A few minutes into their drive, Cruz reached for the radio and began to play the dials without taking his eyes off the road. This is why he’d insisted they take his car. He knew things about it no one else could know. If something was wrong or off with it, he’d be the first to come to that conclusion--there’d be no delay in getting Alexis and her girls to safety. So he’d said. She thought it was just because he didn’t like the stations she had preset in her car. As the strains of some eighties soft rock ballad filled the sedan, Alexis knew how right she’d been.

She rolled her eyes, exasperated by the preferences of the young.

Cruz saw her out of the corner of his eye and turned to her, curiously. “Problem DA Davis?”

She tucked her coat around herself. “Not if we’ve just traveled twenty years back in time.” She caught the flash of his smile in the burnt orange shadows that filled the cabin.

“I take it you’re not a fan of the power ballad?” She felt his mockery and scoffed, somewhat haughtily. She wasn’t a snob, really.

“No, those weren’t exactly my speed back then.” She eyes the headlights in the rearview mirror anxiously and stiffened as the dark vehicle began to pull up alongside them. There was a traffic light ahead, going on yellow, next red. She stopped breathing as they came to a rolling stop at the same time. She noticed Cruz’s hand move surreptitiously towards his sidearm. Her knuckles were bone-white against her ribs. She heard Kristina whimper and Molly begin to snore, secure in her seat.

If she were standing she’d collapse, but in her current position there was no where to go but in. She closed her eyes as tightly as she could and determined that all their work couldn’t have been in vain. She didn’t believe God was that cruel. When she thought she might die of cardiac arrest from the sheer amount of distress she was in, she felt a small hand rest on her forearm.

“Mommy?” Kristina called her, clearly scared of how white her mother had become.

Alexis forced her lungs to fill with oxygen and uncurled her fists. She vigorously began to stretch, both to amuse Krissy and to rid her body of the terrible tension that had her muscles in knots. They were alone on the streets again. The wealthy housing and luxury cars were becoming fewer as they were entering the city’s inner sanctum. They must’ve been crazy to take this path through the heart of Port Charles. This would test their dedication to this plan, as well as their devotion to Molly and Kristina.

There were unofficial checkpoints they would pass through between the sometimes overlapping territories of the Corinthos Family, the Alcazar Familia, and the Medicis, who were every bit as domineering as they seemed. The Medicis had swept into town just as Sonny and Lorenzo had truly begun to butt heads over certain illegal trading rights and other more personal vendettas.

Lorenzo could not forgive Sam’s part in the death of his son. He considered her a murderer and made it his duty to punish her as he saw fit. The proper punishment, he decided, was death and he sent a pack of his most skilled minions to carry it out. However, that only ended in a blood bath when Jason and Max intercepted his death squad and turned the tables on them. Jason wanted to whisk Sam away to a safe house in the Caymans, but she refused to leave. She belonged at his side, she said, and she stayed. She never left the penthouse again. It wasn’t safe.

Before long, Lorenzo no longer had time to plot the demise of Diego’s executioner. He became aware of how genuine a threat the Medicis were when Vicente Medici himself called to let him know that his services were no longer required in Port Charles. At midnight, Alcazar’s arms shipment out of Montreal was intercepted, commandeered and resold before dawn. Every member of Alcazar’s crew was cut down by snipers’ bullets. They never had a chance.

Ric’s hands were full and tied. He could be of no help to his former mob ally. Medici’s men had paid him a visit. If he so much as breathed towards a search warrant against their organization, it was predicted that Molly would become the unfortunate victim of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He refused to test their word and stopped taking Lorenzo’s calls.

While Alcazar ceased to be a problem, Sonny was content not to get involved in any territorial disputes between the two rival families. That is, until Medici was so bold as to send a message of the same content to Grey Skull. It was apparent to him that he’d been too slow in seeing this man as a possible usurper. He and Jason immediately made plans to take out the head of the business. Their motto, take out the head and the feet have no brain. A funny thing happened though. Their plans backfired.

The man they had taken out with such calculating cruelty wasn’t the head of the company, just the figurehead. The real deal was much too smart to place himself at the scene of the crime. That’s why he’d been so successful. So, now they had the assassination of an allegedly innocent man to contend with.

With the rising crime in the city, the District Attorney wasn’t in a position to sweep something like this under the rug. The people were watching; it was Election Season. Ric stalled for as long as he could manage but eventually warrants were issued for the arrest of both Sonny and Jason. Although they were out on bail in no time, their incarceration signified a change in guard for Port Charles. They weren’t untouchable anymore. What they were was pissed. They weren’t alone.

Lorenzo had refused to give even a block of his territory over to the Medici clan. He had been in this town for years and had no intention of pulling up his roots and relocating. Vicente, the man he thought had been killed, was not pleased. He called again, voice still pleasant as can be, and let Alcazar know in no uncertain terms that he knew exactly what Skye and Lila did with their days, where they took their walks, their favorite places to shop and have lunch, and that he had little compunction about interrupting their peaceful existence with a well-timed hail of bullets. He succeeded in enraging the already loosely hinged Venezuelan to the point of madness. Moreover, he also instilled him with a modicum of fear. Though small it was potent enough to send Lorenzo packing his loved ones off to some unattainable location in the boondocks. Better they be barefoot in the backwoods than gone from life. Then, he was free to wreak havoc without fear for them and he did.

Jason and Sonny struck a blow to the Medici operation when the condo functioning as a headquarters was burned to a cinder. For a few short days their work appeared to be done. All was quiet on the grapevine and there wasn’t a flicker of Medici life. Then, there was the video. Michael and Morgan playing flag football at the park. Kristina at school with her friends. Tiny Molly asleep in her crib. Suddenly it wasn’t about guns or coffee beans. Though the video wasn’t narrated and there was no message attached, the unspoken declaration was clear. Their children were in play and it was serious.

Sonny didn’t show Alexis the tape until a month later after an unidentified woman attempted to take Kristina out of school without her permission. Once Alexis realized it wasn’t Sam who’d done it, she contacted Sonny and asked him exactly what he’d gotten himself into. She’d been able to note the anxiety in his voice as he ordered her to come to Grey Skull immediately and not to make any unnecessary stops along the way.

She was horrified as she saw footage of her little girl swinging happily on the monkey bars next to her newest best friend. Her head swam and she lost what little food chemo had allowed her to keep down. Sonny had stammered out an apology and put her in one of his guest beds in spite of her protests. He vowed to keep them safe for that long. He accomplished that much; they survived the night.

The next day, she discovered that her car had been wired to explode as soon as she inserted her key. Even in this day and age, nothing sent a louder message than the car bomb. Sonny refused to allow her to drive herself after that. She thought it must have been guilt; her car had been parked on his property all night.

Subsequently, the threats only became more insistent and eventually they skipped Sonny and Jason altogether, arriving directly on Alexis’ lake house doorstep. A beautifully wrapped gift; bright pink with light green ribbons and a large bow. It caught Kristina’s attention as soon as they stepped out of the black Mercedes that shuttled them about these days. Upon setting eyes on it, Alexis felt a rush of dread so strong that she sprinted after her daughter and yanked the rectangular package from her fingers in the same motion that she pulled Kristina to floorboards. It blew as it made contact with the water.

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