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Jason was sitting with Carly, a snifter of whiskey dangling from one hand while the other played in her lush blond locks as she rested her head against the back of the couch. He was listening to how Lulu came over to advocate for Dante. How she didn’t even bother to offer comfort or sympathy for her son, Lulu’s cousin, going to jail. No, she was there to plead for Carly to keep her boyfriend Dante safe from Jason.
“You should've heard her going on and on about how Dante loves Micheal and how he was trying to keep him out of the mob.” Carly paused to lift her head enough to take a gulp of her whiskey. “She didn’t utter one word about how Dante took the life of my son into his own hands. That he thought he knew better than his own mother how to take care of him. Some arrogant prick who lied his way into our lives as an undercover cop. I told her I’d keep you from killing Dante.” She shook her head in disgust causing his fingers to graze her scalp a little. “She really thinks we’re going to get past this. The fact that she thinks like this immediately after Micheal went to jail tells me where her head is. Completely up Dante’s ass. You’d think she’d have learned her lesson after Johnny Zacchara used her as an alibi. But not Lulu,” Carly sneered, closing her eyes and tilting her head back slightly as Jason continued to play in her hair. “I’m gonna make her wish she’d never met his ass in the first place. When I’m through with them, they’ll both wish they’d made different choices.”
“You can’t do anything to Lulu. As much as you’re angry with her right now, you still love her.”
“She is supposed to love Micheal and me, her family. She put her relationship with Dante over the life of her cousin! How am I supposed to forgive her?” Carly yelled as her head snapped toward him, and the tumbler full of scotch in her hand nearly sloshed over.
“You don’t,” Jason quietly replies, sliding his hand closer until it was cupping her head and sliding towards her cheek.
“I don’t? You just said…”
“…Don’t do anything in the way of revenge. You love her. You don’t really want to ruin her life. What would that change? And you don’t want her dead. What you do want is her to feel your anger, your sadness and your betrayal. So, give her that. Show her how much she hurt you. Throw her out of your life. Despite everything she did, she still loves you, Carly. You have given her so much love & support. The way you’ve stood by her is not that easy to lose. Taking that away from her will show her just how badly she screwed up. I don’t know if you want to be done with her forever, or if five years down the line, you’ll want her back in your life again.” Jason paused to take a gulp of his own drink. “Just promise me that if you ever change your mind about Lulu, be cautious and let her back in very slowly. Trust even more slowly.”
Carly lays there with her eyes closed & her face in the palm of his hand as his thumb caresses her and contemplates Jason’s suggestion. It was still revenge, whether Jason believed it or not. A cold revenge. A silent one. One he himself used to employ against his own family years ago. And once for about a year against her, to deadly effect. She is brought out of her thoughts when Jason stands up and goes to the bar to refill his drink.
“As for Dante, leave him to me,” Jason growls. “I’ll take care of him.”
“Bring it,” she called, knocking back the rest of her drink. “And as much as I wish you could, you can’t, Jason. He’s Sonny’s son. You kill him, and Sonny will never forgive you,” Carly throws at him. “He will kill you.” She snorts derisively. “He’ll try anyway. Or worse, he’ll start some war that could get us all killed.”
“No, I can do it clean. Leave no trace. It could be anyone. Dante posed as Dominic,” he spits out angrily as finishes pouring himself another glass & grabs the decanter to rejoin Carly. “He was associated with the guards and some of the other families’ low-level guys. Anyone could want to kill him now that it’s out that he's a cop.”
“But Sonny will suspect you.”
“He can suspect, but he won’t have any proof.”
Carly snorted again as Jason rejoined her on the couch and set down his glass. “When has Sonny ever really cared about evidence when he gets in his feelings like that. And you know Sonny. He will have you or someone else look into it. When he can’t find anything, he’ll get frustrated and angry, and become reckless. He’ll start to look at you and become resentful & distrustful. He’ll start to undermine you within the organization because you will be the only target he can find. And that’s if you can lie well enough to convince him when he asks you point blank did you kill his son,” Carly reminds him.
Jason slams down the decanter full of amber liquor. “What am I supposed to do? Just let him walk around free and clear after he hurt my so—after he hurt Micheal?”
Carly noted his aborted statement. She would also always hold Jason as Micheal’s real father in her heart. “Don’t,” she whispered, handing him her empty glass. “He is and always will be your son. Our son. Our boy.”
“Our boy,” he echoed, picking up the decanter and refilling her glass.
“But we both know that Sonny will not hold Dante accountable in any real way. He’ll cover and excuse his part in Micheal going to prison. He won’t acknowledge that it wasn’t his right to interrupt Sonny’s trial to throw Micheal under the bus. He’ll say he was protecting his brother along with a whole bunch of other bullshit that dances around the fact that Dante was in the wrong. In Sonny’s eyes, Dante is so naive, he believed that the law would be fair. I don’t know if all his cases have ended up fair and squeaky clean, but the law has never been like that for criminals and their families. Maybe he’ll find that out, now that he’s related to one.” She curls her lip in a smirk imagining Dante suffering due to being Sonny’s son.
“What you do,” she continues after a long pause to take a swig from her freshly refilled glass, “is take your own advice. Ice Sonny out. Emotionally. He loves you, and no matter that he now has a new son, he sees you as his former mentee and protégée, his partner, his best friend but most importantly his brother. You take it all away. Become his cold and detached partner, and he won’t know what to do with himself. He won’t have that strength and support you always give him in his personal life. As for the business, you stay the course, business as usual. Except everyone will see the rift. They’ll know that Sonny has lost your respect and probably your loyalty. Sonny likes to forget or ignore the fact that I know these guys. I’ve hosted plenty of business dinners for them and their wives. Mingled with their families, their kids. The Five Families respect a man who takes care of his family.” She meets his gaze head on. “A loyal man who understands his responsibilities not only to his family but THE family.”
Jason looked at Carly with narrowed eyes as he mulled over her words. Subconsciously, his fingers found their way back to her silky tresses, and he could feel himself relaxing again. As much as they tried to keep her out of the business, there were social obligations that the wives, and sometimes, their whole families, had to participate in. She wasn’t a fool, so it shouldn’t be a surprise she noticed everything.
“You’re right,” he said. “Despite Dante being Sonny’s son, he’s an undercover cop that Sonny shot in his own house. It’s out there, and they have to be looking at him, looking at the organization and wondering what he’s going to do now. Sonny feels too much guilt to do anything that shows there are consequences to being an undercover cop and getting his son thrown in Pentonville.”
“Exactly. You have to be the de facto leader, the strong one. Make sure that despite the fact that Sonny is a mess over this new son and Micheal going to jail, that you are taking care of business. It keeps us safe when Sonny as usual isn’t thinking about the safety of the rest of us.”
Jason sighs, takes another gulp of his drink. As he leans forward to refill, he hears Carly give a sigh of her own.
“I’m going to have to take drastic measures of my own.”
“Carly, any plan you come up with to get back at Dante—”
“No, this is about protecting Morgan.”
Jason turns around and stares at her, “What are you planning?”
“I can’t trust Sonny with Morgan. I caved and let him back in Morgan’s life just a little, but let’s be honest. He shot an undercover cop at point blank range in his own house. After letting Micheal get shot at the warehouse, I can't let this go, Jason. I have to be a better mother than I was to Micheal. I can’t let another one of my kids get hurt.” He looks closely at her, head back on the couch arm, eyes closed as tears trickle down her cheeks & his heart wrenches painfully in his chest.
Jason sets down his glass & reaches over & takes her near-empty tumbler before it slips to the floor. Jason slides closer and slips his arms around her, pulling her face into his shoulder as the dam finally breaks and the sobs begin. Kissing her on the head, he murmurs for her to breathe, let it out and count to ten even as the first of his tears break free.
“What are you going to do?” He asked softly once they’d both begun calming down. “You know Sonny will fight you on this. He’s already lost Micheal to prison, and Dante currently says he hates him. He'll be like a wild animal trying to hold on to the son he has left.”
Carly pulled back to wipe her face.
“I’m going to channel my version of Diane. I will finally be more like her favorite client.”
Jason peers at her and encourages her to continue as he takes another drink.
“I have sole custody. I make the rules. I am going to limit Sonny’s visitation, whether he likes it or not. He can no longer be with my baby alone. The visits must be supervised, and by someone I know will protect my son above everyone & everything. I don’t want Morgan going to any of the warehouses or over to Greystone anymore, either.”
No
“He’s going to hate that,” Jason states, reaching out to wipe away a stray tear.
“I don’t care. And if he decides to challenge me on this, I will go to family court and use the fact that he didn’t cover Micheal when he got shot, and that he shot an undercover cop who just so happened to be his son in his own home.”
“But Dante lied and said he accidentally shot himself.”
“Come on Jason. Nobody really believes that. Interestingly enough, no one has tried to prove it. I mean, Sonny didn’t shoot him with his own gun…” Carly trails off as she wonders what actually happened to the gun Sonny shot Dante with and were ballistics run on the bullet from Dante’s chest?
Jason thinks about her plan as he retrieves her glass and leans over to refill their drinks. He looks at the decanter and wonders just how much he had tonight?
His train of thought is interrupted when Carly speaks again.
“I also want to do something you probably won’t like.”
“What is it?” Jason asks, stiffening as he turns back around.
“I want to get my own guards.”
“Carly, no.”
“Wait, let me finish. I want guards that have no ties to Sonny. Unfortunately, that means no ties to you because all the guards are men in the organization. But I want to hire Spinelli to find and vet them. I think that way you will feel more secure in our security.”
She smiled at her little pun. She must be getting tipsy, Jason thought. He finishes refilling their drinks as he thinks about what she wants to do.
“Yeah ok,” Jason murmurs.
“Ok?”
“We’ll get Spinelli to find you some personal guards. Six. Two each on you and Morgan. One to stick close and one to tail and scout the surroundings. Two to complete the rotation. Hell, maybe even eight.”
“That sounds like a lot,” Carly questions with wide eyes.
“It sounds like enough. We should have always had more guards on the family. Not just when there was cause for concern. We’re coffee importers. There’s always a cause for concern or the possibility of it.”
He sighs as he falls back against the soft cushions. “I should’ve done better,” he whispers so low she had to shift forward to hear him. “I should have done better by our son, by you. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.”
‘What are you saying? Jase, you do everything that you can –”
“No. I should have never talked you into marrying Sonny. That first time. I was so caught up…” ‘..in protecting myself from you’ he finished in his head, out loud he said “Everything that happened was downhill from there, both you and Micheal’s kidnappings, thinking Micheal was dead, dealing with the affairs, divorces, other men stepping in to take care of our boy when it should have been me.”
Carly slipped her arm around his shoulders and pressed her head to the side of his.
“We should have been the one making decisions for our boy. US.” Jason entangled the fingers of his left hand with hers. “Do you know how often I stood by and watched other men make the wrong choices for my son, because I made everyone believe he wasn’t mine anymore.” He gripped his glass tighter. “I let another man adopt him and gave away any power I had to protect & take care of him.” He squeezed his eyes shut tightly. “It’s why I’ve worked so hard to make our territory as strong as it is. Sonny needed to seem untouchable for the family to be safe. I made myself the enforcer that I am, so people would think twice about hurting my family. But I didn’t protect us from the one hurting us from the inside.”
She held Jason closer as his voice rasped with unshed tears. Kissing his temple she said,” You’ve done everything you can to protect us. Love us. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t stuck to my stupid plan. I should have ran straight to you and Micheal in South America. Instead I lost faith and didn’t believe that we could hold our own against AJ, against the Quartermaines. I was impulsive and stubborn. I should have just held onto you and we would have made it. Instead I wasted time we can never get back, made mistakes I can’t take back and betrayed you in the worst way. Then when I realized you’d never look at me, want me the same again I threw myself into loving Sonny. Forcing myself to put aside my instincts, thinking he was the only way I could be loved, all I deserved. I couldn’t rationalize away the violence and the danger because that’s what our life is but I pretended that he could keep us safe when I knew it was never him. Forgave him time and time again for recklessly endangering my kids. I did this. I should have walked away so many times.”
She pulls away from Jason, runs her finger through her hair and murmurs to herself, “Just like I should have walked away that night. I haven’t learned anything at all.” Carly turns and lifts her tumbler to her lips as she scoots to the edge of her seat and leans away. “I’m my own worst enemy and now I’ve dragged my kids into this.”
Carly sips her drink, leans over and into herself, looking into the past. “I’d just had a fight with AJ. He’d made me feel worthless and that you would never want me. Choose me. I block it out the best I can and then I see you dancing with her. Wrapped up in her arms. The pain I felt man. I couldn’t breathe. I just started walking and walking. Thinking that AJ is right. Why would he ever want me? The things I’d done, the person I am. I didn't deserve it, to be happy. I deserved to be hurt. To be punished. So unworthy, how could I ever believe I was valuable to you. Who am I kidding?”
She’s rocking back and forth and Jason can see that he’s losing her inside herself. She’s speaking about the past like it’s the present. The pain of everything that’s happened to Micheal over the years and that it has brought them here. On the outside while their boy is stuck in a jail cell months after having just woken up from a coma. The guilt is wrapping around Carly tight and if he doesn’t reach her soon, the noose will strike, she’ll be back in Rose Lawn and maybe lost to him forever.
“I don’t even know how I ended up there. In front of the penthouse door. The perfect punishment. Someone who would tell me the truth. Exactly what I needed to hear. An excuse to self destruct. A reason to make the pain go away. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to think about it if I could just make the pain go away,” she trails off in a whisper. “I asked him about the two of you. Were you seeing her behind my back? Ha,” she barks in a laugh startling Jason. “How could you be going behind my back, I’m married to your brother. So quick to remind me of what I’ve done to you. What I caused. How he hopes you’ll choose her. Better off without me. Better off.”
Tears are sliding down her cheeks. Jason is stiff in his own memories. The pain of being shot and walking in on them is running parallel as he watches guilt and misery contort her beautiful face. How didn’t he see this before? They had been a completely chaotic mess. Her more so than him but he’d done his damage too. Pulling her in and pushing her away. Not saying the things he really meant. Being so wrapped up in Robin and letting her version of morality and relationships overshadow how he truly felt. And not just about relationships but about life in general. Right and wrong. Letting her tie him up in knots about how he lived his life only to continually go behind his back and try to control his… the glass cracks in his hand and it was like a fog had lifted. He sets the glass on the table. God this wasn’t good for either one of them, reliving the past while they were so torn up over Micheal trying to pinpoint just where they’d gone wrong.
Feeling bereft without her, Jason reaches for her and pulls her back against him. Hooks his chin on her shoulder and says, “Hey, despite all that we went through, I know you wouldn’t wish Morgan away or Joss. And I wouldn’t have Jake. The three of them are the sunrises in our heartbreak.” He rocks with her and wraps her in his arms. “Forgive me Caroline. Forgive me.”
The sound of Jason asking for forgiveness against her ear, jolts her out of her stroll down a hellish memory lane.
“Jason -”
“No, listen to me. I hate that he turned your worst fears and insecurities against you but I’m not surprised. We’ve both watched him do it over the years. We know the truth now. We know who we are to ourselves and each other. Despite everything we’ll fix this. We’re stronger now. We’ll somehow make this better for our family. Don’t go down that road and leave me alone Carly. Stay with me.” He hugs her tighter and she sets her glass down then turns in his arms.
“I’m here Jase,” as she holds his face in her palms. “I will always be here right by your side.”
“Always,” he replies, breathing in sync with her. He searches her clear eyes and smiles gently because she’s back with him. “Always,” he repeats as he presses a soft kiss into her lips.
***
It’s quiet in the early morning. They lay awake wrapped in each other's arms. Him on his back and her cuddled to his side. There is no worry, no panic, no guilt and no shame. Just a feeling of safe haven and love. Carly rubs her hand up Jason’s chest, kisses over his heart and drags her nose up to burrow into his shoulder. He tightens his grip, kisses the top of her hair and rolls towards her. Looking her in the eye, he kisses her once, twice, three times and exhales. He feels calm and settled. He feels at home. Jason blinks and tucks that piece of information away to examine on the next motorcycle ride through the country. As much as he wants to stay, he can’t. She knows he can’t. As much as they live their lives by each other’s side, they also share them with other people. People who would never understand. People who truly don’t understand them but they’ve made their choices. The brightening sky is ushering in their responsibilities.
“I have to go,” He whispers as he breathes her in.
She holds onto him tightly and says,”I know.”
She lets him go, he rolls out of her arms and stands up. Reaching down to pick up his jeans, she can’t help but admire him. Once he’s fully clothed and lacing up his boots, she gracefully rises from the couch and wraps the throw blanket around her. He looks at her swollen lips and tousled golden hair and resists the urge to start again. Jason grabs her hand and they walk to the front door. The house is still dark but of course he knows the way in her home.
He turns and takes her in his arms and holds her warm body to his. Rakes his hand through her hair. She holds him around his waist and they just take one more minute.
“I’ll call you later,” he says, breaking their hug.
She smiles at him, “OK.”
“Lock the door,” he reminds her as he slips away.
She grins as she turns the deadbolt and shakes her head. Then she heads upstairs to start her day.