No one was in the living room when Brenda came downstairs, but she could hear voices coming from the kitchen. Jane and John had arrived loaded down with groceries just shortly before Jax had sent Brenda up to lie down. Jane had assured Brenda that they would get everything squared away before she got up and that she had a wonderful lunch planned for all of them, too. Brenda assumed that Jane had enlisted both John and Jax in the lunch preparations. She decided she'd see if anything had come from Dr. Eckhart's office first, and then she'd call Jax out from the kitchen to read the results with her. After all, this was just as much about his future as it was about hers. They were a team -- now and forever. Now and forever… She prayed that the results of the test were negative, otherwise now and forever would be a yoke that would keep Jax shackled to her forever…

She saw the stack of mail piled on the table behind the couch, and began rifling through it, finally finding a large, manila envelope addressed to her with Dr. Eckhart's office as the return address. With trembling hands, she picked it up and held it to her heart, praying to have the strength to accept whatever the verdict was. She swallowed hard, blinking back the tears that were already forming behind her closed eyes. "Jax," she said softly, her voice wavering slightly.

"What are you doing back down here so soon?" Jax asked as he pushed through the door from the kitchen, prepared to scold her for not resting longer. But he stopped short when he saw her face and that she was holding the still unopened letter from Dr. Eckhart's office; instead, he pulled her instantly into his arms. "It'll be okay no matter what, Brenda. I promise. We're going to face whatever the future holds together -- the three of us."

Brenda let out a sob then. "Oh, god, Jax… I don't want this for our child… But no matter what, I'm going to have this baby…"

"Shh… Of course, we're going to have this baby. And if you have the gene, we'll deal with that. And even if you do have the gene, it doesn't mean this baby does. You understand that, don't you?" Brenda nodded slowly as Jax cupped her face in both of his hands, and kissed her gently. He wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs and then said softly, "Let's go sit down and open the envelope, and then deal with whatever it says together."

Again Brenda nodded, and he led her to the couch, and they both sat down while Brenda opened the envelope and slowly pulled the letter from Dr. Eckhart out.

"Do you want me to read it, Sweetie?" Jax asked, trying to make this as easy on Brenda as possible.

She took a deep breath and shook her head. "No, I can handle this," she said, smiling weakly through her tears. "After all, I'm going to be a mother, and I have to learn how to handle any situation that comes along…" She wiped the tears from her eyes and focused on the letter, but new tears began to form as she read through to the end.

Jax inhaled sharply, fearing the worse. "We'll face this together…" he began as Brenda flung her arms around his neck and broke into a full-blown torrent of tears. "I will always love you, no matter what…"

"It was negative, Jax! I don't have the gene!" Brenda finally choked out through her tears. "I'm okay and that means our baby's safe, too!" she said as she grabbed him and kissed him hard on the lips.

"Thank God!" he cried softly, his heart in his throat and his eyes shining with tears as he fervently kissed her back.

"The bad times are all behind us now, Jax," Brenda breathed between kisses. "There's nothing and no one who can hurt us now."

Marco Leone stood with his two bodyguards outside the door that led to Sonny Corinthos's private quarters on this secluded little island off the coast of Venezuela, and thought about how easy it had been to locate Mr. Corinthos. He had simply picked up the phone and made a couple of quick calls, and all of the information on Michael "Sonny" Corinthos, Jr., and his junior crime lord operation was his for the asking. He laughed to himself as he realized how easy it would be to kill Corinthos now. But that was not the purpose of this little trip to paradise, and Corinthos and his little organization were no threat to him. Besides, he had a far better use for Mr. Corinthos. He planned to use Corinthos to handle a job that Marco could no longer supervise himself. And, when Corinthos had finished his appointed task or no longer proved useful to him, then he would have the pleasure of grinding him beneath the heels of his $500 Italian loafers like the bug that he was.

Marco nodded, and Tommy, one of Marco's longtime bodyguards, knocked on the heavy, mahogany door that led to Corinthos's suite. There was no answer. Marco motioned for Tommy to knock again, which he did -- much harder this time. There was a momentary silence and then the sound of glass breaking against the inside of the door, followed by a drunken voice shouting: "Go away!"

"Open it!" Marco said, irritated by Corinthos's apparent lack of civility. Both Tommy and Sal, Marco's other body guard, drew their guns and opened the door, instinctively shielding Marco from any gunfire that might greet them as they entered. But none did. All that greeted them as they entered the darkened room was the sweltering stench of liquor mixed with sweat. Corinthos had evidently turned off the air conditioning and all the windows were shut and the room was like a sauna. A small, dark figure sat hunched forward in a chair, a glass in his hands, his head leaning against the drawn shades of the nearby window.

"Get some lights on in here and open the windows!" Marco ordered. "It stinks in here!" Sal went about doing as Marco ordered while Tommy kept his gun trained on the head of the figure in the chair, prepared to fire in a heartbeat should the man threaten Mr. Leone's safety.

"I said go the hell away!" Sonny slurred, as he pulled himself up out of the chair and reeled around to face these intruders into his private sanctuary of pain and self-pity. But he stopped short when he saw who was standing before him. Even in his drunken state, Sonny recognized Marco Leone, one of the biggest and most powerful mob bosses on the Eastern Seaboard. Dazed, Sonny let the half-filled glass of amber liquid slip out of his grip, shattering on the floor beside him.

"Not a very good use of such a fine Scotch," Marco said as he stooped to look at the label on the broken bottle that had been hurled at the door before they had entered. He picked up a large shard of the remains of the bottle and stood back up, waving the piece of glass as he walked to where Sonny stood. "Did no one teach you about the finer things in life, Mr. Corinthos? One treats a fine liquor as one does a woman -- with tenderness and with finesse." He moved closer to Sonny and narrowed his eyes menacingly as he studied him. "But something tells me that you never learned proper etiquette where either was concerned."

Sonny took in a deep breath and tried to calm his rapidly beating heart, as Marco Leone inched closer to him, wielding the razor-sharp piece of glass perilously close to Sonny's throat. He broke out into a cold sweat, and swallowed the bile that was threatening to rise up his esophagus. With all the bravado he could muster, he spit out, "Okay, you found me. Just go ahead and kill me!"

Marco dropped the piece of glass back onto the floor and burst out laughing. "Little man, as if you had enough importance in the world for me to come here and do you in myself! If I -- or anyone -- had truly wanted you dead, you would have been taken out months ago, and you would never have known what hit you." Slowly he walked around Sonny, as Sonny swayed unsteadily, trying to keep from passing out from the heady combination of liquor and fright. "Despite all your strategies to the contrary, you were amazingly easy to locate. But I think that you have greatly overestimated the impact that your continued existence has on the organization. You, Mr. Corinthos, are but a mere bottom feeder in the vast ocean that is the organization, and I --" he got his face into Sonny's as he continued, "-- am a shark who regularly eats your kind as a midday snack, if I'm so inclined. But you are far more useful to me alive than dead, Mr. Corinthos, and so I am not inclined to swallow you up, so to speak."

"I'm outta the organization now," Sonny answered as he swallowed hard again, reaching behind him for the chair on which to steady himself. His movement made Tommy cock the gun that he held pointed directly at Sonny's left temple. Sonny visibly blanched at the familiar sound.

Sonny's fear made Marco smile. This one was truly a paper tiger, he thought -- all posturing and pomposity, but nothing more. Luckily, nothing more was really required for this particular assignment. Marco merely needed this man because of whom he loved -- Brenda Barrett -- and how his mere presence in her life would threaten the happy existence of the Jacks family.

"Tommy, please…" Marco finally said, indicating with his hands for Tommy to lower the gun. "Mr. Corinthos is our host here. There's no need to intimidate him when he has no intention of being anything less than gracious to us. Isn't that right, Mr. Corinthos?"

Sonny nodded mutely, as Sal pushed him back into the chair behind him, while Tommy lowered the gun but continued to keep it visibly in his hand.

"What do you want with me?" Sonny asked quietly.

Marco's smile grew larger as he realized how easy this one would be to control and manipulate. "I want to hire you to do a little job for me, Mr. Corinthos, and it will all be above board. There will be no hint of my involvement at all. You will be returning to the States and back to Port Charles, New York, in the guise of a legitimate businessman."

Sonny's eyes widened at the mention of Port Charles. "I can't go back there!" Sonny declared, as he tried to stand up, his fear of Marco Leone and his thugs momentarily overridden by his horror at the prospect of going back there, where "her" memory would be everywhere.

Sal pulled him back into the chair as Tommy once again aimed the gun at Sonny's head.

"What's the matter, Mr. Corinthos? Are you afraid of ghosts? Or is it just one ghost that you fear?" Marco asked, his broad smile indicating that he was truly enjoying this little moment of psychological torture for Sonny.

Sonny ignored Marco's comments for a few seconds and then asked, "Why me? Why do you need me to do this job for you? Moreno has control of the town now, and he'd be more than willing to do anything you'd ask."

"Ah, but Mr. Moreno is not suited for the task that I have in mind, and I always say that one should use the right tool in order to do the job right. And, in this case, Mr. Corinthos, you are the right tool for the job," Marco continued enigmatically. "Besides, as I said before, this is the job of a legitimate businessman, and since you so openly renounced the organization when you fled both Port Charles and your lovely bride-to-be--" Marco emphasized 'bride-to-be' and savored the look of pain that crossed Sonny's face at those words, "-- last year for this tropical paradise of yours, it will not be too difficult for the gullible townspeople to believe that you have indeed turned over the proverbial new leaf and returned to the town you called home for so many years to establish some legitimate business ties. Besides, you hate the people that I want to bring down as much as I do, and I know you will tackle this assignment with all the fervor of a man bent on revenge," Marco added.

Sonny gave him a puzzled look, his brain still not functioning properly from too many days of total inebriation. "And who might that be?"

Marco paused momentarily for dramatic effect. "Jasper Jacks and the entire Jacks family," he finally said, his lips curving into a smile as the mere mention of the name brought a fire to Corinthos's bloodshot eyes. "Are you interested, Mr. Corinthos?"

"I'd do anything to bring him to his knees," Sonny spat out between clenched teeth, the venom evident in his voice.

"I thought you would, Mr. Corinthos," Marco laughed. "As I said, the right tool for the right job…"

"And just what is this job?" Sonny asked, the thought of revenge against Jax rapidly clearing the liquor-induced cobwebs from his head.

"I'm hoping that you can lure the Jacks family into a lucrative business deal for me, that I will personally close when the time is right. But mostly I want you to wreak havoc on young Jax's personal life, especially his love life," Marco said, choosing his words carefully to fully incite Corinthos's intense hatred for Jax.

Sonny's eyes narrowed as the animosity he felt for Jax boiled to the surface. "Love life? He lets her die, and less than a month later he has a love life?!" he exploded, jumping out of the chair. Sal and Tommy moved to restrain him, but Marco warned them off, preferring to allow Sonny's anger toward Jax to be unleashed now. "I'll gladly bring him down, and then I want the pleasure of killing him!" Sonny shouted, his eyes lit with the intense fury that he had felt since the day he had learned of Brenda's death.

Marco smiled as he saw his plan coming together far better than he had ever dreamed. He would have been content to merely destroy young Jax and the entire family, but if Corinthos actually killed Jax, then that was even better, especially since Corinthos would be the one to blame for it all. "Whatever you wish, Mr. Corinthos, but my involvement is never to come to light, or your murder will be the next one after Jax's that Port Charles's finest will be trying to solve, do you understand?"

"Yes," Sonny nodded.

"Now, I plan to give you a substantial amount of working capital, and you'll have access to ample funds for your personal use also. You are to establish a residence in the better part of town, and not in your former townhouse. I want you to appear as pure as the driven snow while you're in Port Charles. I want you to be involved in community activities and to disassociate yourself from anyone who smacks of involvement in the organization. But, of course, this will not be all work and no play for you while you're there. In addition to the personal satisfaction that you'll receive in destroying the Jacks family -- and killing Jax, if that is your wish -- I think it is only fair that you also take back something that is rightfully yours that young Mr. Jacks stole from you…"

"Jax no longer has the one thing he took that I'll never stop wanting," Sonny said quietly.

"Don't be so sure about that, Mr. Corinthos. Mr. Jacks has had a particularly good turn of fortune in the past week or so." Marco pulled out a photo of Brenda and Jax taken just the day before as they left General Hospital, with the date and time stamped in the lower right corner of the photo, and handed it to Sonny.

"She's alive?!" Sonny's heart leapt at the photo evidence in his hands.

Marco watched as Sonny played his fingers across the grainy image of Brenda Barrett's face, and decided that he needed to get Sonny out of this love-struck mode and back into fighting mode. "It seems that once again Jasper Jacks has the best that life can offer, while you are once again left out in the cold…" Marco smiled when his well-chosen words had the exact effect he hoped that they would.

"But not for long!" Sonny answered, the fire of hatred immediately returning to his eyes, as, for the first time in weeks, he savored his future and what it held: he was going home to destroy Jax and reclaim Brenda as his own.