Er, you may want to re-read chapter 12 as this one picks up EXACTLY where that one left off...

I disclaim: if ownership of this gave me rights over Jason Cook, would I be here?

Rated: Quite nasty. Clint, please don't sue, even if your new movie (reportedly) is terrible.

Chapter 13

"Mom?" Belle repeated, shaking golden blonde hair out of her eyes and staring in disbelief at the beautiful woman before her. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Her hostess sighed, and put a hand to her head in a gesture that reminded Belle exactly of her mother.

"Belle, I know who you think I am, but I swear, I’m not your mother." The woman who resembled Marlena so exactly watched as tears started in Belle’s eyes, as the girl believe that her own mother was denying her. "No, Belle, don’t cry."

"I’m not," said Belle furiously, feeling the pain be submerged by the fury.

"Belle, I’m not you mom." The woman repeated more firmly. "I’m your Aunt Samantha."

Belle’s head flew up, and her blue eyes turned as hard as diamonds and as beautiful. "That’s not possible. Mom’s sister died before I was born."

"Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated," Samantha said with a smile. "In Salem, they usually are."

Belle did not return the smile. She was staring at a woman who looked exactly like her mother, but wasn’t. "The butler called you Miss Dimera. You’re not. You’re Miss Evans."

"Hush," Samantha took a step forwards, causing Belle to recoil and Spanner Joe to silently flex his muscles in a threatening way. Samantha sighed and ran a hand through her perfectly coiffured hair. "As far as the household knows, I’m Miss Dimera, the grown up niece of Stefano Dimera."

"Why do they think that?" Samantha was forcibly reminded of her twin sister as Belle’s beautiful blue eyes narrowed and she crinkled her nose.

She sighed. "That’s a long story."

Samantha watched as her niece chose a sofa to sit on and plunked herself down.

"I’m not going anywhere." Belle settled herself down, and signalled to Spanner Joe to relax, not noticing the smitten expression on his face. She knew that her aunt was a beautiful woman, as beautiful as her mother, but she did not realise Joe’s susceptibility to a pretty face.

"Well, it all began when the Salem Strangler stalked the streets all those years ago…"

The second bullet sped past Angelo’s cheek, just missing him by millimetres. He could hear Kirsten murmuring a Hail Mary above him, and the slight whimper that Harry could not hold inside, but ignored both. He was as silent as the grave, though he was hoping desperately that he wouldn’t be in a position to find out exactly how silent it was from the inside anytime soon.

The sniper, he decided, was deliberately missing. No one who had been chosen as an assassin by the Fettuccinis would be such a bad shot. However, that left the question: why miss?

"So you’re telling me that your death was faked?" Belle looked horrified, remembering the pain her mother had expressed at the loss of a twin sister. "It was all a lie?"

"Get down, now!" Angelo barked, putting his feet either side of the ladder and allowing himself to slide down faster than he could run, hitting the next landing with a thud, and reaching up to catch Kirsten as she slipped down the rungs and fell into his arms.

Belle’s Aunt Samantha sighed, "A necessary one. You don’t understand, Belle."

"No, I don’t," Belle’s expression was determined, resembling her father’s trademark scowl, "so explain it to me."

Spanner Joe sighed to himself, and found a comfortable seat. It was going to be a long night, and a very confusing one.

"My hero," Kirsten breathed as Angelo caught her slender body and lowered her to the next level of the fire escape. He did not respond to the words, perhaps did not even hear them, as yet another bullet darted past him and slammed into the wall.

He didn’t even grunt as Harry’s feet hit him in the back and Kirsten’s nails dug into his wrists as he dropped her down.

"Sorry," Harry muttered, as Kirsten gave him a dirty look.

Angelo didn’t reply. He didn’t know if they would make it down alive, let alone uninjured, and a slight pressure on his back wasn’t going to worry him while there were bullets whistling past his skull.

"So you’re telling me that your death was faked as you were part of a secret government agency that was set on destroying the Dimera clan from the inside, and you had to go undercover as Stefano’s long lost niece, the daughter of the sister he lost years ago, and you’ve stayed undercover working to bring him down until now?" Belle’s head was spinning. She glanced over at Spanner Joe, but he had fallen asleep, unable, after all the walking they had done, to stay alert enough to follow the intricacies of Salem relationships.

"Yes," Samantha replied shortly. "I’ve been Miss Dimera for longer than you’ve been alive."

The dizziness wasn’t going away. "But you know you’re really Samantha, my Mom’s twin sister, right?"

"Of course, Stefano’s brain washing techniques aren’t that good!" Samantha gave her niece a bright smile. Then it faded as quickly as it had begun as her gaze shifted from Belle’s face to the long windows looking out onto the garden. "I think you’d better go soon, Belle. My ‘Uncle’ will be back before it gets dark."

She considered this briefly, then crossed her arms and stared hard at her aunt. "I’m not leaving until you tell me where Shawn is."

"Oh dear," Samantha had stood up but quickly sat back down again. "I see you’ve inherited your father’s stubbornness."

"And my mother’s heart," Belle added swiftly. "So, where is he? What have you all done with the love of my life?"

The door behind Belle opened smoothly, and Stefano Dimera, in full Opera dress, strode in with a magnificence few could rival. He took one look at the small blonde girl sitting on his couch, and sighed, not noticing as Samantha slipped out another door or that Spanner Joe jerked awake at his post. "How did you find me this time, Isabella?"

Completely undaunted by the arrival of her family’s arch-nemesis, Belle stood up and stared him down, looking up to his eyes with a gaze of blue steel. "Where is he, Stefi?"

"Please don’t call me that!" Stefano was actually afraid of her. No one in Salem would believe it, but Belle Black of all people was the one Stefano knew would not hesitate to harm him, all because she thought that he knew where her precious Shawn Douglas was. Not that he did. "I don’t know."

Belle twitched a finger at Spanner Joe, and he rose slowly to tower over Stefano. "Are you sure?"

Stefano did not cringe, but only because his self restraint was masterful. He could barely keep the fear from his voice. "I swear on my children’s lives, I don’t know!"

Belle stared at him for long seconds. She believed him. She knew he could lie well enough to convince her parents, but there was no sign of lying in his eyes now. She doubted she could trust him, but she believed him all the same. "Have you seen him since the time when your John clone was revealed?"

"What John clone? I haven’t seen Shawn Douglas for months. I’ve been out of Salem. I hadn’t seen him when you shot me, and I haven’t seen him since." Stefano had to control a steady tremor that wanted to overrule his stiffness. He had faced many enemies, but none could scare him the way Belle could. "Isabella Black, I promise, I do not know where Shawn Douglas Brady is, where he has been or where he may be in the future."

Belle stared harder.

"Except that someone closely resembling him abducted Vicomtesse de la Fere in New York," he added quickly.

Belle scrunched up her nose and narrowed her eyes at him. He trembled. "Who?"

"My least pleasant and most spoiled daughter, Ivy; her mother is Lady Sarah Hamilton." Stefano sighed again, but elicited no sympathy from either Spanner Joe or Belle. "I am, in fact, quite grateful to Shawn Douglas for his abduction of her, if it was him. She really was a tiresome girl. Always getting into financial difficulties and begging me to save her from the big bad world…"

He jerked his head a little, and felt his heart surge with adrenaline. He was trained for this in every way possible. He would not fail on the eve of his triumph. If he did, and survived the sniper’s bullets, his Boss would make life so unendurable for him that he would pray to have died here on the fire escape with a beautiful woman in his arms and a friend by his side.

Even as he thought it, Angelo knew that he could not afford to lose that friend or this woman. If he died doing so, he would save Harry and Kirsten. He owed them that much. He could not explain what they had done to him that night, but Harry with his simple faith in mankind and Kirsten with her willingness to trust him after a horrific ordeal had changed something in him. He had told himself that he was not made for love, but perhaps he could die for friendship. The coldness that had encased his heart was melting even as his body cooled in the frosty night air.

It was rather a shame therefore that he might not live long enough for his heart to beat freely once again.

The next bullet found it’s mark, and though he emitted no sound, the impact sent him stumbling backwards, blood gushing from the wound in his arm.

"Angelo!" Harry half yelled, unable to stop himself, but though the sound should have drawn the sniper’s mark upon him, Harry was not targeted by the man on the roof.

"Shut up," Angelo bit out, keeping his voice level though the pain was bad. "It doesn’t matter."

"So he’s in New York?" Belle moved to leave. "Why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place?"

"Isabella," there was something in the Stef’s tone that stopped her dead in her tracks. "I don’t think you’re going to find what you expect."

Belle stared hard at him, waiting for him to continue.

The threat of Spanner Joe still lurked.

"He’s changed, Belle," Stefano had softened suddenly. He respected this girl, was a little afraid of her, but also admired her. She had guts, brains, a heart, and knew how to use them all. "And maybe not for the better."

A smile brightened Belle’s face. "Then I’ll just have to change him back then, won’t I?"

They were nearly at the bottom of the fire escape.

"When you hit the ground," Angelo started, clamping a hand down over his wounded arm as he watched the two lower themselves. His heart began to race faster. ‘Please, God,’ he thought, ‘not now.’ He fought back the pain, forcing out his final instructions past the sea of red that threatened to obscure his vision and envelop his mind and finished his sentence, "run for the street. Catch a cab if you can. If you can’t, just run like hell."

"What are you going to do?" Kirsten was only feet from the ground, and her worried blue eyes stared up at him with an emotion he didn’t want to explore.

Angelo drove back the pain with a mental thrust. He couldn’t fall apart, not now. "Keep you two alive by any means necessary."

"I don’t think I like the sound of that," Harry couldn’t say more as the ground knocked the wind out of him. He had missed his footing, and for a moment lay sprawled on the cold cement. Then Kirsten was by his side, and they scrambled up together.

She cast a glance back to where Angelo had last been, and saw nothing but darkness.

His voice came out of the night from above them, hot and fierce like a lion’s pant. "I said run!"

They ran as if every demon in hell had been unleashed onto their heels.

No more bullets sounded through the night air. There were no more terrifying breezes across their skin as they narrowly missed being shot. Only the sound of running feet on cold concrete and snatched panting breaths came to their ears.

"Are we safe?" Harry asked as he and Kirsten drew frantic breaths, six blocks later. Footsteps came lurching from behind them. "Run!"

"You know," the footsteps stopped, "some people would say that running from friends was a little rude, and that running from the sound of a stranger’s footsteps was more than a little paranoid."

Kirsten flung herself into the man’s arms. "Angelo! You’re safe!"

"Not until we get to Ms. Corleone’s," Angelo would never admit how comfortable and enjoyably it was to be hugged. Wild horses wouldn’t drag that out of him, but it was. His arm ached, he knew he was losing blood, and his heart was still beating erratically, but the world seemed a better place when he was being embraced.

Unthinkingly, Harry slapped a hand to his saviour’s arm, missing the wince of pain that flickered across his face in the darkness. "We owe you."

The grimace, like the wince, went unnoticed. "Then you can repay me by taking me to Ms. Corleone."

"Whatever you want." Harry did not like the way Kirsten was staring at Angelo. It was a bit too adoring for his taste. He would have preferred a look along the lines of tender friendship, not hero worship. Hers had too much of the latter and not enough of the former.

"How far is it?" Kirsten was marvelling at the warmth of the arm Angelo embraced her with as he spoke, barely paying attention.

"Kir?" Harry tried to think of a way that would not seem insanely jealous and possessive to remove Kirsten from Angelo’s arms, and failed.

"Oh," she started coming out of her trance, thanking God and all of his angels that the street lights were not bright enough to show the blush on her cheeks. "We’ll need a cab."

"I’ll hail one," Harry offered, but Angelo was already employing a faster method by stepping directly into the path of one the of New York’s famous yellow taxi cabs that frequented the half empty street, and refusing to budge so it had to stop or hit him.

It stopped with half an inch to go before colliding with his legs.

Kirsten never knew how much money Angelo had given the cab driver, a small Sikh man with a turban covering his dark head, but it had been enough for him to break every traffic law in existence, avoid any patrol cars and land them in Upper Manhattan in a matter of minutes. He never stopped smiling. Kirsten couldn’t have guessed that the wad of bank-bills now lining his pockets were enough to allow him to buy his own taxi, even his own company of taxis. All she knew was that in less time than it would have taken on the subway, Babe Corleone’s New York mansion lay sprawled before them.

Babe had never been one for simplicity, but she was elegant, and so was her home. In the best of New York styles, it was grand, elegant and precisely to the fashion of its day. Angelo, no student of architecture, only knew it was a beautiful building.

"I can’t believe we made it," Harry murmured, staring up at the house.

"Oh ye of little faith," Kirsten chided. "I," she added, turning to Angelo who was looking rather pale, "always knew we’d get here safely."

"Was that why you kept twisting around in the cab and muttering ‘we’re being followed, I just know it’?" He asked, with a grin.

Kirsten muttered something unrepeatable at him as the ‘butler’ opened the door before them.

"Where’s Mario?" With her head tossed back, hands on slender hips, blue eyes narrowed, Angelo had a sudden flash of remembrance as he stared at Kirsten that passed again as quickly as it had come.

"Where has she gone?" John stormed, pacing through the SPD hallway and marching into Bo Brady’s office with a scowl on his handsome face. "Where’s my baby girl?"

"John, please," Marlena laid a gentle hand on her husband’s shoulder, "you were the one that put in her jail. You can’t expect her to stay there. She is an Evans after all. She’ll do anything for the man she loves."

"She does love him, then," John murmured to himself, peaceful for a brief moment, thinking almost with regret of the days lost when he could wrap Belle up in his arms and keep her safe from the world, and her only interest in her Shawn Douglas was to do with playing doctor, or house, or tea party, or, John remembered fondly, one memorable afternoon, storming the Dimera mansion and rescuing her favourite kite with him.

Bo sighed. "We don’t know exactly where Belle is, John. I have every man out looking for her."

"I left her in your care, Bo!" John was agonised. His daughter had been on a mission to find her best friend ever since their return from Europe, and with her genetics nothing short of imprisonment was going to stop her, and she’d just proved that not even jail would hold an Evans-Black with a Horton-Brady-Kiriakis soul mate to rescue from danger.

"I know." The younger man had aged visibly in the months since Shawn’s disappearance. His still handsome face was more lined than it had been in July, and his dark hair was beginning to show the first silver hairs of his life. He was sagging under the weight of both his own grief and his wife’s, and though they knew Shawn had been alive recently, reports of him were not promising. He could be anywhere, doing anything, suffering the worst torments imaginable to man, and they were impotent. Not even Shane with all of his ISA connections had found him, and with each passing day, Bo and Hope found their belief in his return fading and with it, their own will to carry on. They could only imagine what was happening to their first born child, and shiver in fear for what might be.

"We’ll find her, John." Bo needed to find Belle for his own sake as well as theirs. He could not lose the girl who, in the months following Shawn’s disappearance, had begun to call him Papa Bo, blood not withstanding, as well as his own child.

John Black knew that, and felt comfort. Bo, like a true Brady, would let nothing stand in his way any more than Shawn would when it came to the women they loved.

The radio on his desk crackled, and Officer Perez’s voice came over clear and distinct. "Captain Brady? This is Delta Alpha Zulu Echo, we have a possible ID of Belle Black…"

A woman’s scream echoed through the house, and acting on pure instinct, Angelo’s hand shot out in a fierce punch to the butler’s face that sent the man reeling backwards.

Angelo ran past him into the house throwing the briefcase back into Harry’s arms.

Another scream echoed, and he turned to see a slender dark haired woman standing at the top of the stairs, and a short Italian man raising his fist to hit her across her already swollen face. Her long body trembled with fear and she shied away from the man who held her.

"Don’t." That word alone from Angelo’s lips could have frozen hell over.

The stocky man turned and saw a handsome dark haired youth, who could hardly have been twenty, but with the oldest eyes he had ever seen, staring up at him from beneath the ornate staircase.

"You gonna stop me, kid?" He snarled in his New York accent, broken yellow teeth showing through twisted lips, "You and what army?"

"I need an army?" Angelo’s eyebrow went up, the only non-speaking part of his body that moved.

Another scream, and then a fourth, a fifth and a sixth rang through the air around them. Angelo realised that the dark haired woman at the top of the stairs was not the only one under attack.

Without there seeming to be seconds intervening while he moved, Angelo leaped up the stairs and knocked the Italian backwards. He didn’t speak, just went to work pummelling the man down and out.

"Angelo!" Kirsten yelled from the floor below. "If you’ve knocked him out, move onto the next one!"

Harry was shocked, but then he saw Kirsten’s wicked grin. She was enjoying this. She knew those men, and she knew that they were the ones who had kidnapped her and hurt her. She wanted revenge for the physical and mental injuries done to her, but also for the insult to her family. Angelo was simply the instrument of the total destruction that would tell them all a simple message: Mess with the Corleones, or any of their clan, and expect to die. Brutally, painfully, and, above all, with merciless violence.

Angelo moved quickly, searching each room and time and again finding men assaulting women, hurting them, in some cases coming close to killing them, and in each case he returned their violence doubled. Though he could not know it, the Horton honourable habit of protecting and respecting women at any price was rising in his blood and his mind. He could not bear their abuse of these women. It wasn’t inhuman, it was all to human when he thought of all the venal, cruel, barbaric humans he had met.

With an expression so stiff it could have been set in stone, Angelo pounded his way through the members of the Fettuccini mob, Kirsten and Harry following in his bloody wake with all of the women he rescued behind them.

"Someone’s seen my daughter?" John barked, moving quickly forwards to the radio and watching intently as Bo answered the call.

"Perez, this is Brady," he responded impatiently, "is the ID reliable?"

"Saw her passport," the answer came back. "Definitely Belle Black, according to the airline stewardess."

"Airline?" Marlena had gone pale.

"Where the hell was my daughter going?" John’s face had gone purple. It was as if all the colour was transferring itself from Marlena’s face to John’s.

"She bought two tickets to New Orleans, round trip," Perez went on.

Bo’s expression became as intent as John’s. "When does she leave?"

"You don’t understand, sir," Perez sounded apologetic. "She’s gone. The flight took off this morning."

Squashing the feeling of impotence that rose in him and the sudden hope that came too, Bo asked, "Who was her travelling companion? Can the woman remember what he looked like?"

"Pretty unforgettable, she’d say," Perez’s battery was running down, and the sounds from the radio were weakening. "A big older guy, covered in tattoos, helped Miss Black out with some trouble she was having with a younger boy. She didn’t catch their names."

"Thank you, officer," Bo remembered to say, "good work. Over and out."

He turned to John. "The big guy was probably Spanner Joe. He broke out of prison with Belle last night. As far as I can tell, he’s harmless."

"But he was in jail!" Marlena shrieked.

"So was Belle," Bo pointed out rationally, "and he was only in for indecent exposure, not attempted justifiable homicide."

"She didn’t try to shoot Stefano again, did she?" Brady asked from the doorway, mildly amused by the situation, and not, as his parents were, terrified for his younger sister’s safety. "Tut tut, and after she promised me just now on the phone that she wouldn’t."

Marlena lunged towards him. "You heard from Belle?"

"She called Megan in case there was any news of Shawn," Brady moved inside easily, followed by his brunette girlfriend. "She said not to worry. She’s safe, and she’ll be home by late this morning at the latest."

John and Marlena settled back, relieved. "Thank God."

Bo’s eyebrow lifted. "What’s up with this afternoon?"

"Beats me," Brady answered, casually leaning back against the door.

Megan grimaced. "I know what’s today and she can’t be looking forwards to it anymore than me…"

"Time for us to go, Joe," Belle rose from her seat slowly, not noticing the relieved expression that spread slowly over her unwilling host’s face at her impending departure. She turned a bright smile on Stefano, one that forced him to stop himself from cringing back. "Mr Dimera, thank you for all of your help."

Belle took a slow step forwards, proving that Shawn was not the only one who could hide the iron hand beneath the velvet glove. "It’s been a pleasure, and, Stefi," he did cringe then at the nickname and at Belle’s cold expression as she moved forwards again, "if I find out you’ve been lying to me, I’m going to hunt you down and win myself another of those lovely gold medals the Mayor gives me every time I shoot you. Only this time," a final step bringing Belle eye to eye with her family’s arch nemesis, "it’s going to be extra big because of all the damage I will have done to you."

Striding past the startled butler with Spanner Joe trailing in her wake, Belle turned and threw back to him, "You better pray he is in New York, Stefano, and that’s my final warning."

"Where is she?" Angelo turned from his latest punching bag to the young red head that he had just saved. "Where’s Babe?"

"She’s in the Winter Room," she managed to say as his dark gaze seared her, as if he saw not her body but her inner thoughts and feelings, and judged her, "in the West Wing."

"Show me." His knuckles were cracked and bleeding, but he didn’t notice. The bullet wound was throbbing blood steadily out of his body, but he didn’t care. They would be the least of his worries if he had to tell his Boss that Babe Corleone had died at the hands of the Fettuccini mob, when he had been a hair’s breadth from saving her. The images that filled his mind of what his employer’s fury would be were enough to force his ‘fight or flight’ adrenaline hormone levels as high as any physical threat near him.

He followed the swaying form of the woman out of the room, and down a series of hallways, their floors lined with deep plush purple carpets, his features as he walked softly lit by antique wall lamps.

They stopped for him to rescue more of the attacked women, some of whom were fighting back by themselves and being beaten harder for it, others who curled up into balls and prayed for it to end soon, and steadily the entourage of followers behind him grew.

"She’s in there," the red head pointed, and Angelo stared along the way.

The room she had led him to was one which could have been described as a drawing room, but was more like an abattoir as Angelo looked into it.

Guns were being fired, but the bangs were censored by silencers on their barrels. Bullets whistled from one side to the other, and Angelo realised that far from abandoning the rest of the house to marauders, Babe had been attempting to save them all by holding off the worst of the attack herself with her most loyal bodyguards surrounding her.

He had seen pictures, naturally, of the tall, elegant, high cheek boned blonde Amazonian who fired bullet after bullet at the men who were trying to take her dignity, her life, and most importantly of all, her power away from her, but no picture could ever do justice to the expressive nature of her face.

It was with awe that Angelo glimpsed her features across the room and from behind her barricade, marred as they were by blood and the expression of complete ferocity that she showed as men fell around her and no more came forward, and with a strange need in his heart. He had seen strong women before, he had seen fierce women before, but they had been nothing to the reality of Babe Corleone, one time representative of the USA for the UND and now Capa of her own mob, fighting like a tigress with threatened cubs.

He was on the wrong side of the room, he realised. He was facing Babe, not looking at her back, which meant that the Fettuccinni mob members were directly in front of him. Realising that obtaining and using one of their guns against them would be no problem, Angelo smiled.

Ignoring the women behind him, he moved as silently as a stalking cat and quietly executed one of Babe’s enemies. Taking the gun, a heavy Magnum revolver, into his hand, removing the silencer that made its aim inaccurate and checking its ammunition, Angelo knew that with his next actions, he was making Babe’s fight his.

"Turn to face me, real slow," he hissed, watching as the surprised men swung around to find their lines infiltrated and a man with an anger as cold and dangerous as the North Atlantic staring down the barrel of a .44 at them.

Behind him, with more than a dozen furious women, Kirsten and Harry stood waiting with smiles of expectation on their faces.

"Now I don’t know what you think you’re doing here," Angelo was perfectly still, his eyes narrowed, his lip curled, unconsciously doing his best ever ‘Dirty Harry’ impression, and scaring the hell out of the mob before him, "but if you don’t leave immediately, there’s going to be trouble."

Babe fired another shot, and one of the distracted men hit the floor with a bullet in his head.

The sound of the falling body brought the others round again and then Angelo was facing off with only three of the nine strong gang. Thirteen others lay on the floor, dead or dying.

One fired at Angelo, and he dived out of the way, followed by the women and Harry.

Reaching around the corner of his grand piano barricade, wishing that bullets weren’t damaging its antique finish in a brief moment of aestheticism, Angelo fired at the mobsters, each the force of each shot recoiling and forcing back his arm.

With his assistance, Babe and her men were finally gaining the upper hand after their previous stalemate.

The number of breathing Fettuccini mobsters fell from nine to two.

Angelo stood up slowly, and watched as their guns emptied themselves at Babe’s end of the room, finally falling ineffectually on empty barrels. They scrambled for ammunition, but not before Angelo levelled his gun at them.

"Stop." Icicles had been hotter than his voice when he spoke. "You sons of bitches."

Having seen the effect that his unconsciously affected Clint Eastwood impression had had on the hardened criminals before him, Angelo took the impression further, only then becoming aware of repeating lines from a movie he could knew but could not remember ever watching. "Ah, ah, I know what you’re thinking." He glanced down at the gun and back up to men, a sardonic smile on his lips. "Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off," he looked down again at one of the men he had shot before, noting the damage done to the body, watching the two others’ faces blanch as they too registered its mutilation, "you've got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punks?"

If anyone had looked more scared that night, or praying harder to be lucky, it had been Kirsten tied to a chair and beaten by their fellow gang members. The remembrance turned Angelo’s heart to stone.

He didn’t want to fire in cold blood. That wasn’t his way, but his decision was made for him when one of them reached for the pistol of a dead colleague, and Angelo fired to save them all.

"Guess he was just too stupid to be lucky," he murmured, watching the beaten women take hostage the last mobster and Babe stalk her way over the battlefield like an Amazon queen walking through the jungle.

Babe, at six feet tall and with golden blonde hair falling down her back in bloodied waves, looked an older, taller, more worldly wise version of Belle, he thought. Then he thought, ‘Who the hell is Belle?’ and the memory slipped from his grasp again.

The survivors of the gang battle were all blood spattered, battle weary, exhausted and still wary of one another.

"Thank you," Babe nodded her acknowledgement of his part in her war. "Now, who the hell are you?"

"Aunt B!" Kirsten squealed, and threw herself at her aunt’s warm figure, not caring about the blood. "This is my angel. He saved me."

"Ma’am," Angelo stood perfectly still while Babe took him in: his expensive black clothes torn, bloodied and ruined by the night’s activities, his mussed dark hair, the gold earring that doubled as an identity marker and a fashion statement, the flat, lithe muscled tall body, and the dark eyes that a woman could drown her soul and her sins in.

The blood rushed from his head and his heart beat became erratic as his adrenaline levels fell.

‘Please, God, not now,’ he prayed as the world turned red for all the wrong reasons.

"And you are?" Babe repeated, blue eyes meeting brown, failing to recognise his face, but seeing in those eyes a look that was all too familiar to her. It was a look she saw every time she gazed at herself in a mirror.

Angelo managed one of his devastatingly wonderful smiles that turned even Babe’s bones to hot jelly. "Angelo Salvatore at your service, Mrs Corleone."

Then he passed out backwards in spectacular fashion, hitting the floor with a thud.

That was probably not the end of chapter 13. I can't make up my mind if I need another chapter to start here or not, so you may get 13B a bit later. Yep, I'm rambling. Like I said, happy holidays, and sweet dreams.

"Angelo, are you OK?" Kirsten was sitting near him, a wet cloth in her hand with which she had been gently dabbing his forehead, and holding his hand. She smiled tenderly. He looked so young, younger even than her, and the cold mercenary look in his eyes had gone, leaving only confusion, sadness and pain, so much pain. "You passed out."

"No, before that," Shawn lifted a hand to his head. He felt so confused, as if the whole world was in a fog, and he was standing in the middle of a labyrinth completely lost.

"Well," Kirsten said slowly, thinking over the night before, "you’ve been shot, hit, punched, kicked, chased off the side of a building, nearly run over by a taxi, and that was before you’d started the fight downstairs, which we won, by the way."

"Oh, God," Shawn murmured, slumping back and wishing he hadn’t asked, or, more simply, that he hadn’t woken up yet.

"That’s what Harry said when you hit the floor," a gentle smile spread over her lovely features. "Are you feeling better now?"

Shawn did a mental inventory of his body, quietly testing the feeling in each of his limbs and finding no irreparable damage. Even as he began to speak, however, he felt his jaw stiffen, his arm throb, and a dozen other injuries beg for his attention. "I don’t remember how I was feeling before, so I can’t really answer the question."

A little pause followed. Shawn still lost in the fog, lay back and was fussed over by an anxious Kirsten. Too tired to speak, Shawn was hit by a sudden remembrance of his life before the voice’s interference.

Flashback

End of flashback

"Belle?" the name came to him suddenly.

Kirsten raised her head from her nursing of him. "What?"

The door opened abruptly, and a woman with golden hair and an ageing Italian bodyguard glided in. She wore a tailored black suit and a blank smile. He wore an Armani grey suit, a gun in a holster beneath his shoulder and a grim expression.

Danger signals shot through Shawn’s nervous system, and in a conditioned response to keep his body from harm, Shawn’s persona was subdued again by Angelo’s. Kristen’s machine had done its work well. Angelo won through though Shawn fought every step of the way. His Boss would have been pleased.

With eyes as cold as they were wise and brown, Angelo turned slowly, his body aching and complaining with every minute movement, and stared at his visitors.

"Darling boy…"

"Where are we, Miss Belle?" Spanner Joe was tired. He felt that the flight had robbed his big body of its last trace of strength.

"Home," Belle returned happily, marching out of the airport, pushing their luggage cart before her, loaded with suitcases from New Orleans.

"Not Salem, Miss Belle!" Spanner Joe begged, not having paid attention to any part of their flight on We Fly Anyone Anywhere Anytime Airlines. "You forget that we escaped from jail the last time we were here!"

"That was ages ago," Belle dismissed his fears casually, signalling for a taxi.

"It was two days ago!" Spanner Joe glanced at Belle’s resolute face and sighed.

"Joe," the way she said his name was wonderful, and he was immediately half won over by her. "Time moves differently here in Salem. The cops will already have forgotten we escaped, were imprisoned, or even did anything wrong." She briefly considered the reason for her father’s unreasonable imprisonment of her. "Not that I did."

"And if they haven’t?" Spanner Joe wasn’t willing to return to jail. He had a report to make to his employer the next day, and he didn’t want to make her mad.

"Then my future uncle-in-law and father-in-law are senior detectives," Belle answered breezily. "They’ll get us out."

Worn out, Spanner Joe scratched his head. "You getting married, Miss Belle?"

"Ask me again in February, Joe," Belle answered him with a pleasant smile.

"Does that mean I can set a date for the wedding to be in April?" Henry asked from behind them, making Belle jump and Spanner Joe growl out something unprintable.

"What the hell are you doing here, Henry?" Belle’s eyes narrowed and her fists clenched as he came closer.

"I was picking up some brochures for our Winter Break together at the Travel Agents’ next door." He showed her a handful of glossy magazines displaying vacation destinations in bright colours. "Would you prefer Hawaii or the Rocky mountains? We could visit Eric in Colorado, but I’m not sure how he would feel about us sleeping in the same bed."

Spanner Joe shifted forwards and rippled his muscles. "You want me to break his jaw, Miss Belle?"

"No." Spanner Joe looked disappointed at her answer. He was just in the mood to break Henry’s jaw. "Henry, I have no idea where you’ve come up with this," Belle was too well bred to say what she meant, but Spanner Joe’s muttering made it abundantly clear, "but I have never and will never sleep in the same bed as you!"

"But, darling," Henry looked at her with a mixture of pity and amusement. "You already have."

Babe rained kisses down on Angelo’s upturned handsome face, noting his coldness and his blood matted hair. "Darling, darling boy…" Babe repeated again and again.

Angelo didn’t resist her affectionate assault on his form. He glanced over at Kirsten, who was lying on the floor giggling helpless and kicking the ground whenever Babe slipped into Italian. "Caro, Caro mia."

"Signora," Angelo choked out at last when Babe’s fingers had patted his head, her arms embraced him and her lips been pressed to his skin so often that no end appeared in sight.

Babe stepped back far enough to let her caresses cease to inhibit his breathing.

"Grazie, Signora," he added.

"No, no," Babe insisted, "thank you, dear boy."

"Aunt B.," Kirsten begged as she slowly rose from the floor, still giggling at times but recovering at a steady rate. "I think you’re worrying him."

Babe turned on her niece, "I’m still angry with you for ignoring my warnings and running away from your bodyguard!"

She muttered something about kidnap trauma, but before it could escalate into a full scale fight, a shout from outside interrupted them.

"I don’t care! I must go!" The yelled words were followed by a string of Italian curses, most of which Angelo could understand and a few of which were so obscene that he almost blushed.

"What in the Virgin Mother’s name is that?" Babe shouted in exasperation.

"Mrs Corleone," one of the two heavily armed men she had left outside of Angelo’s room came in meekly. "We’re real sorry, Mrs Corleone, but…"

He was shoved out of the way by a series of beautiful women, all bruised and battered, who sauntered into the room.

"There he is, girls!" One at the front called back to her companions, and the flood became a tidal wave.

"Uh oh," Kirsten muttered with false sincerity, "you’re in trouble now."

Angelo didn’t flinch, didn’t move a single muscle, didn’t even blink. The mercenary in his brain calculated the odds. He had taken in the room as he had lain there, and knew that if attacked, his one hope would be to leap through the window and run. Of course, the point was academic. He doubted he could walk, let alone run.

Babe straightened her back and glared over the mass of women. Dignity flowed through her as they gave her the slight nod of acceptance of her authority. She was Queen here, they her subjects. As such, she ruled with a stainless steel rod, a will of titanium and a heart of gold - if you could touch it. Angelo had. He didn’t know it, but he was in no danger. He had saved Kirsten, had rescued the women and had helped Babe to win out against the siege that had threatened her home.

He had won her eternal gratitude, her loyalty, and best of all, her love. He had nothing to fear, but Angelo didn’t know that and every instinct in his body told him to run like hell.

"What da hell are you talking about?" Belle nearly shrieked, unconsciously quoting her ex-step father, Roman.

"You and I," Henry, feeling bolder than he had ever since he’d glimpsed Spanner Joe’s muscles behind Belle, took a small step forwards and pointed at Belle, "have shared the same bed before. The night of Philip’s party."

"What?" Belle couldn’t remember anything about that party except missing Shawn, and then wondering where he had gone. No other memory flickered even dimly through her mind.

"You heard me," Henry was smirking now. "You don’t believe me?" Henry put a hand to her hip bone. "You have a small birthmark here - in the shape of a heart."

No one except her parents, her brother and Shawn knew that she had a birthmark there, and he only knew because he had seen her swimming suit ride up once. What had happened that night?

Spanner Joe watched as Belle’s expression became harder. She was going to blow her top.

"You know what, Henry?" She sounded sweet then, like butter wouldn’t melt between those lovely lips.

"What?" Another smirk, this time with more self satisfaction than before.

Belle smiled prettily. "You’re a disgusting, dirty minded, egotistical psychotic with delusions of sex appeal, but right now I don’t have time to deal with you. Joe," she took her bodyguard by the arm and turned on Henry, "let’s go. Henry - if you’re lying to me, you’re a dead man. If you’re not lying, you’re jail bait. Capiche." She walked away from him then, letting Spanner Joe bring the luggage.

Henry quivered as Spanner Joe stared him down, but as the man broke his stare and hurried after Belle, Henry shouted eagerly, "I’ll call you!"

"What’s today?" John looked like he wanted to shake Megan until she told him what he wanted to know. "What?"

"Our last final. It was postponed from yesterday." Megan shifted uncomfortably, disliking the level of intentness that John’s gaze fixed upon her. "Someone stole the exam paper and they had to rewrite it."

"And Belle is taking this final?" Marlena was trying to calm her husband down, but his words came out spoken in an accent so staccato that it could have been the stuttering of a machine gun.

"Taking it?" Megan almost laughed. "It’s in fashion design. She’s going to ace it." Another thought passed through her mind. "That is, if she turns up."

Brady had noticeably relaxed, and now a wide smile spread across his lips. "Tink miss an opportunity to write about clothes? Dad would sooner miss a drink." Then he remembered his father was still in the room, and he quickly corrected himself. "I didn’t mean it like that."

John muttered something and then said more distinctly, "And that’s a fact."

Belle brushed her blonde hair out and glanced over at her companion. Spanner Joe was nursing his swollen feet. She felt wonderful. All she had to do was max out her credit card buying herself another round trip plane ticket, ace her fashion design final, find and rescue her kidnapped best friend, evade the Salem police, Bo, her brother and her father, avoid the Dimera clan who would surely be out for revenge, prevent everyone from killing Henry until she found out what he had meant before about their going to bed together, and convince Spanner Joe that another trip was going to be worthwhile so that she could have a little backup when she stormed whatever stronghold Shawn was being held in. All in a day’s work for a Black, really.

In the grand room where a roaring fire crackled in the enormous fireplace casting devilish shadows onto the walls, the women crowded Angelo, and he had the uncomfortable sensation of budding claustrophobia, but no danger signals quickened his pulse and his pupils failed to dilate. As they came closer, a peculiar sense of safety filled him, which was ridiculous. He was in unfamiliar territory, besieged by possible enemies, weaponless, wounded and if a fight ensued, without a hope, but for the first time in months, he felt safe.

He must be getting old - he was clearly losing whatever small sense of self preservation he had salvaged from the night before.

Then, as if to prove that his instincts could be utterly wrong, a slim blonde pulled a gun and pointed it directly at his head. "Bang."

Babe nearly ripped the gun out of her hand. "Do that again, and I’ll use this on you." It was no idle threat, and Kirsten, her customary joke with new members to the clan having failed, bowed her head in shame. "Fool." Babe spat, and turned back to Angelo with an apology on her lips.

The people surrounding him ignored this little drama, fascinated by his reaction. This is not strictly true, however, as he hadn’t had one. He had stared along the barrel of the gun with the complete indifference to it that only madmen and the perfect poker player could master.

"Congratulations," a tall brunette stepped forwards smiling and a flicker of recognition passed through Angelo’s eyes, he had seen her before, he thought. "Kirsten’s tried that on every bodyguard she’s ever had, and you’re the first not to flinch."

He accepted the compliment gracefully, his eyes fixed on Babe’s face.

"I owe you," she said after a pause that seemed to last forever.

Kirsten shifted uneasily. "We all do."

There were emphatic nods from the women, and even Babe’s bodyguards appeared to believe themselves in his debt.

Angelo said nothing. A dismissal would be insulting, a demand rude, and anything else unacceptable. He didn’t move a single muscle. As if his life depended on it, he remained perfectly still.

Babe went on, her voice a little roughened by emotion. "My niece," she waved a hand at a blushing Kirsten, "she’s very foolish, headstrong and stubborn, but we love her. Dearly. She’s one of our own." A gentle smile graced Babe’s features. "Blood of our blood. For bringing her back to us, we thank you."

More nods from around the room, and that uncomfortable sensation of claustrophobia began to return. Kirsten was loved by, and belonged to, so many people, and he had no one. Slamming it back down with a powerful mental parry, Angelo forced himself to believe that alone was better, safer, made him stronger, and at the same time realised he was lying to himself. ‘No man is an island’ - he could not exist without others, even if he spent most of his time pretending that he could.

Perhaps that was why he ignored everything that he should have been doing to further his Boss’s plans, and instead said in a voice broken, low and hoarse the words that twenty four hours before he wouldn’t have even thought: "I need your help."

"Miss Black?" The final had been easy. Belle had known all the right answers, had worked her way through the paper, had remembered to turn over the last page and had seen that the question carrying the most marks was one she could answer confidently. She felt wonderful. Now it was time to rescue Shawn. So it was with irritation rather than pleasure that she turned to face her lecturer.

"Yes, Miss Dee?" her tone was sweet, but Shawn would have been able to see the tension in her finely made limbs.

"I noticed that you’ve been a little distracted in class recently," the very well dressed teacher assessed the girl’s clothes, "And quite frankly, last week your shoes simply did not go with your purse."

Belle blushed, to be faulted be Miss Dee was to know that you had fallen far below the fashion standards set by the well dressed. "I know, and I’m really sorry, Miss Dee, but-"

"No excuses, Belle," Miss Dee’s face broke into a wide smile. "I realise that Megan brought it in for you. I believe you’d spent the previous night in circumstances less than conducive to fashion excellence."

"You mean I was in jail," Belle replied brightly. Miss Dee blushed a little. She was young, beautiful and not quite in control of the tastes of her class. "Don’t worry, Miss Dee, it won’t happen again."

Belle’s teacher obviously had no idea what to reply to that so changed the subject. "Belle, what I really wanted to tell you was that in January there’s a trip to Paris for a fashion show - we only have limited tickets, one to be precise, but as you are our best student and work on the Salem Young Herald newspaper for the college, we thought you might like to cover it for us. It would mean having to make up your classes for that week, but you have an A average, and none of your teachers feel that you will suffer particularly from missing that week. We would pay for your ticket, and your hotel, but unfortunately we couldn’t afford the plane tickets for transatlantic flights…"

"Not going to be a problem," Belle was smiling broadly now. "When will I be going?"

Miss Dee smiled back. Belle was going to have a marvellous time. "Last week of January."

Fifteen minutes later as Miss Dee sat in the staff room gripping the mug of coffee tightly between her clenched fists, she still felt the shock of the surprise of having Belle Black, daughter of John Black one of the richest men in Salem, fling her arms around her and hug her tightly, crying ‘Thank you!’ again and again before almost skipping out of the door, losing her high heeled Gucci shoes on the way and not caring.

She had thought that Belle would have had more respect for fashion than that.

"You want our help?" Kirsten felt shocked. Angelo was always so in control, so calm and cool, how on earth could he need anyone’s help? It was as if an immortal had descended from their pedestal to beg the aid of a mere human.

Angelo nodded in reply, turning his gaze from Babe to Kirsten at last. She flushed a little, despairing of ever finding the poise in herself that her aunt was famed for, and turned her face from his.

"Anything," Babe promised rashly, "we can do to help, we will do."

"Find my past," Angelo was staring through her, not at her. "Tell me who I am."

"That’s two tickets round trip to New York," the airline hostess had been a little surprised at Belle’s reappearance, but rather enjoyed the sight of her unmanageable manager flinching away from Spanner Joe.

"Thank you," Belle smiled brightly. She was going to find Shawn. She was sure of it.

"Where the hell do you think you’re going?" Brady sounded furious, standing directly behind her as he was.

She turned around and faced her brother with a pleasant smile. "To find Shawn."

A thing never before happened then: Babe was stunned into silence. Famous for her quick wit and quicker temper, she found her mind blank for a reply.

"You don’t know your family?" Kirsten was shocked. Angelo Salvatore not knowing something? It seemed so unlikely as to be impossible.

He waited to answer her as the rest of the occupants of the room, in obedience to Babe’s peremptory click of her fingers, filed out with many backward glances at Angelo’s prostrate form on the chaise-lounge.

"No." The word came slowly at last, almost as if it pained him, which perhaps it did.

"Angelo…" Babe spoke with hesitation. He seemed to have deprived her of speech. "I…"

Whatever she was going to say next was interrupted by the ringing of Angelo’s cellphone.

Harry, having been forgotten in the crowd, tossed it across the room and with the grace of a jungle cat, marred only by a wince of discomfort at the end, Angelo caught it.

"Yes?" The word was neither barked nor purred. It was as without passion as if he was ordering pizza, less, for hunger brings needy eagerness to the voice.

Kirsten was left wondering who was calling.

A subtle change came over Angelo’s whole body, a stiffening that spoke of tension and even, perhaps, fear. "Yes, of course. Two hours, and I’ll bring the Roses."

‘Roses?’ Everyone else thought simultaneously.

Angelo ended the call and began to pull himself up, a mask as pale as marble settling over his handsome face. No flicker of expression betrayed the pain he felt as the pieces of broken bones rub against each other.

"Where are you going?" Harry moved from his place leaning against the wall and rushed across the room, preparing to catch his new friend if he fell.

A sudden, fascinating, brilliant smile broke through Angelo’s mask. "To church."

"You’re not going alone," Brady re-crossed his arms and stared at Belle hard.

"You’re right," Belle smiled up at him, then she pointed to Spanner Joe who was standing behind Brady watching Belle quietly for any sign of distress, ready to spring to her defence, "I’m taking him with me."

Brady turned around slowly, and looked straight at her bodyguard, "Hi."

"Hi," Joe replied, as Belle grinned happily over at him.

"Joe, I presume?" Megan asked politely, walking past her astounded boyfriend and offering ‘Spanner’ her hand.

"Yeah," Spanner Joe moved uncomfortable unconsciously twitching the muscle under his favourite - non-obscene - tattoo. "Sorry, I don’t know your name; Miss Belle hasn’t introduced us properly."

Brady’s eyebrow flickered in his father’s best mercenary style at the words ‘Miss Belle’.

Megan smiled prettily, catching Brady’s hand and pulling him over to them. "I’m Megan and this is my boyfriend and Belle’s brother Brady."

Belle moved to the front again, "Look, it’s nice to know you care, but we have a plane to catch."

"Belle," Brady’s tone was not one to be disobeyed, "you’re not going anywhere by yourself or with only Joe here - no offence, Joe, but she’s my sister."

"No worries," Joe flashed a gold toothed grin, "got six sisters myself, each more headstrong than the last."

Brady winced in sympathy.

"Brady," Belle interrupted their brother to brother bonding session, "tempus fugit!"

"What have I told you about swearing, Belle?" John barked as he ran up behind Brady, panting slightly.

"It means ‘time flies’, Dad," Belle replied with a roll of her pretty eyes, "not," her next words were lost in a mumble as Brady clamped a hand over his sister’s mouth before she could finish.

"Anyway," Philip’s slow drawl was heard as he and Rose walked slowly through the airport, Pink and Kitty swapping notes on Shawn and their flight tickets behind them, "we’re all coming with you."

"New York, baby," Pink yelped excitedly, having regained the more sensible portion of her vivacity.

Kitty slid her sunglasses down her nose slowly, peering over the top of them. "Shawn would never forgive us if we let you go only to be kidnapped again." The smile that always foretold trouble to come spread over her face. "Besides, I’d like to take a little tour of my old stomping grounds."

For a moment Belle thought she saw Kitty’s eyes flash, but then the look was gone and their flight was being called.

Thus it was so that Belle, her bodyguard, her brother, his girlfriend, her brother’s uncle, his girlfriend, Belle’s best friend’s wild girl friend, and his pink haired protégéé set off a plane to New York to rescue Shawn from whatever dread fate had befallen him, unaware of the near unbelievable consequences of their actions that day.

"We’re coming with you," Harry moved forwards. Kirsten was by his side. They weren’t leaving Angelo when he was in such a vulnerable state.

"No," Angelo reached for the edge of the chaise-lounge and pulled himself off it. "You can’t come."

"Why not?" Kirsten had crossed her arms and was staring at him hard.

"Because if you do, you’ll get hurt." The pain in his chest was worsening again. He needed his medication, but he didn’t know where it was anymore. He’d have to brave it out. He couldn’t show the agony, or Kirsten and Babe would never let him out of the room, and if he didn’t get to the church within two hours, the pain would be far worse than a few twinges in his chest.

Sitting on the plane, with Spanner Joe in the seat behind her and Kitty sitting in the aisle seat next to her, trapping her next to the window so she couldn’t run the moment the plane touched down, Belle clenched and unclenched her hands repeatedly. Shawn, she kept thinking, she was going to Shawn, and then everything would be OK. The terrible ache inside of her would go, the guilt of being so stupid as to be kidnapped would fade the moment she held him in her arms once more, and everything would come right. She needed her best friend back, not with a whining, self pitying greed of ungrounded feelings of selfish lust but with the low down powerful urge of her soul and her gut and her blood all screaming out in unison for him. She loved him. She admitted it to herself freely. She needed him too. He was the only one to know her ugliest sides, her petty jealousies and spites, and still see her whole and beautiful despite them.

The plane’s flight path curved as they approached the runway. They were nearly there. Belle’s heart quickened in anticipation. Now all she had to do was find him, one man in a city of millions, and save him from a fate as bad as being a pawn of Stefano Dimera.

Or rather, that was what she thought. In fact his fate was about to become a lot worse than that of a mere foot soldier caught in the crossfire of an intertribal war. Much, much worse.

Kristen paced restlessly through the vestry, waiting impatiently for the priest’s arrival, cursing under her breath. Stopping as the door opened, she stared over at her ally.

"This isn’t going to work." She worried at her lower scarlet lip.

"Of course, it will work," Angelo’s Boss replied. "Smoke a cigarette or drink some Communion wine. The priest will suspect something if you continue to pace like that."

She lit a cigarette, took a long drag and relaxed a little. "He’ll just think I’m an anxious in-law."

The slightest smile crossed the Boss’s cold face. "Somehow, I imagine not."

A shadow fell into the room. "You called?" Angelo asked from his position leaning against the doorjamb, the briefcase he had carried the night before clenched in one hand, the tightness of his grip the only indicator of his fear.

"Yes," his Boss replied. "Did you get the papers?"

"Yes," Angelo’s expression was cool and pragmatic. "Also the rubies, and I found Babe Corleone."

A simple nod from his master sufficed as acceptance and praise.

Kristen spent a few moments admiring Angelo’s face, tracing his ancestry in it and marvelling at his fineness of feature, but at Babe’s name she started forwards. "You found her? Really?"

The Boss twitched the slightest frown at her, easily subduing her into silence. Kristen flinched back, took another long drag on the cigarette, and brooded.

"These are your new orders," he stopped however, at the entrance of Lady Sarah Hamilton and her illegitimate daughter, la Vicomtesse de la Fere, known to her friends as Ivy. He sank into the shadows unnoticed as the two women walked forwards.

Lady Sarah’s hand had a slight tremble to it, Angelo noticed, as she extended it to him. Doubtless she was remembering his last words to her and feared the consequential events which were about to befall her.

Flashback

End of Flashback

He took her hand in his and kissed her fingers gently. "Lady Sarah."

She gave him a slight nod in response. "Mr Salvatore."

His Boss gave a hint of a smile as Ivy offered her hand to Angelo and he took it with perfectly masked distaste.

"Vicomtesse," Angelo managed not to drop her hand in undue haste. "You’re looking well."

"Thank you, Mr Salvatore," Ivy’s manner had none of her mother’s grace. "I wish I could say the same to you."

His bruises darkened as a slightly flush came to his cheeks.

Ignoring her remark, he went on, "May I introduce Miss Kristen Dimera?" Angelo brought Kristen forward, and with a ladylike grace, she was introduced to both mother and daughter.

"Forgive me, Mr Salvatore," there was no tremble of fear in Lady Sarah’s voice, but still her hand was not quite steady, "but why have we been asked here?"

"Because," for the first time the Boss took a step forwards and was noticed by the noblewomen, "there is to be a wedding."

"Really? And who is to be married?" The trembling of Lady Sarah’s hand had ceased. The fear flowed out of her. This was not the moment of her downfall after all, apparently. Her worries had been unfounded. Colour returned to her Ladyship’s cheeks.

For the first time, Kristen smiled as the Boss spoke the devastating words: "Why, Ivy and Angelo of course."

"No!"

Belle picked up her luggage and almost ran to the exit, her friends trailing behind her. Something bad was going to happen, she thought. Not something catastrophic, but something bad nonetheless. She didn’t just feel it in her bones, but in every cell in her body. What she had been determined to do before became even more urgent now. She had to get to him. He needed her, and she could not fail him now. If she did, she might never be able to be with him again.

She ran faster, and the tug of her soul told her that she was coming closer to him with every step. Nothing could stop her now. She dropped her bags into Rose’s waiting trolley and leapt into a cab. Shawn was waiting for her. He had to be. Forget moonlit bridges in Paris, crazy kidnapping European psychopaths and compounds in freezing Russian forests, there reunion had to be here and now.

"Mama?" JT Brady, having readjusted once more to the facts of his paternity with the ease and serenity of mind of small children, reached out his arms to his beautiful parent. Hope swept him up, and wished that Shawn was still as small, as easy to protect from harm, and most of all, was still in her arms.

"Yes, sweetie?" She pressed the child’s cheek against her own. He smelled so sweet, and when she looked down, she saw the deep brown eyes of his father and his brother in miniature staring out of his chubby cute little face.

"When Shawn coming home?" JT was playing with the strands of his mother’s hair, his face was full of hope.

"Soon, sweetie," Hope promised, knowing that with every passing day the probability of ever seeing Shawn again grew more and more distant, "soon."

"But I want him now!" JT screwed up his face, and started to cry. He wanted his big brother, the only one who could make just the right kind of aeroplane noises, whose pretty girl gave him cookies, who tucked him up in bed, who was the only one who could read ‘It Could Be Worse’ in just the right tone of voice and who loved him more than life itself, whoever’s child he was.

"Oh sweetie, it will be OK. I promise." Hope clutched the child closer to her. He needed his Mama, but he needed his big brother too, and nothing they had done had brought his lost brother back to him. Knowing that no other comfort would work, she began to sing softly to her youngest son, her heart longing for her eldest to walk through the door and join their hug, and her head knowing that it wasn’t going to happen, not now, perhaps not ever. "Love, Love, Love…
Love, Love, Love.
Love, Love, Love.
There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It's easy.
Nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It's easy.
All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.
All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.
Nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.
All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need."

JT’s young voice joined in at last, softly singing the words as his mother cried and he drifted into sleep.
"All you need is love

"Belle, slow down!" Megan panted as the petite blonde dodged between the barely moving cars with the courage and ease of a native New Yorker and ran downtown. "We lost Pink and Philip two blocks back, Rose is stranded outside of Tiffany’s with the luggage, Kitty’s a block behind us, and I’ve no idea where Brady and Spanner Joe are except I think I saw a traffic cop chasing them!"

Belle stopped for long enough to let Megan catch up, adjusting her grip on her handbag and calculating how much further it would be to Shawn. Not far now, her heart told her. She prayed she would get to him in time, but understood the basic physics of fairy tale endings: the heroine will always get to the hero in time, but only if she doesn’t stop. Fairy tales don’t happen to the lazy. You could count on finding him in the nick of time only if you didn’t stop for a coffee along the way. A million to one chance, but it might just work…

"She’s on her way to New York, Bo," John said with unaccustomed softness. "She thinks Shawn is there."

"I know," Bo brought his fist down on his desk hard in frustration. It hit with a dull sound. "Shane keeps saying it’s not ready, though. For God’s sake, after all we’ve been through, surely now is the moment to act!"

John expelled a slow breath in exasperation. "Bo, I know how you feel, but we have to wait. We all agreed on the plan."

"That was before Dimera stole my son, damn it!" Bo started pacing, much as Kristen had in New York.

"Shawn’s abduction can’t alter our plan, Bo," John leaned forwards on the desk. "You know that as well as I do."

"He’s my son, John," Bo stopped pacing. "I have to do something."

"And we will," Shane’s English accented voice came to them from the doorway. "But we have to follow the plan. If we’re to bring Dimera down, we need the full of co-operation and support of the ISA."

"But my son…" Bo was thinking not only of Shawn, but also of his wife and little JT, missing Shawn as badly as his parents did, crying out in the night for his big brother.

"I know, Bo," Shane laid a comforting hand on his distraught friend’s shoulder, "but we’ll bring him home by Christmas, I promise."

Bo stared into Shane’s eyes, giving emphasis to his words, "By Christmas, Donovan, or I’ll go after him myself, plan or no plan."

"No!"

The word burst from three mouths at once, Angelo’s the softest spoken, Lady Sarah’s and Ivy’s more angrily barked.

The Boss heard Angelo’s word, and it decided him. The boy was getting above himself, his total obedience to his, the Boss’s, will was wavering.

"Lady Sarah," the cold dark eyes of the Boss settled their gaze on the pale, furious, trembling woman, "you said once that you would give anything to have your daughter returned to you." Those terrible eyes narrowed and he rapped on the wooden bookcase with each syllable uttered. "Anything."

"But…" Lady Sarah shook badly, her very lips tinged blue against the white parchment of her skin. She could say nothing. It was only too true that she had promised anything, but to see her only child married to a man she neither loved nor even knew! She rebelled against the thought.

"I know what you’re thinking, Lady Sarah," the Boss went on cool as Steve McQueen and as nasty as if playing a Robert Mitchum role, "You’re thinking that I am asking you to sacrifice your daughter, but I do not ask you for her life, only her hand. Refuse me and it will be your reputation, even your life, that is sacrificed."

"Don’t I get a say in this?" Ivy stood as straight as a poker, eyes blazing with fury.

The Boss turned on her the full weight of his stare. "You will be given an income for as long as you remain married, for life if Angelo dies first, a lump sum if you divorce far less than the income, but substantial enough. Angelo has good looks, position in society, an intelligent mind, wealth…"

"A body to kill for, generosity and sweetness when he cares to show it," Kristen finished helpfully.

"And if you marry him now," the Boss was as seductive as the devil and just as tempting, "these will be your wedding present from Angelo. A larger, more public wedding will follow, but only today can these become yours." He opened the briefcase his pet soldier had brought, showing the rubies referred to as ‘the Roses’. Large, well cut, with flawless centres in beautiful gold settings, they were enough to temp Ivy’s mercenary heart and make her eyes flash with greed rather than anger.

"I’ll do it," she murmured, fascinated by their glister.

"Ivy!" Lady Sarah cried, hurt and shocked.

"Father Michael will officiate," Angelo wasn’t really listening to his employer even as the words were begun. He was thinking of his future life, chained to Ivy.

A Catholic priest, straight backed, grey haired, looking venerable and scared, was led into the room by an anxious Kristen.

"This is most irregular," he murmured, but was pushed out of the vestry into the main part of the church to stand before the altar, with Angelo reluctantly walking arm in arm with Ivy after them, a pale Lady Sarah and a narrow eyed Boss bringing up the rear. "Most irregular."

"Not so irregular that the marriage will be invalid," the Boss reminded him with the slightest hint of threat in his voice. With a voice like that, ostentatiously displayed weapons were unnecessary.

"No, not that irregular," the priest hurriedly corrected himself, drawing himself up and beginning the service.

They sang the responses to the Mass, crossing themselves with due reverence, and bowing their heads to pray, each action bringing back some dim remembrance of services passed to Angelo’s confused memory, each adding to his feelings of resentment and rebellion, until the Father asked of Ivy, "Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband? Do you promise to love, honour and cherish him, through sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, for better for worse, as long as you both shall live?"

She simpered prettily, her wide red lips pouting a little, her blonde head giving a small nod, and answered, pretending that the ‘for richer for poorer’ did not give her a choking feeling, "I do."

Father Michael nodded and turned to Angelo, "And do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife? Do you promise love, honour and cherish her, through sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, for better for worse, as long as you both shall live?"

"No. She may take me," he moved suddenly, straightening up, crossing his arms, growling out the words with bitterness, "but I refuse her."

"What?" Shrieked Ivy and Lady Sarah at once, the daughter in dismay seeing the rubies and power slip through her fingers, the mother seeing the dawn of hope.

Kristen took a faltering step forwards. "But…"

"But nothing," Angelo snarled like a caged tiger, "I will not marry her."

Surprisingly, the Boss did not argue with his rebellious protégé. He turned to Lady Sarah, "A slight change of plan nothing more is necessary, I perceive. The wedding, public and legal, will take place on the 24^th of December, I swear to you."

"But Christmas is less than a week away!" Ivy whined. "How will anything be ready? I want a big proper fancy wedding! I want all my friends to see me and be jealous! I want the rubies around my neck, satin on my feet and diamonds in my hair!"

"I assure you," the Boss didn’t snap, that wasn’t his way. Instead he let no emotion be shown in his voice, replacing it with the emptiness of contempt. His hand rested gently on a Bible lying on the side of the pew. "Everything will be ready." He signalled to Angelo, a little flicker of his eyebrow the only indication of his displeasure, "Everything."

"Goodbye," Kristen’s smile was hiding fear. She had not expected such open rebellion from this quarter. She liked Angelo more than she would admit to her co-conspirator. The Boss wouldn’t forgive the simple treachery of her feelings anymore than he would forgive a betrayal to the authorities.

"Goodbye," Lady Sarah answered in defeat, despising her own weakness, and dragged Ivy away from the church.

The Boss nodded in reply, and turned to Angelo.

"Fool." He didn’t even spit the word, but spoke it as if it meant nothing, and held no hurt. "This is not the end."

He walked out of the church then, leaving Kristen to handcuff herself to Angelo and the briefcase.

Angelo sighed gently as she pulled him to the waiting car. "It never is."

Belle was racing, her heart in her mouth, beating harder with each pumping step she took, mind turning, everything pushing her towards the only thing that mattered, finding Shawn. She paused briefly as a bus rushed past her, breathing harshly. Where was he? She felt her something like her spirit tug her to the left, and leaving a panting Megan in her wake, she skittered between the traffic and ran down a long avenue.

She had to stop, her breath was coming in short gasps now, but she knew if she stopped she would lose him. She couldn’t afford to lose him now. Another block, another turn, and then the white visage of the church was laid before her. It was a squat building, ugly and impressive rather than beautiful and magnificent. A bell tolled the hour. It was later than she thought.

The trouble with million to one chances that might just work is that there are nine hundred and nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine chances that say it won’t. Prayers rolled off Belle’s lips as she came closer and closer to her goal. ‘Please’ - the word had never meant so much to her. ‘Please let him be there.’

The priest, an old man with hair the colour of dirty snow and shaking hands, was locking the doors as Belle threw herself across the street, praying that she was in time, not seeing the limousine that forced its way down the road behind her. Shawn had been here, she knew, but was he still inside? Had she come so far only to lose him now? She pushed back the thought. She would not be defeated so easily.

Even more breathless from running up the church steps, Belle was panting when she reached the priest. "Father," she reached out to touch the man, and realised that he was shaking. "Please, I have to know, is there a young man here? He’s tall, handsome, hair so dark it’s almost black, eyes the colour of chocolate…" Belle didn’t know what else to say. The old man was shaking his head.

"You’re too late," he was fiddling with the door’s lock when he spoke, and so did not say Belle’s face whiten or her knuckles grip tighter around the handbag’s handle. "There was a young man here, but he’s gone. They’re all gone."

"Was he alright?" Belle felt her heart breaking at losing Shawn again, but she had to know if he was healthy after all her father had been through at their kidnapper’s hands.

"No," the priest turned at last and realised how lovely Belle was, and how terrified, "he was banged up." He touched his own forehead. "Bruises on his face. Made me wonder more. I mean, who would want to look like they’d just been in a boxing match in their wedding photos?"

"Wedding?" Belle grasped at the word. "Who was getting married?"

"The young man, and the Vicomtesse, only they weren’t you see," the priest was turning the keys over and over in his hand. "She said ‘I do’ and he said ‘I don’t’, you see."

A thought flickered through Belle’s mind, perhaps she had the wrong church, perhaps all the instincts in her small body were wrong, and Shawn had never been here. She reached into her bag and fumbled around until she found the picture of Megan and Shawn in New York. Shawn was leaning against a Harley Davidson motorbike, in what looked like an apple orchard in bloom, with a leather jacket on, a gold earring glinting, and the cheekiest, cockiest most gorgeous smile ever seen across his lips. "Was this him?"

It was the priest’s turn to fumble around then as he searched for his glasses. "Yes, he’s a little older than in this, and his hair’s shorter, and he’s a lot more bruised now, and he wasn’t smiling much, but that would be him."

"Belle!" Brady and Spanner Joe, at very long last, had escaped the traffic cop chasing them, found the rest of the group, and were now catching up with Belle.

"Please, you have to tell me, are they married? Shawn and his Vicomtesse?" The words were clinging to Belle’s throat, she didn’t want to speak them, but she had to. She had to know. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘his fiancée’.

"Angelo, they called him." The old priest’s mind was wandering rather. "Not Shawn, Angelo." He caught sight of Belle’s stare and the group running up behind her. "No. They’re not."

The air rushed from Belle’s lungs in relief. He wasn’t married. He was alive. He was in deep trouble, but he was alive. The world was a blessed place once more. "Did you hear the surname?" She gripped the man’s arm. "What did they call him other than Angelo?"

"Salvatore," Father Michael shook his head, "I wondered about that. He didn’t look much like an angel of salvation to me, but then," he scratched his head by way of contrast, "I suppose they never do."

Belle hugged him hard. She knew enough now. She could find him. She knew exactly where to start looking too, and to her friend’s astonishment, she was off and running immediately, throwing kisses back to the priest and with a huge smile on her face. She knew that name. The summer he had been lost to her, he had come to New York, he had stayed with Megan, working in ‘Guiseppe’s Café’, and then his nickname had been ‘Angelo’. Now, at last, she knew exactly where to find her missing Shawn.

"Is that really you?" His heart pounded. He couldn’t believe it.

"Yes, it’s me." She was so beautiful. He’d forgotten just how beautiful she was. She looked like an angel… "Come closer."

He moved towards her, noticing the way the light breeze was caressing her blonde hair, the way the moonlight made her eyes shimmer, and how wondrous she looked in that light.

"It’s been so long," he was near her now.

"Too long," she put out her hand to take his. "You know I’m yours, don’t you?"

"Are you?"

"Always and forever."

His. His Belle. The words seemed almost as unreal as the idea that lay behind them. She was his. Always and forever.

He looked down at their linked fingers, and a thousand memories ran through his mind.

The voice’s words echoed abruptly through his head. ‘Aim low. Fire. Now.’

And then he raised the gun in his other hand, took a single step backwards, and fired point blank into Belle’s chest, a shot that could not fail to kill her. It broke her heart and his irredeemably.

The boy she had once claimed to love so desperately, the boy who had loved her more than his own life, took her life with no more compunction than he would have had in shooting Stefano Dimera.

Darkness fell, hope died, and all was lost.

Shawn Douglas Brady had killed Isabella Black.

TBC?...

MBB chapter 13 is nearly done to my satisfaction. Be patient.

To tide you over, a piece of utter silliness.

I disclaim.

Breathless, they broke apart. So much had happened in so little time: His mother was alive. Tony Dimera was her father's brother supposedly. Billie wasn't anymore brain dead than usual. Lexie's faked death had been revealed. Bo wasn't a murderer. Lexie was pregnant and no one knew if the child was Abe's or Brandon's. The Gemini twins were proven Dimeras which made them some kind of cousin of hers. Chloe was Craig’s child, not Dr Sykes’s, and pregnant in turn with Brady’s child. Philip had found love and solace in Mimi's arms. Nicole had married Colin and they had left for their honeymoon in Ireland. Victor was dating Maggie. Kate was back with Nicholas Alamain. Eric was back in town, wooing Greta. Austin was in love with the waitress from the Java cafe. Best of all, they were back together again after she had been kidnapped by mistake by a crazed Canadian 'Hours of Our Existence' fan who had thought she was Kiki Hurricane and he had rescued her with a little help from his baby brother.

The world was nothing to them. They wouldn't have noticed if they had been standing on the top of an erupting volcano so involved were they in each other.

Looking back on everything they had been through, it was incredible they were still alive, let alone still in love.

Diapers to dances.

All day suckers to sucker punches.

Cookies and milk to chocolate body paint and kisses beneath coconut trees.

Light hearted playing at aeroplane pilot to deadly serious playing at Survivor.

Oh, and the biggest danger of all: High School.

And now, at last, they had stopped throwing sand and snowballs at each other and begun throwing sensual stares and sexy glances.

A love like theirs neither fades nor flickers. It matures into the kind of flame that started the Great Fire of London. The passion between them now could burn down a thousand Cathedrals. It had burned a Dimera and from the ashes no new Phoenix would arise.

They'd had more than their fair share of problems.

Jabbing fingers to Jan Spears.

Dangerous dares to Dimera twins.

Broken bones to broken hearts.

But that was over now.

Only one thing was left between them, unspoken, unheard, not even glanced between them, but more glaringly obvious by the day that they were together once more.

He had said it first: with a snowman and her red lipstick.

With a thousand kisses beneath a million billion stars.

With every move of his body and beat of his heart.

With promises of a Someday yet to come.

She had answered him clearly: with tiny touches.

With comfort and strength when the world went dark.

With butterfly touches that said more than words.

With everything in her body and her soul.

Now all that was left was to say it aloud. To confess, and hope for the echo of their words to return to them.

Uncertainty wracked them both to the point of distraction.

You could promise 'Someday' but in the end, you were the one who had to make it 'today and forever after'.

He said it first. She had risked her heart on him time and again. It was his turn to take the risk.

He stepped forwards slowly, and cradled the back of her blonde head in his large hand.

"If I tried to show you how much I love you everyday for the rest of our lives together," he murmured, bringing her closer so that his vision was filled by the sight of her eyes, and his whole world was within her, "and you added all that love together, it would be but a grain of sand on a beach the size of the universe to how I really feel about you. I love you that much."

She blushed, and would have been embarrassed, but couldn't be with him. "I don't have your fancy words," she began, and a kiss on her temple told her that he didn't need them, "I can't tell you what you mean to me. The universe isn't big enough for all the love I have for you."

They kissed then, with the thoroughness and gentleness of lovers who know they have eternity to be together in, and aren't going to waste a single second.

"I love you," she whispered.

"I thought that was my line," the smile that had enchanted her since she could first focus her eyes on him warmed her and made her cheeks glow. Or perhaps that was the gentle movement of his hands.

She leaned her head against his shoulder, enjoying his warmth. "Do you remember when we watched that movie?"

She could almost see his grin broadening as she nestled deeper into his shoulder, listening to the music no one else could hear wash around them in sensuous waves. "Which one?"

"The one with the singer who was being stalked and fell in love with Kevin Costner for some box office reason." He wasn't distracted from her, though her very aura was enough to distract him.

"Yes." He waited for more. It came in a rush.

"Well," she lifted her head and stared into his eyes, "she sang 'And I will always love you'."

"And?" He was still waiting.

"Do you think she really loved him?" She was playing with his hair now, her fingers twirling and tugging it gently.

He frowned a little. "The singer or the real person?"

"Either." Another little twirl, another finger threaded into the thick locks of his dark hair.

"Maybe." She laughed then. She would never know how much he loved the sound of her laugh, the very sound of her happiness. "Why?"

"Because," she moved even closer and their breathless feeling returned. "I don't want you to laugh when I say this, if I sound a little like her."

"I won't." He promised it as seriously and solemnly as he could manage when she was so close and so warm.

She took a deep breath, forcing him to suck in deeply too. "I will always love you."

He didn't laugh.

"Promise me you won't laugh when I say this," he asked her with as much solemnity as she had shown.

"OK." smile as bright as Christmas snow and as warm as a Puerto Rican noon time sun.

"Baby, not only do I love you more than anything else in this world," he was still solemn, but if she had looked into his eyes she would have detected the slightest hint of mischief in them, "but Whitney Houston has nothing on you."

He glanced down at her lovely face, his gaze falling as far as their bodies pressing together would let. "But if you ever decide to go for a Dolly Parton look," a wicked grin at last, though still laced with the gentility and tenderness of before, and a quick wiggle of his eyebrows, "I certainly won't object. Just as long as the short skirts and cowboy boots don't turn you into a bronco bunny."

Half infuriated, half amused by his obvious mocking of her solemnity, she did the only thing she could think of to shut him up and make him forget all about 'The Bodyguard'.

She kissed him good and hard, and whispered a promise of eternity into his ear. That had him forgetting everything but her, just as it was supposed to.

"You know what else?" He cuddled her closer as the kiss ended, but she moved just far away enough to look past his jaw.

"What?" She asked, amused and joyous, cheeks pink with pleasure.

"Every day from now on is going to be our Someday, love," he brought her in for another kiss, "and I will love you until long after eternity runs out."

She remembered another film then, and before drawing him into another promise sealing kiss, whispered, "Ditto."

This is not ‘The End’. Only the beginning...

I disclaim. I don't own anything except the prose and a few incidental characters. Damn...

Chapter 12

Shawn Douglas Brady, brainwashed to believe himself to be and act as Angelo Salvatore, the most eligible and handsome bachelor in the upper echelons of New York society, crawled through the claustrophobically small air vent on his hands and knees, feeling the metal scrape the skin off of his legs and palms as he did so. He bit back a swearword, knowing the slightest sound could compromise his position. The sounds of human beings drinking, gambling, dancing, and, he suspected, whoring, came clearly up from below.

He swung his entire body left in one easy movement, and threw himself against the grating at the end. He looked down into a brightly lit, well furnished office with chrome fittings and black leather chairs. ‘Typical modernist junk that won’t outlast the year,’ he thought rather bitterly, remembering the Spartan appearance of his own base.

The room was empty of people, so Angelo started unscrewing the grate in front of him, calculating both the size and the security aspects of the room. It was large, roomy and very badly guarded. It was also unfrequented at a quarter past three a.m., the time he was visiting it. With the only the slightest hint of a grin on his very handsome face, he dropped silently into the room and waited for an alarm bell to sound. When it didn’t, he reached up for his briefcase and slipped from the room, running along the corridor, with its grey carpet and soft cream wallpaper, into the safe room.

He snapped on the light, and glanced around him. The room itself was small, a mere cupboard to the palatial rooms downstairs, but it was important. The low cost décor was merely to make it look like an unused office, but it was far more than that. This was where the jewels that the officials gave to their favourite girls were kept, and the jewels were what had brought Angelo here. He hungered for money with a surprisingly rapacious appetite, for with them he might be able to buy his freedom and go into his business for himself. He had always - though it was the always of the months he remembered - to go to sea, and a sufficiently large cache of rare stones would win him away not only from the Boss but also from New York.

The smile on his lips, as he moved the Picasso painting from its place on the wall and flicked the switch that it had hidden, was just slightly devilish, and if someone else had been watching him, they would have said he appeared like a mischievous small boy. Angelo had yet to realise how young he appeared to all those who did not see that fathomless coldness in his eyes or hear the biting sarcasm in her voice.

The second panel, covered by the picture of the Tahitian flower girl in red slid back, exposing the safe. With a ‘Samson safe cracker - no where is safe with us’, he spun the combination and heard the click that told him the door would now swing open safely. Perhaps he was being over cautious, but before he opened it, he stepped behind the door, making sure that, when it flew across the room, none of the trick paint would splatter him.

Fingering the diamonds, rubies, emerald and sapphires as he loaded them into his briefcase and closed it with a snap. Replacing the paintings, he felt a different smile stretch his lips, one of artistic appreciation.

"The lady in red," he murmured, and started valuing the picture at current auction prices.

The scream that rent the air as he replaced the picture made his blood run colder. His head snapped around and in an instant he was behind the door, light switched off and briefcase firmly held under one arm. Screams like that meant only one thing: trouble, and lots of it.

He wanted to simply slip down the corridor again, leave them to whatever the hell it was they were doing, but something in him refused to let him do so. The chevalier of olden times that dwelt in his heart dug his heels in and yanked on the reins of Angelo’s will power.

Not even daring to curse silently, Angelo Salvatore went to earn his name.

"Miss Belle, my feet hurt," Spanner Joe complained plaintively, trailing after the petite blonde with a mission, hours before Angelo left his apartment for his night’s work.

"Spanner," Belle called over her shoulder without slowing down, "it’s only another four blocks and then we’ll be able to rest at the hotel. I promise, we can take a cab back."

Cursing in Italian under his breath, Spanner Joe followed her to the fifteenth white mansion they had visited that day. None of them had been the Maison Blanche, and his shoulders, legs, ankles and knees were all protesting at the unjust treatment.

Belle knocked at the door with what Joe had already termed her ‘let me in or there’ll be trouble’ face on. He hoped they would let her in, and quickly. His boots were still wet from the blood that had gushed the last snooty butler’s nose.

The door swung open slowly, the hinges creaking slightly, and an old man in blue overalls was revealed.

"Can I help you?" He asked in a quavering voice, evidently surprised by the appearance of this tiny blonde and her enormous bodyguard. He thought he recognised her as Miss Kirsten Storms, that famous New York socialite and gave her a little bow. "I beg your pardon, Miss Storms, I didn’t recognise you at first. I’m afraid Mr Dimera isn’t here right now, but Ms Dimera is."

With a triumphant smile, Belle walked into the mansion with Spanner Joe walking slowly behind her.

"Through here please, Miss Storms," the man in overalls conducted them through to a half painted sitting room, complete with pictures under sheets and an oriental rug rolled up against one wall. "Ms Dimera will be along immediately. Forgive the mess, please, we were just redecorating."

Belle nodded and smiled, and Spanner Joe gazed around him in open amazement. "These are some nice digs, Miss Belle!"

"Call me Miss Storms for as long as we’re here, Joe," Belle answered, flashing a smile. "He said Ms Dimera was here. I wonder which Dimera he meant? I thought Lexie was still in Salem."

"Hello, Miss Storms," the voice came from behind them, and they both turned to see a tall, beautiful blonde woman standing in the doorway. There was a quick intake of breath.

The blonde woman started forwards. "Isabella?"

Belle gasped, "Mom?"

Angelo slipped the pick into the lock, and twisted gently. From inside the room he could hear the sounds of someone being hit, and biting back their cries. The ice packed around his heart shivered with each blow, and a little compassion leaked out. He squashed it down into the back of his mind, but it stayed there, waiting, not to be dismissed so easily as Angelo had dismissed all of his other feelings.

He had to stop himself humming as he jimmied the lock open and crept inside the darkened room, the plush carpet sinking beneath his feet.

"Tell us where it is," a man’s voice barked, and Angelo felt the bile rise in his throat.

He could see the person being hit now, and it was a girl as young as she was beautiful, and she was very young and very beautiful. Blonde, wind ruffled hair spread in a halo around an angel’s face. He recognised her at once, Miss Kirsten Storms, the woman who had once thrown a coffee pot at his head.

With a calculating gaze, Angelo took in the contents of the room. It was almost bare, except for the chair she was strapped too, and the lamp hanging above her head, but it looked to be richly furnished usually. The walls were a dull grey, the carpet beneath their feet likewise, meant to be undistinguished, but the carpet was deep pile and there were chrome fittings. Angelo realised the room had been stripped bare so the girl could be held here in safety, and wondered that the lock had been so cheap. Then he remembered the security outside the building was so tough that they expected no one to get in.

Well he had, and if they thought he was going to leave that poor girl to her fate, they had another thing coming. He assessed the situation, noting only two men, the one who was hitting her every time she refused to answer the question and the other who asked the questions. The first was a tall, thick set man with black hair and a cruelly shaped mouth, too hard lines of red, dressed in an expensive looking Italian suit. The second was shorter, thinner, with iron grey hair and glasses. His suit also looked Italian, tailor made with it, and his mouth wasn’t cruel. His eyes were though. Angelo could see from ten feet away that, though they were fixed on the girl in front of him, the man’s eyes were small and cold, like grey marbles.

Suppressing a shudder, Angelo slipped forwards, knowing they hadn’t seen his stealthy entrance and pressed a finger to his lips as the girl’s attention became fixed on him. Her eyes were already wide with fear, and now they widened still further with shock. ‘Of all the places,’ she seemed to be saying, ‘I expected to see you next, here was not even on the list.’

"Where is it?" the second man repeated, and when Kirsten simply lifted her chin a little higher and spat into his face, the first man hit her hard across the cheek and she reeled backwards.

Something in Angelo snapped, something he didn’t even know existed, but it set off a chain reaction both in him and events that he had never foreseen came into the realms or probability as he reacted.

In a single bound he had his hands around the neck of the second man and he was squeezing at a pressure point. The man fell to the floor with a dull thud, and the first man, recovering from his shock, charged forwards like an ugly bull.

Angelo quickly side stepped out of the way, bringing his doubled fists down onto the back of the man’s neck and his knee into his groin. Another dull thud sounded as the man hit the floor. Kneeling beside him, Angelo whipped out a long cord he had brought with him, and quickly tied him up. Then he hit him hard twice, first to knock him out and then to break his jaw so he wouldn’t be able to call out for help when he woke up. He tied the second man up too, but didn’t to hit him again. He needed to get Kirsten out and fast.

"Kirsten?" he grabbed her bruised chin, and then, more gently, turned her terrified face towards his own. "I am going to get you out of here, but you need to do exactly what I say."

Unable to speak, she nodded.

"First," he went on as coolly as if they were talking about a picnic in the park, "I’m going to cut you loose. Then you’re going to follow me down the hall into another room. Silently. I’ll tell you what to do next when we get there, OK?"

Another nod.

Angelo busied himself with his Swiss army knife, cutting the ropes that bound her and wondering how the hell he had got himself into this.

"Come on," unthinkingly he took her by the hand, and slowly she stood up. She staggered then, and he caught her as she fell, hoisting her up across his shoulder before she could protest into a fireman’s lift. Then he ran like every demon in hell was at his heels, forgetting caution in favour of speed.

She looked terrible. Her skin was bruised black and blue, her lips were chapped and dry, her hair was rumpled and her clothes were torn. She looked, in fact, the complete reverse of her usual primped and preened immaculate self.

When he put her down again, leaning her gently against the wall in the room he had first lowered himself into, he realised she had fainted.

"Salvatore, what the hell are you doing with her?"

Another man would have started, or looked slightly surprised at least to see Harry walk out of the shadows, but Angelo took it in his stride.

"Rescuing her," he said with the shadow of a grin on his handsome face. "What the hell are you doing here?" he echoed.

"Following you," Harry was the more surprised of the pair. He had not expected this. Actually, he couldn’t say what he had expected, but it certainly wasn’t an unconscious Kirsten and a wicked grin.

"Why?" Angelo’s smile vanished instantly. He needed to know how much Harry had seen. "No, tell me later," he said as Harry began what Angelo realised was going to be a long explanation. "We need to get her out of here."

Harry, overwhelmed and confused, simply nodded and watched as Angelo swung himself easily up into the vent shaft, handing Kirsten up to him as soon as he was ready for her and tossing the briefcase in before he too followed.

Between them, they managed to manoeuvre her through the shaft and out onto the roof. From there, Angelo pushed Harry into the harness, and sent him skidding erratically along the drop line into the enormous apple tree that grew fifty feet away. Then, he strapped Kirsten in and hung on for dear life as they both went flying to join Harry. She would never remember the trip that brought the shots of the guards whistling around their ears, but he would forever, especially in the middle of the night when he slept in his cold lonely bed.

Shimmying down the tree with Kirsten over one shoulder and the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, Angelo glanced around to check for more guards, and then whispered, "Run for it!" to Harry, who needed no encouragement.

The three of them moved through the trees, and Kirsten woke with staring at Angelo’s back side. Confused though not completely unwilling to maintain her position, she cried, "What the hell is going on?" before being silenced by a slap on the rear from Harry as Angelo had his hands full already.

"Shut up!" he whispered fiercely in a tone that sent ripples of excitement down Kirsten’s back. "You’re being rescued, so unless you want to go back there, be quiet!"

After what seemed an hour of staring at Angelo’s posterior and being jiggled around, Kirsten was lain down on the cold ground of Central Park at night and felt Angelo force a bottle between her teeth. Drinking gratefully before she realised what it was, she downed the whisky and spluttered at the burn.

"What the hell is going on?" She repeated once the stinging sensation had ceased. "Who are you really? Where am I?" Then as an afterthought she said, "Thank you for rescuing me."

"You’re welcome," Harry grinned at her. Angelo just looked moodily down at his briefcase, wondering at the night’s events with stoic calm.

"To answer your questions," he said, having caught his breath, "I found you in a room at the Belgravia Mansion being beaten up by a thug and a man who seemed to think you knew something. I’m Angelo Salvatore, I think. You know Harry."

"I know you," she broke in. "I just couldn’t believe it was really the same guy as caught the coffee pot I threw at him and downed the lot in one go."

A flicker of a smile crossed Angelo’s lips, but he went on as cold and precise as before. "You’re in Central Park, but not for long." He took the flask from Harry who had just imbibed half the contents and sipped from it slowly. "We need to get you back to my apartment. Can you walk?"

The beaten girl stood up slowly, "I think so."

"Good," Angelo turned to Harry. "Call a cab. Get in it and go home. Tonight never happened. You never saw any of this and as far as you know, Miss Storms is in bed right now. OK?"

"Nope," Harry said blithely. "You’re forgetting something."

"What?" Angelo was tired, and his mood was worsening by the moment, but his usual sangfroid didn’t slip.

"I know what’s in that briefcase," he grinned.

"No, you don’t." Angelo took another sip of whisky.

"Yes, I do," Harry argued. "It’s jewels and I know to whom they belong."

Too tired to argue, Angelo gave in. "Come on. Call a cab. Miss Storms, I’m sure," his good manners flooded back over them like a warm blanket, "would like to get warm and change her clothes I believe. I also have a rather nice dinner waiting at my apartment she may like to eat."

"A turkey sandwich?" she asked, grasping onto this one strand of sanity in an insane world.

Angelo nodded. "With lettuce and mayonnaise, but no tomato."

Kirsten sighed, content. If he was offering her turkey sandwiches, with lettuce and mayonnaise but no tomato, at this moment she would follow him to the ends of the earth.

She was too tired to fully appreciate the feel of his gentle, strong arms around her as he carried her into the cab, her head resting against his shoulder and Harry carrying her shoes for her, but she felt peace there a wonder relief to her after the last few terrible hours of her life.

Back in Angelo’s Spartan New York apartment, Harry watched with unmatched interest as the girl he had spent years flirting with over elegantly made delicacies ploughed her way through the thickest sandwich he had ever seen, with a bowl of French fries on the side. When she was done, she fastidiously wiped her fingers clean with a paper napkin and handed an amused Angelo the empty plate. "Thank you," she said politely, reaching for a proffered red apple.

"Now I have a question of my own: what did those men want you to tell them?" Angelo’s eyes were less cold than usual, a hint of compassion sparked in their brown depths, but his voice was as coolly controlled as ever.

"Where a painting is," she replied, just as coolly, between ravenous bites of her apple.

"What painting?" Harry sat next to the blonde and took her in slowly. She had an ice pack clamped to her face, bandages on her arms and torso, and a split lip. She looked like she had been through hell, but here she was, calmly, if hungrily, munching an apple, and keeping both men guessing.

"Just a painting," she had finished her apple now and was gazing longingly at the freezer.

"Ice cream?" Angelo asked, reading her mind. She nodded, still hungry. "You can have some if you tell me what painting and where."

She stared at him for a minute, calculating the chance of getting ice cream without telling him anything against the chance of getting hurt if she told him which painting and where. She decided quickly. "It’s a Rembrandt. One of his lesser known pieces. ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son’. Now gimme."

He knew the picture. He had thought it was in St. Petersburg, that was where he’d last seen it.

Angelo took the ice cream out of the freezer and picked up a large silver spoon from the side. She could read the flavour: Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, her favourite. "Where is it?"

They had beaten her black and blue, tortured her with metal strips and kept her without food or drink all day long. Through out it all, she stayed strong. If they had only known, they could have touched her on her weak spot and she would have told them everything. Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream was Kirsten’s greatest weakness, and without a second thought she answered all of Angelo’s questions.

"It’s in the International National Dancers Building." His eyebrow flickered, so she went on, rather more quickly as he moved the ice cream closer to her. "Where the dancers from every country in the UN stay while the UN is in session in New York."

The eyebrow flickered again.

Kirsten sighed. It was typical of men not to know anything about dancers, whereas if they had been sport stars he could have told her everything from their best ever performance to their shoe size. "They all like having their dancing girls in New York so they can compare them to the girls in the Roxy. Each country has a girl who can do their national dance, and they all stay together at this building." She took another napkin and searched for a pen before scribbling down a street number. "That’s what it’s supposed to be about anyway, but it’s basically run by the Corleone family, and the fact that they have the Rembrandt is really pi-" Kirsten stopped short and then corrected herself, "making the Fettuccini family mad. They want it badly."

Angelo spooned more ice cream into her bowl, and she ate it ravenously. "Why?"

"It’s not the picture they want," she confided, "it’s the frame. In code under the gold leaf, there’s the safe number for Old Joe’s fortune. The Corleone family, well, Babe actually, knows what the number is but can’t get at the safe, and the Fettuccini family can get at the safe, but don’t know the number and can’t crack it on account of Old Joe rigging it to explode if they use any number but the right one straight off, within a time limit. Do you have any apple pie?"

Angelo shook his head and she looked disappointed.

Though unwilling to leave them just when things were getting interesting, Harry leapt up before Angelo could stop him and ran outside to buy a pie from the all night baker’s across the street, hoping his act of generosity and kindness would be looked on with favour by the beautiful Miss Storms. When she saw he brought vanilla ice cream too, she smiled sweetly at him and set about devouring the pie.

"You know Babe Corleone?" For the first time, there was feeling in Angelo’s voice, hope in fact.

"I should do," Kirsten replied between mouthfuls. "We are related."

Angelo looked like he had just been told that he was the recipient of a million dollar jackpot prize. "Can you introduce me?"

"Sure, why not?" She grinned at him, split lip and all, over her bowl of apple pie and ice cream. "Got any more ice cream?"

With a slight sigh, Harry opened the freezer door to show her the empty shelves inside. "You cleaned him out."

She shrugged, licking her spoon clean through pink, moist lips. Her immediate hunger pangs satisfied, her curiosity was reawakened. "Why do you want to know this stuff?"

Angelo smiled. "Because I’m curious."

She tried to glower at him, but with that megawatt smile turned on, found it impossible.

"No, really, why do you want to know?" Kirsten laid down her spoon, a sure sign she meant business.

"Why are the Fettuccini family so desperate to get their hands on Old Joe’s fortune?" Angelo asked, quickly changing the subject.

Harry answered instead of Kirsten, "Since Natalya K…"

"I know who you mean," Angelo quickly interposed as Harry stuttered out the Russian name, not realising that he knew the woman personally, and that she was searching for her Super Shawn at that very moment.

"Well, since Natalya K’s new wonder drug came out, every addict’s been forced to come off drugs in a hurry, and no one is getting hooked any more, so a major source of income has been lost to them. Unlike the Corleones, they dealt mostly in cocaine, heroin and opium, some speed, acid and ecstasy, but basically anything that will fricassee your brain real fast. The Corleone family never had anything to do with drugs, just bootlegging liquor and a few…" Harry trailed off as he looked at Kirsten’s expression. He was not going to mention the Corleone dance clubs, renowned throughout New York, in front of her. Then he went on, hoping she hadn’t noticed the pause. "…Other things. The Fettuccini family aren’t going to survive if they don’t get some cash and soon. South America is falling to pieces because the drug barons are losing their wealth and can’t pay their thugs anymore. The whole deal’s shot. So they need Old Joe’s money. Without it…"

"They’re geography ," Kirsten replied with a wicked grin and through a mouthful of pie.

"You mean history," Harry corrected her gently.

"I know what I mean," she snapped back. The smile, tinged with a light of mania, returned. "The Fettuccinis are going to be floating slowly down the river in no time."

She gazed around the room, evidently searching for more food, her hunger pains no longer sated. Angelo sighed, and reached into the cupboard for the packet of cereal he had bought two days before when pretending to shop but actually following the bodyguard of the French ambassador as he searched for mangoes. He grimaced at the name: ‘Captain Courage’s Crunchie Crisp Crackle Snaps’. He handed the carton silently over to Kirsten who took it gratefully and began crunching it dry.

"When can we pay a visit to Mrs Corleone?" He asked, re-crossing his arms.

For a moment the crunching stopped. "Can I sleep here?" He shrugged. He’d give up his bed to her and sleep on the floor. "Good," Kirsten announced between mouthfuls, "then we’ll go in the morning."

"I think I’d better sit down," Harry murmured, sinking into a chair. He glanced at Kirsten who was just beginning to practise her flirting techniques on their host and asked quickly, "Can I stay here too?"

Another shrug. He’d have to find more blankets and pillows, but to let Harry or Kirsten go home only an hour after he’d rescued her with him as an accomplice from the Fettuccini stronghold was to risk their safety and his own. Kirsten would be looked for, so would the jewels, and Angelo, in more than his usual calculating style, decided that Harry could not be trusted to keep his mouth shut about either.

"Do you have any tea?" The faintest smile crossed Angelo’s lips as Kirsten sent another searching gaze searing through the room, ducking her head back and forth to see past either side of her host. The girl was insatiable.

"No, only milk, coffee, hot chocolate, or," he paused and watched Kirsten’s eyebrow flicker up with amusement, "Scotch whisky."

"Not Irish?" Harry asked jokingly.

For a moment, Angelo Salvatore was subdued by Shawn Douglas Brady. He said in wonder, "Irish…"

The door of the apartment flew open as a man in a grey Armani suit kicked it in. Angelo took back control of the mind as his skills became vital.

"Get down," he bit out sharply. He did not lower himself, instead calculating how difficult it would be to get past the man they would have posted on the fire escape, down the three men barging into the room and the two he believed would stand in the hallway. He believed the three of them would live as long as there was no sniper posted on the roof of the opposite building.

"Angelo," the first man said confidently, snidely dusting his cuffs, "still living, I see."

Angelo recognised the man’s voice immediately as that of the right hand thug of the Fettuccini family, Nicholas ‘the knife’. He was undoubtedly here to reclaim Kirsten and take revenge on the man who had rescued her. Angelo showed a feral grin. A straight forward revenge raid he could fight.

Silently, he waited for Nicholas to throw a punch, then blocked it, swept a hand under the other man’s defence, ripped the knife out of his foe’s grip and pushed two fingers under his ribs, knocking the wind out of him and sending him reeling backwards. The two henchmen disturbed by their boss’s swift defeat did not attack immediately, and Angelo took advantage of their hesitation by stabbing both in quick barehanded jabs and knocking both unconscious.

Without a word, Angelo signalled to his stunned companions to follow him, turned the knife in his hand and leaned around the window. The unsuspecting guard only knew of Angelo’s presence when the knife blade pricked against his neck.

"Do you want to die?" Angelo’s voice was as calm as it had been when offering drinks to his guests.

The man began to shake his head, then felt the knife scratch him and choked out, "No!"

"Then tell your boss this," Angelo could have been ordering coffee, but the Mediterranean man’s dark face had turned ash grey. "Miss Storms is under my protection now and my employer’s. Hurt her, and I will personally maim ten of your Mob. Kill her," and at last his voice dropped to a chilling whisper, "and there won’t be a soul to remember the night I came after you." He dropped the knife to above the man’s clavicle, "And the name’s Mr. Salvatore."

He banged the man’s head against the wall, knocking the man unconscious.

He let the body drop and moved Kirsten and Harry out onto the fire escape, bringing the precious briefcase with them. He climbed into the darkness first, wary of attack from below, and let himself drop down.

A sniper’s bullet from the opposite roof whistled two millimetres above his head, ruffling his dark hair, and lodging in the wall behind him. Kirsten, her foot hovering inches above where Angelo’s head had been gasped, Harry stifled a cry of fear, and for the first time that night, Angelo Salvatore felt afraid.

TBC...

If you want to know what happened in the first story, read it. This is taking forever to summarise.

Channel 5 did this when they started showing Days over here. Here goes nothing!

Previously on My Boyfriend’s Back (sequel to the terminally crazed Never Said Goodbye):

• After the motorcycle accident at the end of NSG, Shawn was kidnapped and conditioned by the voice, a mysterious evil mad genius who trained him to be a soldier, medic, Navy SEAL, multi-linguist, mercenary, thief and leading light in New York society.
• Shawn currently believes himself to be Angelo Salvatore, the voice / Boss’s mercenary. His former identity as Shawn Douglas Brady of Salem, ?, is completely submerged by Angelo’s dominant persona.
• Shawn, when he is Shawn and not Angelo, believes that Belle slept with evil Henry Gates.
• Henry is currently stalking Belle, but she has a new bodyguard in the form of Spanner Joe, an enormous man with interesting if lewd tattoos.
• Shawn escaped from the voice’s fortress once successfully (a couple of times he was recaptured) before he was turned into Angelo Salvatore and conditioned to be the voice’s pawn.
• He then found himself in northern Russia, sought refuge after many hours of desperate travelling with the heavily pregnant Natalya, who’s husband had been murdered by the voice / Boss’s henchmen, delivered her baby, and helped her find safety in Moscow.
• Then Shawn went back to Salem.
• Kitty (yes, our Kit-Kat but with a wicked temper) met Shawn in Paris in NSG and they became best friends. She is broken hearted because her then boyfriend Bobby cheated on her with her then best friend Ivy when she lived in New York.
• She and Megan attempted to help Shawn take revenge, only to watch him trade himself for the two Blacks, Belle who had been kidnapped recently, and John who had been held captive since his fateful honeymoon in Hawaii when Hope as Gina supposedly fell pregnant.
• The John we have all seen since that time is a John-clone, and has now been dismantled and replaced by the real John.
• This means that the John-clone was the one that Princess Gina slept with on the submarine, but because he was a robot (come on, could a real man ever have expressions that wooden?) JT is in fact Bo’s, conceived in Paris, but the memory of the event was brainwashed out of them. (Just so you know, I came up with this before it was even rumoured on the show. I’ve been channelling NBC producers again!)
• Kristen Dimera is alive, well, and working for the voice. She’s also crazy and hell bent on revenge.
• Marlena has been reunited with John and the John-clone’s European fancy woman has disappeared. Who she actually is still to be revealed.
• Brady is very happy in a relationship with Shawn’s friend Megan.
• Bo and Hope are definitely together, the baby swop never happened (or did it?).
• Chloe was actually Elvis Dimera in drag and is dead, having killed Jason, Jan and Belle’s actually gay boyfriend Larry on the night of the prom. (All in NSG)
• Shawn, as Angelo, returned the adult daughter, Ivy, of Lady Sarah Hamilton to her mother, and when Lady Sarah could not meet his price - an introduction to Babe Corleone - he plots revenge against her.
• Having been rescued by Shawn, Belle has set out to rescue him in turn. (This falls into the ‘Rebel’s heroines get a backbone’ story thread.)
• Believing that Stefano held him hostage (she was drugged at the time and can’t remember the kidnapping), when she returned to Salem she broke into the Dimansion, shot the Stef three times, and didn’t go to jail because she was doing the place a ‘public service’ according to * cough * Tigger * cough * nurse Ali MacIntyre.
• A month after she shot the Stef, John locked her up for the night in the Salem jail after the umpteenth time she broke into Stefano’s mansion looking for Shawn. There she met Spanner Joe, and was impressed by his lewd tattoos. He was in the jail because they were deemed to be ‘indecent exposure’ when shown in public.
• Spanner Joe, a few New York socialites (Kirsten Storms (not an actress), Harry, his cousin Nikki, Maria Guylian, Lady Sarah and le Vicomtesse de la Fere) and the usual casual on-lookers get caught up in the lives of the Salemites at war, and we haven’t even begun on what happens with a pair of movie stars, a native New Yorker naturalised in Paris, a major revenge plot and of course, a bridge in Paris in February. (for the last, you might want to re-read chapters 14-16 of NSG in the completed archive)
• Belle broke Spanner Joe and herself out of jail and she is now running from the law, and, far more scarily, her father, searching desperately for the man she loves in every hideout the Stef has ever been known to own or visit.
• Shawn was never in any of them. The Stef is not the voice, but that’s another chapter.
• Now, Belle is on a mission to find Shawn.
• Shawn is on a mission of his own as well as playing his part in the voice’s plan.
• And there’s an angel Shawn keeps seeing, the future embodiment of his love with Belle. If he doesn’t get his heart, soul, memory and Belle back, and his prophetic dream comes true, Kitty and Belle will die.

My Boyfriend’s Back chapter 12 trailer (French fries, ice cream and madness in Manhattan):

Angelo Salvatore, the most eligible and handsome bachelor in the upper echelons of New York society…

…meant only one thing: trouble, and lots of it…

…His boots were still wet from the blood that had gushed from the last snooty butler’s nose…

…"I’m afraid Mr Dimera isn’t here right now, but Ms Dimera is"…

…"Mom?"…

…‘Of all the places,’ she seemed to be saying, ‘I expected to see you next, here was not even on the list.’…

…it set off a chain reaction both in him and events that he had never foreseen came into the realms of probability…

…she sighed, content. If he was offering her turkey sandwiches, with lettuce and mayonnaise but no tomato, at this moment she would follow him to the ends of the earth…

…"Now gimme."…

…The eyebrow flickered again…

…"I think I’d better sit down"…

…and for the first time that night, Angelo Salvatore felt afraid…

Coming soon, to a board near you!