CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE "Son of a..." Luke muttered as he lashed out, planting his fist on Tim's face. The older man dodged, taking only a glancing blow, but it was enough to stagger him for a moment. Luke's eyes were wide, his face white, and his teeth clinched. "That's a #$%^&* lie!" "Unfortunately, it's not," Tim told him. "Lena was one of the great mistakes of my life." "One? What else could you have possibly have done to equal that?" "None of your business. It's enough that I have to deal with them from time to time," Tim answered curtly. "I don't need to have you lecturing me on how to conduct my life." "Somebody sure as hell should have," Luke told him. He was still reeling from the latest revelation. Helena was his mother? "That damned woman tried," Tim responded. "She wanted me to kill her old man for her-had ambitions of controlling the whole shebang over in Greece, but Mikkos had different ideas. See, Helena is a Cassadine in her own right-distant cousin or something like that, but the same last name. She's always been really pi**ed that she wasn't able to run the family, but because she's a woman, she was denied the chance. Her plan was to do in Mikkos and then marry a man she could control. That's where I came in. She planned to persuade me to off her dearly beloved and then become her puppet. Problem was, Mikkos found out about us before I found out about him." "You didn't know that she was married?" Tim looked a bit chagrinned. "Not exactly. Near as I can figure it, she left him back when he was fooling around on her with the butler's daughter or some such thing. Anyway, we met in Paris and, woo-hoo!! What a weekend!! That woman can be persuasive as hell when she sets her mind to it!" Luke thought he'd gag, but the story was fascinating in a nightmarish sort of way. "Go on." "We were together for about two years, off and on. More off than on, but with Helena, that's understandable. That woman has hell's own temper, but the making up was worth it! Anyhow, eventually you came along, and long about that time, Mikkos learned that Helena's baby wasn't his. That sort of steamed his clams, if you know what I mean, and he decided that the only good Spencer was a dead Spencer, so I grabbed my family and we hauled a** across the Atlantic and hid out in New York for a while. I married Paulena and we headed down to Florida. Bobbie was born, and then I found out that Mikkos was still after me, so I left Lena and drew his fire. I let him think that he'd killed me for a while, but Helena knew the truth. In fact, I think that she may have saved me once or twice, just for old time's sake." "Clarify a point or two for me. Wouldn't the family leadership have passed to his brother or some other Cassadine male? Why did she think that she could have taken over?" "Helena always had a plan," Tim admitted. "The woman, for all that she's crazy as a bedbug, is brilliant. She was going to arrange accidents, or frame them for whatever and then take over. She was the mother to the heir, and therefore could control everything until he came of age. By then, she'd be pulling his strings, too. But, things went from sugar to sh** and it took her quite some time to persuade Mikkos that she could be trusted again. Meanwhile, she stayed faithful to him while he fooled around on her-or so he thought." "You don't mean that you went back for more?" "Hell no!! I'm not that much of a fool! Let's just say that I have a few bits of information stored away that can make Helena squirm if I need to. Things she doesn't know that I know." Luke shook his head, still stunned by all he'd heard. This couldn't be happening to him, he decided, finally. He had to be caught up in some sort of a waking nightmare. "So, if I understand you correctly, Stefan is really my half-brother, which makes Lucky my nephew as well as my wife's son by my half-brother. Which makes Lucky and Nik cousins as well as half-brothers." "Something like that," Tim admitted, sheepishly. "#$%^&*!!!" Luke cursed with a fluency that astounded everybody in the room, even those who had heard him expound at length before. "How could you do that?? Bad enough that I have to be Helena's son, but now I have to also be related to that pompous prig of a Greco-Russian noble wannabe?" "Don't get your panties in a wad, son," Tim counseled. "Things could have been worse." "Worse?? Worse than being the son of the mother from hell? Worse than being a Cassadine by blood?" "Hell yes," Tim told him, frankly. "I could have left you with her and let Mikkos kill you, but I got you away from that nutcase family so you could have a reasonably normal life." "Normal? You call what we got normal?" "It's better than what Stefan got-yeah, I know all about him. He's so anal that..." Luke grinned in spite of himself. "He is, isn't he?? Just like a Cassadine-got to try to control everything and everybody." "But not this time," Tim promised. "This time the Spencers will have the upper hand." Lucky watched. He was not amused. Nik watched Lucky. He was concerned. "You're going to be staying with Uncle Sean and Aunt Tiffany," Frisco told his daughters when they asked where their mother was. He was careful not to answer them directly. "But where is Mommy?" Maxie asked, impatiently. "She had some business to take care of," Frisco answered. "And I'm going to go help her while you get to play with the Donely children." "Can Jillian come over?" "I think that can be arranged," Frisco nodded. He'd promise them anything to keep them happy at this point. Steering them clear of the morning paper, Frisco made a mental note to drag out every child's movie that he could find to make sure that they didn't hear any news that would mention that their mother was missing. "Now, come along." Down the street a ways, Jamie and Jerry were busily bundling unconscious photographers and reporters into their cars. The cousins exchanged knowing glances as they saw Frisco hurry his girls out of the brownstone and into a waiting car. Their job here was done. Now, the real work began. Where was Felicia? Felicia closed her eyes and tried to wake up. Only in her worst nightmare could she be tied to a chair while Ryan Chamberlain, a dead man, smiled at her. "Open your eyes, Felicia," Ryan suggested. "It's really me!" He laughed, gleefully, madly. "Now, you know that I'm not dead-not that escaping that carnival fire was a complete piece of cake, but one must always plan for the unexpected. Trapdoors come in handy. Surely you don't think that I'd stayed there without a contingency plan, do you?" He laughed again. "But, did the authorities consider that? Of course not. They saw what they wanted to see, as usual. Predictable." Felicia looked at him, watched as he smiled down at her. She knew that she should be scared, but maybe this was just some sick acceptance of an inevitability. Maybe she was on emotional overload. Maybe... "What? You aren't going to scream?" Ryan smiled. "I'm sorry that I had to tie you up, but I can't help but remember that time in the cabin when you tried to kill me." "Too bad you didn't die then." "It wasn't for your lack of trying," Ryan told her. "And, to be honest, I have to admire that in a woman. Perseverance is a beautiful thing." "What do you want with me?" Ryan shook his head. "You have to ask? Filly, I've waited for you to come to your senses and realize that we belong together. You, me, together at last." "In your dreams." "There, too. But, I know that you'll take a little more convincing, and this time, I'll succeed." "Not." "Oh, yeah. That was a part of the deal. I do a job for a friend, and he'll do a job for me." Ryan smiled again. "I kept my end of the bargain. That blonde tramp is dead. Everybody will just assume that the Grim Reaper got you, too. You disappear, and then we live happily ever after." A whimper brought Felicia back to the real problem of the other woman still alive in the room. "What about her?" Ryan grinned broadly. "Considering what was revealed this evening at the Outback, I'd guess that she'll turn out to be important to someone who is important to me."