I’m tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface
Don’t know what you’re expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes
– Numb, Linkin Park

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Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Istanbul, Turkey

 Pendik District: Reyhan Caddesi

 Luke was already in a terrible mood even before he had to drive clear across the damn city — he’d gone back to the airport to pick up a second rental van since Lucky’s ridiculous sports car would only seat two—and would stick out like a sore thumb in most districts. Lucky had done it just to annoy his father, Luke was sure of it.

By the time he’d secured the nondescript van and headed towards the first of the addresses Nikolas had given him—it was almost noon. As Luke drove along the D100 highway, he wondered just how current Nikolas’s intel was — the area didn’t look anything like the kind of neighborhood where Helena might tuck away a research lab.

Then again, the old bitch had hidden one deep beneath General Hospital, so there was no telling what she might do or where she’d do it.

Luke parked the van across the street from the address on his list and settled in to watch the comings and goings. Pendik was on the Asian side of the city, higher up in elevation than their place in Fatih. The whole area was populated with tan and cream colored buildings, business and residential. The one he was staking out was two stories, supposedly a clinic. People came and went at a pretty rapid and regular rate.

Too many people, Luke thought. Actual patients, likely. Doctors and nurses and other medical staff members. More likely Helena or another Cassadine had poached doctors from this clinic for her plans. Or she’d sold off the building and moved.

After three hours of watching the comings and goings, Luke took out a small piece of paper from his wallet, scratched a line through the top address.

One down. Time to move on to the next.

Kiremit House: Study

It had been nearly a year and a half since the morning he’d washed ashore in Greece, since he’d sworn his revenge on Valentin Cassadine — and yet Nikolas still toiled away in darkness and secrecy.

He’d spent most of that time hunting down leads from a flat in Marseilles, scouring the European continent for any information about the mysterious Cassadine bastard that no one had ever heard of before Helena had first spoken of him to Luke a little less than a decade ago.  But no one knew anything about him, not even the aliases they’d managed to pin to him.

Valentin was a cipher who had appeared out of thin air—managing to be in the right place at the right time as Helena embarked on her final revenge. He’d used his connections to play games with Jason and Drew, switching the brothers as a little joke no one but he would ever understand. He’d sat back and allowed Helena to spin her plot, thinking she’d sent the real Jason Morgan back to Port Charles when he was actually comatose in a Russian clinic.

But if Chimera had been the plan all along, Nikolas wondered now, sitting at the desk, poring over old ledgers and journals for what felt like the thousandth time, what was in it for Valentin? And if he’d had access to Chimera all that time, why had he concocted that ham fisted attack in Greece? Putting Sam and Drew, Laura and Kevin, Ava — all of them in danger. All of them witnesses. Why not unleash Chimera and get rid of the obstacles that way?

The pieces didn’t fit together, and nothing Nikolas had done in all this time could explain all that had happened. If Valentin had the will, why hadn’t he used that first, then disposed of Nikolas? He could have orchestrated an accident to make it all go down more smoothly—

The will he’d produced weeks after Nikolas’s plunge into the sea had given Valentin all the power, but it wouldn’t keep Nikolas or Spencer safe if Nikolas returned to the land of the living.

Nikolas steepled his hands on the desk, looked over at the last photograph of his son — one taken the last time he’d seen him. Luke had offered updated ones, but Nikolas had refused. He didn’t want the visual of how much time he’d lost. He thought of his own youth — from the ages of thirteen to fifteen, he’d grown almost a foot. His voice had changed.

He bowed his head, took a deep breath. It hit him more often now— the time he was surrendering to this — time he would never get back. Time that Lucky would never have with his own sons.

But a few years lost would be worth it if Nikolas could be sure that Valentin was gone. If he could be sure that this time, finally, Helena’s schemes were over. That the darkest days of the Cassadine family were behind them.

Until Nikolas could be sure the world was safe for his family and the people he loved, it wasn’t safe to return.

He turned back to the journals, prepared to dive into the pages once again for some hint, some lead into Valentin’s past, hoping to unravel the mystery of where in the hell he’d come from.

Pendik: Bağhat Caddesi

 After eliminating the second address in the Pendik district and feeling like he’d wasted an entire damn day, Luke stopped at a kebab counter. He wasn’t looking forward to returning to the house without any results — or spending much more time in Istanbul with the Dark Prince and Little Obrecht.

He’d meant what he’d said to Nikolas — having him stay dead meant Valentin thought he was safe, but it didn’t sit right with Luke to be working with Nikolas at the same time he knew Laura was back home worrying over the Cassadine war starting again. He’d mostly ignored the guilt over the last year. It’d been easy. Nikolas had been in Europe, and Luke had avoided him like the damn plague.

But now he was sharing living quarters. Reporting to the man like he was a fucking general at war. It itched at him, right between the shoulder blades. Laura sure as hell wasn’t going to agree everyone was better off thinking her son was dead. And when she found out Lucky had been lying all this time, too—Luke hoped he was no where near his ex-wife when she discovered that minor detail.

He paid for his order, then wandered over to a bench to take in some scenery while eating. No reason he had to hurry back to Fatih and give Nikolas the bad news. It was the prince’s damn list, Luke reminded himself. He’d wanted to start with Spinelli’s, but Nikolas had been sure his research was better. More accurate.

Absently, Luke tugged his cell phone out and scrolled through the calls and voicemails he’d been ignoring since he’d landed. Most were from Laura — hoping for an update. And a message from Tracy. “Well, what does she want?” he murmured.

Curious, and a bit bored, Luke decided to return the call—and Tracy must have been staring daggers at her phone because the call connected almost before the first ring had completed.

“It’s about damn time you called me back!”

“Now, Spanky, is that any way to talk to your loving husband?”

“Ex-husband—” Tracy took a deep breath. “I need your help.”

“I’m a little busy right now. Haven’t you heard about the return of the prodigal son?”

“I know you’re hunting down Valentin Cassadine, but you have the connections to get this done without a trace.”

Intrigued, Luke tipped his head. “Are we hiding a body?” When she hesitated, he sat up a little straighter. “Tracy?”

“No. The body’s been dead for forty years. And someone else did the deed. Susan Moore.”

“Ah. I’m vaguely familiar with it, but I don’t know why it matters to you. Neither of us were in Port Charles when the old girl got done in.”

“No. But—” There was a pause, and Luke could almost picture his ex-wife looking around furtively to see if anyone was listening. “Look. I’m not a good person.”

“Who is?” Luke perked. This was certainly shaping up to be an interesting conversation.

“I did something back then that was…perhaps not exactly a good thing. But it felt necessary—”

“Tracy, cut the bullshit.”

“Monica found out that there was a twin. She called me, and I arranged for Drew to disappear into the foster system.”

Luke’s mouth dropped slightly because he certainly hadn’t been expecting that. “Uh, run that by me one more time?”

“Damn it, Luke—”

“The last time I was in town, Robert was digging that old case up because they were trying to figure out how Victor knew about the twins. Don’t tell me—”

“No. No, God, no. I didn’t…I didn’t have anything to do with that. But yes, Robert and Curtis Ashford are looking into the case. Monica is freaking out. She’s the weak link,” Tracy muttered. “I may have hated the cold-hearted bitch she used to be, but at least you could count on her to keep a damned secret.”

“Tracy—”

“Look, I just need to make sure they can’t trace it back to me. Or to Monica. So she can keep being grandmother of the year, and I can stay out of trouble.”

“I can make some calls, but I can’t promise it’ll have my full attention. At least not for a few more days.”

“Anything. Please. I can probably swing two, maybe three weeks of distraction. I’d appreciate it, Luke.”

“I’ll do what I can. Don’t kidnap anyone else while you’re waiting.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Wasn’t joking. I’ll be in touch.” Luke ended the call, slid the phone back in his pocket. Tracy was never boring, he thought. He tossed the remains of his kebab. Time to head back to the other side of the peninsula and face the music. On their first day in town, they were exactly where they’d been the day before — nowhere.

Kiremit: Lucky’s Bedroom

Lucky leaned back in his chair, tapped a few keys, frowning at a lab report from the 1970s. What the hell was Helena doing with WSB medical records from over forty years ago?

“Didn’t they vet any of this before they sent it to us?”

Lucky grimaced, swiveled in the chair to face the doorway. Britt stood there, tablet in hand, a scowl on her face. “What?”

“This crap in the shared folder. Everything I open is like fifty years old and has nothing to do with any of the experiments—” Britt flopped onto his bed, scrolling again on the tablet. “It’s like they wanted to make your life miserable.”

“There wasn’t a file structure,” Lucky said, his shoulders tensed. “It’s not like Helena named the files top secret memory experiments. She probably dumped everything in here to annoy my mother—”

“What’s the purpose?” Britt muttered. “She sent the files to your mother to protect Nikolas. Why make it so difficult?”

“You obviously never met the old bitch.” Lucky crossed his legs, resting them on the bed. “And there might be something to this. The WSB started to cross paths with the Cassadines a few years after some of this is dated. The Ice Princess? That’s late seventies, early eighties.”

“What does that have to do with memory experiments?” Britt demanded. “I thought we were supposed to be looking for this memory protocol—”

“We’re looking for anything that we can use to put the Cassadines out of business. Didn’t you go to college? Don’t you know anything about research?” Lucky retorted. “You can’t always get what you want without a lot of work. Then again, you’re the one who couldn’t bother to get pregnant on your own, right? You had to steal my sister’s embryo.”

Britt gripped the sides of the tablet, dropped her eyes. “You’re right. I’m looking for the shortcut. I want this to be done. I want whatever answers Nikolas is looking for to be in the first damn file we look at.” She shoved herself to her feet. “Or is this your idea of a good time? Wandering around the world, looking for demons and ghosts while the rest of the world goes on without you?”

Lucky stilled. “What does that mean?”

“It means exactly what I said, doesn’t it? I can’t go home because I’ll be arrested on sight. But you? You could go home tomorrow. Probably go back to being a cop. You’ve got kids. A mother and a sister. But you’re here lying to all of them. So either you enjoy this or maybe you can understand my frustration. I’ve spent all day looking through this junk and nothing is worth knowing—”

“I can’t go home,” Lucky cut her off, and she closed her mouth. “Not until I know that Helena didn’t lay one more trap for my family. I can’t. We thought she was gone, didn’t we? And then, from beyond the grave, she came back and almost had Jake killing a ballroom full of people, including himself and his mother.” He shook his head. “I want the world to forget those boys were ever Spencers. Because maybe then whatever Cassadines are left will leave them the hell out of this war.”

He rose from his chair, the heat rising in his cheeks, in his chest. He wanted to hit something, to put his fist through the damn wall. “I didn’t ask for this. The Cassadines stole my mother, traumatized her. Did the same to my grandmother. They took me, played with my head and used me like a weapon. And then, for her final act of revenge, the old bitch stole my son and made us think he was dead. Do you understand what it’s like? I had to tell Elizabeth Jake was dead. Stand over his grave. But please, keep telling me how you’re being inconvenienced by having to read some lab reports. I’m dying to hear how you’re the victim.”

Britt exhaled slowly. “Okay. We’re not getting anywhere like this. I’m sorry. Okay? Let me just—I’m sorry. You’re right. I made this situation what it is. I lied and I destroyed my own life. So I get it.” She cleared her throat. “And maybe I’m frustrated because I’m reading all of this, and I don’t understand it. Why it’s here or how it fits in. I’ve wasted so much of my life already. I don’t want to keep losing time. I’m not going to apologize for wanting this to be over faster.”

Lucky dragged a hand down his face, then sat down again. “It’s all part of a story,” he said. “We don’t know when the Cassadines and the WSB became intertwined. Was it when Victor went to work there? Or were they working together before then? And if they were, then that just doubles all the places we have to look for traces of Helena’s plans. The WSB has properties and resources in every damned country. I get it, you’re here to get Nikolas back on his damned throne. You want to cut to the chase. But I can’t cut corners. Not this time. Every time I think it’s over, she comes back again. I have to be sure. Even if I have to read every damn file on this drive twice, I’m going to do that. You can either help me or you can go to tell Nikolas to give you something else to do.”

She looked down at the tablet and was quiet for a long moment. Finally, she sighed. “I keep expecting to find my parents’ names,” she said, her voice almost inaudible.

He frowned. “What?”

“They worked for whoever would hire them. Mother didn’t really have any conscience or loyalty. Just whoever would fund her projects. And well, my father—you know what he’s capable of. Some day, their names are going to show up in these files. I don’t know everything they’ve done. I’ve never wanted to know.” Her pained eyes met his. “They played with your head, right? That was my father. And my mother was working with Victor around the time Helena had Jake. She probably knew about it. You want the story, Lucky, and I want to pretend none of this is happening. At the same time my mother was helping me steal your sister’s child, she probably helped Helena hold Jake captive. My family has done nothing but destroy lives for generations. It’s all we’re good at.”

This he almost understood — the fear of knowing your parents might be capable of evil, of not wanting to see or believe it. He’d been a teenager once, standing in his living room, listening to his father recount the horror he’d inflicted on Lucky’s mother. On the woman Luke had always said he loved more than anything. His father had fallen hard and fast from the pedestal Lucky had always placed him on, and he’d never really been able to get his foundations back.

“Then you have a choice, Britt. You can stay and help so they can’t ever do this again. Or go back to Geneva and wait for the statute of limitations to end. Either way, I’m going to find out the truth and make sure that the Cassadines or anyone else in their world can’t hurt the people I love again.” He lifted his brows. “What’s it going to be?”

She looked away, then sighed, and met his eyes. “I’m not going to apologize for being selfish. For wanting my life back. But maybe you’re right. Maybe we’ll never be safe if people like my parents are out there. So let’s get back to reading these files and hope we find something worth knowing.”

← Chapter 42 | Chapter 44 →