“Sami, of course I got you a glove too! I am not the misogynist you and your mother are always making me out to be!” John said as he tossed her a glove from the big bag Jensen held open.

“What’s a misogynist?” Bryce asked from his perch on the railing, watching the proceedings with interest.

“Basically, think male chauvinist pig, Bryce. You’re probably familiar with that term,” John replied.

“Hey! Not me. I’m one of those crunchygroovy new age types. I do my own laundry,” Bryce answered in a wounded tone, all the while being very careful not to let his eyes wander in Carrie’s direction.

“Good God, Jensen how many bloody gloves did you think we needed?” John asked, distracted by the seemingly never ending supply in the big shopping bag.

“You wanted mitts, you got mitts,” Jensen answered haughtily. “Besides, I thought you might want to round out the team. I have played the occasional game, you know.”

John had not known. Jensen had been a fixture in Dimera’s house ever since John could remember. The thought of him sliding facefirst into a base was inconceivable. “You play baseball?!”

“Well, ‘play’ might be too weak a term. I prefer to think of what I do on the diamond as ‘art’,” Jensen answered blandly.

Sensing a challenge, John smiled. “Do you now? Bryce, why don’t you see if any of the boys want to join in. Looks like we got ourselves a game.”

Marlena stepped onto the back porch and was greeted by the crack of a bat. Her smile faded quickly and she nodded coldly at Dimera, moving to sit in the chair furthest from him. It was the first time she had seen him in days and she had almost managed to banish his presence from her mind.

“You look lovely as always, Marlena.”

Irritated, she forced herself to face him. “Stefano, please. I came out to watch my children. I have no desire to engage in one of your stupid mind games.”

“And a good afternoon to you too,” he replied, nodding amicably.

She didn’t bother with an answer, turning her attention to the game. With a wistful smile, she watched John gleefully slap Sami a highfive for completing a double play from her post on first base.

“He’s changed. The time he spent as Roman he isn’t the man he used to be,” Stefano said quietly.

Made curious by the man’s reflective tone, Marlena couldn’t help but ask, “Changed for better or worse, in your opinion?”

Dimera released a dry chuckle. “A little of both, I would say. You know, I think he is even more ruthless now. More dangerous. Can you believe, he even suggested we attempt to destroy the entire ISA when he learned that the Brotherhood represented a threat to you? I almost let him. I actually thought he might pull it off.”

“You must be very proud of what you created.”

Dimera looked back at her with an amused grin. “Oh, I can’t take the credit for what he is, Marlena. I just made sure he survived to realize his potential. You really should thank me, you know. He would have selfdestructed long ago if I hadn’t taken him in.”

“Gratitude is not what I feel toward you, Stefano. You don’t know how many times I have wished I were a better shot,” she replied, glaring at him with blazing eyes.

“John would have probably killed you if you had succeeded. Do you realize that?” he said, tired of being the monster in her little fantasy. “He was never one for killing women, but I’ve known him to make exceptions. You should have seen him when he came home from Europe to find me on the brink of death! He wanted blood, Marlena.”

She ignored the ugly words and looked back to the field, to her children, laughing as they played with the violent young men that John had surrounded himself with. “He would never hurt me. Never.”

Dimera was forced into a reluctant nod. “No. Not now… I told you, he has changed.”

Stefano sat on the porch, nursing a glass of port and enjoying the last cigar of the day. In the distance, he saw John’s lithe form cutting through the tall grass, a big turkey hen slung over his shoulder. “Good hunting, I see!”

A broad grin on his face, John leaped the stairs to the porch and lay the bird down on the deck. “Yea. A nice hen. I’m going to leave it to Jensen to pluck this sucker. I owe him one for homering on me,” he said with a laugh. “Hell, I even had a shot at a deer. Nice eight point buck. Passed it up, though. Figured the kids would eat the turkey but that I’d never hear the end of it if I shot a deer. The mere thought of Sami, going on and on about me killing Bambi… Ugh!”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with them, haven’t you?” Stefano noted, keeping his tone even.

John tensed. “Yea. Some.”

Seeing that John had no intention of elaborating, Stefano continued. “The baseball game this afternoon was impressive. I wouldn’t have thought that Marlena would allow her children to interact with my men. I suppose she trusts your judgement. Personally, I would not have allowed it. Neither would I allow myself to get so close to them, knowing that it will make it that much harder when they leave. Or were you planning on keeping them here indefinitely? You could tell Marlena that the danger still exists, even after we have eliminated the Brotherhood.”

“Don’t be insulting, Stefano. That is something you would do!” John replied, unconsciously tightening his grip on his shotgun.

“Of course it is something I would do. Don’t be obtuse. I get what I want, John. You know that. If I want Marlena, I will have her. Eventually, she might even choose to be with me. How would you react to that?” Dimera asked, an ugly smile on his face.

“Hell, Stefano! Admit it. Half of the attraction is the fact that she doesn’t want you. You could have almost any woman you desire. You’ve had more beautiful women than I can count. Part of the attraction is the fact that she doesn’t want you and she never will!”

“The fact that she used to love me, that just makes it worse, doesn’t it?"John goaded. “You know she actually fell in love with me when we both thought I was you. I should have recognized then that there was no possible way I could be the ‘Phoenix’!”

Stefano shrugged, acknowledging the truth in the words. “Half of the joy of conquest is the difficulty of the challenge, John. If she could fall in love with the ‘Phoenix’ once, she could do it again.”

John groaned and shook his head. “How much do I not want to be having this conversation with you, Stefano?”

“We will have this conversation for as long as it takes for you to realize, you are not going back to Marlena. The time you spend with them here is an illusion. It isn’t real. I don’t want you to forget that.” .

“I know that, dammit! Christ! Can’t you allow me this time with them?” John propped his gun against the rail, not wanting the temptation of the heavy metal in his hands. “You set this into motion, Stefano. You left me with them for fourteen long years! Don’t bitch because it’s hard for me to let them go!”

John was pissed, his anger more at himself than at Dimera. He knew that being with them now was only going to hurt them all more later. He should have settled for making peace with them and then stayed away. That wasn’t Stefano’s fault, it was his own. Hell maybe he would get lucky and take a bullet when they went after the rest of the Brotherhood. It would solve all of their problems. He rubbed his hand across his eyes. Smelt the gun powder that lingered on his skin a fitting signature for what he was, a reminder of what he couldn’t be.

“I know I can’t go back,” John said more calmly. “I know I can never be a part of her life. As long as you recognize that you never will be either, we have no argument.”

As he turned to carry his kill into the kitchen, Stefano’s parting words followed him. “I hope you know what you are doing, John. Now is not the time for mistakes.”

Marlena sat, sipping at a warm mug of herbal tea and considering going to bed. She looked up as Carrie emerged from the small bathroom off of the main suite and padded over to sit with her. Her hair still damp from her bath, she looked like a little girl.

“Hey, are you doing okay?” Carrie asked in concern.

Marlena suppressed a chuckle at how grownup her little baby really was. “I’m fine, Carrie. Why?”

Carrie gave a small shrug. “I was talking to John earlier. I thought maybe… maybe he scared you. What he is now. What he is capable of doing,” she tapered off, watching her mother’s face.

Marlena knitted her brow, surprised by the question. “Does he scare you, Carrie?”

“What he’s done… Yea. That scares me. He’s done things Dad would never have condoned. I mean, John, when he was our dad. Ugh! It’s too confusing to even talk about!” Carrie said, grimacing. “What I mean is, he isn’t the same. I know that. I just figured the things he’s done must make you afraid of him. I guess that’s why you don’t want him to come back home. Right?”

“The things he has done...” Marlena sighed. “That doesn’t scare me, Carrie it saddens me. I know he would never do anything to hurt any of us. You know that too, don’t you?”

“Well, yea! You should have heard what he told Bryce he would do if he ever caught him around me!” She replied with a laugh. “Really! Bryce was scared, but I thought it was kind of sweet. I knew he was just doing it to protect me. I never thought Dad would hurt us. I just sort of assumed you did...”

“And just when exactly were you talking to Bryce, young lady!” Marlena asked, her eyes narrowing.

“Jeesh, Mom. You’re as bad as Dad! He is way too old for me and I’m not interested in the slightest. He’s just a nice guy and he was around one day when I was eating lunch. And please don’t tell Dad! He really might go off the deep end!”

Marlena forced herself to relax. “Okay. I won’t tell ‘your dad’ but it had better not happen again.”





Carrie flushed. “It won’t. Don’t worry. But Mom, if you aren’t afraid of John, why do you keep him at a distance? Why don’t you ask him to come home? You know Sami is right. If you asked him to come back, I think he would do it.”

“Carrie, I thought you would understand this. John isn’t the same man, he can’t be a part of our lives anymore.”

“I never said he was the same. He isn’t I know that. But he still loves us. If you aren’t afraid of him, why can’t he come home? There aren’t any legal charges against him. At least, none that could be proven if he brought us home. What’s to prevent him from coming back?” Carrie asked, wanting to understand her mother’s reasoning.

Exasperated, she threw her hands into the air. “How many reasons do you want, Carrie? He works for Stefano Dimera! His occupation is ‘hired assassin’!”

“So he can quit! That makes it even better because it’s sure to tick Stefano off. Mom, I’m not seeing the problem here. If you asked John to come home to Salem, he would. Don’t you want that?”

This discussion was giving her a pounding headache and it didn’t help that it was her reasonable child that was doing the arguing. “Carrie, it doesn’t have anything to do with what I want or what John wants or even what you want. We can’t go back to the way things were, it’s impossible.”

“Why?”


“It just is, Carrie.”

“Doesn’t seem like a very good reason to me,” Carrie replied.

“What are you two up to now?” Carrie asked, finding the twinners once again immersed in furtive discussion.

“Nothing!” Sami chimed innocently.

Carrie rolled her eyes. Why did everyone in her family insist on making things difficult?! Her brother and sister stared impishly back at her, as if waiting for her to find fault. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders and said, “Well, if that ‘nothing’ has anything to do with getting Mom and Dad back together count me in!”

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