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“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Laura demanded as she watched Elizabeth sit down on the sofa, wincing slightly as the stitches in her side tugged. “You’ve only been home for three days—”

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Jason before he took the boys over to Carly’s house,” Elizabeth said. “I need to know what happened to Nikolas. If he’s alive and in hiding or if he’s—” She pressed her lips together. “We need answers, Laura. You need them, Spencer does—and so does Jake. He remembers his uncle as someone who promisd he’d bring him home. Nikolas made sure my little boy came home. I need to do that for him.”

“You don’t owe me—”

“This isn’t about that,” Elizabeth said, reaching forward to touch Laura’s hand. “This isn’t about what happened with Lucky. This is about me. I don’t just want answers about Nikolas. I want—” She hesitated. “I want revenge.”

“That’s a tricky path to tread,” Laura cautioned. “I know—I’ve gone down it myself.”

“Losing my little boy broke me into pieces,” Elizabeth said. “It made me someone else. I nearly lost my sanity and my children. My life.” Restless, she stood up and went over to the mantel where she’d had a photo of Jake at his last Christmas for the last few years. She’d replaced with a new photo—one of her three boys with Jake at the center.

“Helena doesn’t get to just walk away from this. Neither does any other Cassadine who helped it.” Elizabeth turned back to Laura. “I shot Stavros in the head, so at least there’s something. Robin said Stavros had taken my son and wanted to raise him as his own. I stopped that. But it’s not enough. They always come back, Laura. They’ve spent decades torturing all of us. I can’t bear to think that Spencer and Cameron might have to face another generation some day. It has to stop with us.”

“I wish I’d seen it,” Laura murmured. “Jason said there was brain matter, and maybe I shouldn’t take enjoyment from that, but I do.” She met Elizabeth’s eyes. “What does Jason think?”

“Jason wants Cassadine blood more than I do. He doesn’t really want me involved, but I think that’s because I’m not a hundred percent yet,” she admitted. “But I will be.”

“Before all of this started—” Laura tilted her head to the side. “You and I had a conversation about Jason. About your relationship with him. I wondered if maybe things had changed.”

“That feels like so long ago.” Elizabeth exhaled slowly. “When we got to Greece, Jason sat back and let you and I take charge. Did you notice that?”

“I did.”

“Something changed when we found out there was a chance Jake was alive. Not just—” Elizabeth chewed on her bottom lip. “I don’t know how to explain it. It just—it changed me. I looked at Jason, and I saw what he was doing here. He asked to adopt Cameron, Laura. And I—” She paused. “He wants this life with me. I didn’t trust it before, and I can’t tell you why I believe it now. But I do.”

Laura turned at the sound of an SUV pulling into the driveway. “Well, he’s back with Sonny, and I think Robert and Anna are pulling up behind him, so it’s time to find out what we know now that the reports from Greece are in and what’s next.”

The reports from Greece, however, weren’t encouraging.

“No bodies,” Sonny repeated. “I know enough about Cassadines to know that’s a bad sign.”

“No chance we’re looking at incineration?” Robin asked as she looked over the report her father handed her. “I mean, isn’t it possible?”

“They don’t think the fire got hot enough,” Robert said with a shake of his head. “The real problem is that the estate is a labrynth of tunnels and passageways. The main house collapsed on itself, and we’re still not all the way through it.”

“Any sign of Valentin?” Elizabeth asked. “The Cassadine they were waiting on to start whatever Helena had planned?”

“He made it to Mykonos, and as far as the harbor,” Robert responded. “Then disappeared. So he’s in the wind.”

“What do we know about Valentin?” Jason asked. “Spinelli said he couldn’t find much.”

“There isn’t much to find. He’s the illegitimate son of Mikkos — younger than Alexis,” Anna added. “He worked for the WSB for a time—I know, don’t start,” she said when Laura huffed. “But he turned rogue for DVX. Only worked there a few years before the wall fell and they were all out of a job. Rumors that he went KGB—”

“I hate Russians,” Sonny muttered.

“But he’s stayed under the radar, mostly working as a mercenary for hire in Russia and Eastern Europe.”

“What kind of mercenary do they need there?” Patrick asked, furrowing his brow. “I thought mercenaries were like Rambo—”

“Assassin,” Jason said, surprising them all. Robert lifted his brows as Jason ganced up, realizing no one had said anything else. “If he was working for the KGB in Eastern Europe, he probably took care of those journalists a few years ago. The ones in Bosnia? And then the one in Britain?”

“Correct,” Robert said. “WSB intel says Valentin is one of Putin’s best assassins. He specializes in poisons.”

“How did he get hired at the WSB as a Cassadine?” Sonny asked. “Wouldn’t that keep you out?”

“You’d think,” Anna said, “but Victor Cassadine is running our research program. I don’t make the calls,” she added, when Laura stared at her in disbelief. “I’m a field agent. Robert and I don’t do administration.”

“But I don’t remember Valentin being a player in Cassadine schemes,” Elizabeth said. “Nikolas never mentioned him, and I know he wasn’t someone you and Luke worried during Endgame.”

“No, Valentin wasn’t on the radar back then. After what happened to Alexis’s mother, he kept his affairs more quiet,” Laura said. “After Mikkos died, I think Valentin fell through the cracks. Helena wasn’t thinking about him.”

“Then why get involved now?” Sonny wanted to know. “I get that it was a huge reunion, but, uh, Helena never liked Mikkos’s bastards. She’s been half-trying to kill Alexis her whole damn life. Why invite one to the table?”

“If we knew why Valentin was there, we could maybe figure out if he’s a threat. If he’s not—” Robert began.

“He’s a Cassadine,” Jason said tightly. “They all go.”

Anna’s lips thinned as she hesitated. “This isn’t that kind of mission, Jason. I appreciate your anger over what happened to Jake, but if we’re involving you—”

“You can cut me out,” Jason said, locking eyes with the older woman, “but that won’t stop me. The Cassadines came after my family. And if Helena is still breathing, she’ll keep coming. She knows what Elizabeth and her boys mean to Laura. She’ll keep coming through them. She goes. They all go.”

“I agree with him,” Robert said, stunning Anna. “And that’s not from the head office. It’s not revenge, either,” he said before his ex-wife could open her mouth to protest. “The Cassadines are a threat to the world, but Morgan’s right. If Helena has breath left in that body, she’ll come for Laura. And she’ll come for Elizabeth. You made the kill shot on Stavros,” he said as Elizabeth sighed. “I don’t know if she knows that now, but she will. The only body we found was his. And the bullet matched your gun,” Robert told Jason. “I made the report disappear. Officially, none of us were on that island.”

“But Helena has her ways of learning information,” Laura said with a nod. “And even if she doesn’t know Elizabeth fired the shot, she’ll come for Jason through you. It’s not over because we have Jake.”

“Now that we’re all in agreement that the Cassadines need to go,” Sonny said, “anyone got any suggestions for what we do next? Or are we just spinning our wheels?”

“I’m heading back to Greece to start excavation of the estate,” Robert declared. “It might take a few months, but we’ll get to every damn stone of the island. I was hoping Robin might come back with me to look over the plans and tunnels.”

“I want to go, too,” Elizabeth said before Robin could say anything. “I want—” She paused. “I want to see where Jake was living. The cottage wasn’t blown up, was it?” she asked. “There might be something there that Nikolas left for me. Or—”

“Is it a good idea for you to go back into field?” Anna asked. “You’re still recovering—”

“I’m good enough,” she said. “Can I go?”

“Uh,” Robert pursed his lips. “Yeah, I guess. That’s probably a good idea,” he admitted. “If Robin can help us with the intel on her side of the island, you knew Nikolas longer and a bit better. Of course, Laura—” He eyed Jason and Sonny. “Are we bringing the whole gang?”

“Spinelli will want to go to see if there’s some networks he didn’t crack the first time,” Sonny said, “But I’ll stay behind with the kids to keep them from trying that unaccompanied minor crap.”

“I’m going if you are,” Jason told Elizabeth, and she smiled.

“I didn’t expect anything else.”

Later that night, after they’d put the kids to bed and made plans to leave for Greece in a few days, Elizabeth caught Jason watching her as she checked the stitches in her side—they were the dissolving kind and were already starting to heal into her skin.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” he asked, pulling the comforter back.

“Not arguing with me about Greece.” She twisted on the stool at her vanity table. “I know you don’t want me to go.”

“There are times I don’t want to let you out of this room,” Jason admitted. “But you’re right. If Nikolas left anything for anyone to find, it’d be you. It just makes sense.” He paused. “What are we going to tell the boys?”

“The same thing we did today when we sent them to Carly’s,” Elizabeth said. “Cameron knows how dangerous the Cassadines are, and obviously Jake does.” She paused. “I don’t want to leave him,” she said softly. “I’m afraid to let him out of my sight. I woke up in the hospital, and I thought—”

She looked at herself in the mirror. “I thought it was a dream. That I’d hallucinated everything. Like I did when I had pneumonia. Do you remember?”

“I do.” Jason sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s not a dream.”

“No. But every time I go to sleep, I’m terrified this is the night the dream ends. I’ll wake up and my baby is gone again. And we’ll be back to marking holidays without him, and I’ll wrapping gifts he doesn’t ever get to open—” She squeezed her eyes shut as he came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. “Laura told me I had to be careful about going after the Cassadines for revenge. I know she’s right. But I want Helena to pay for every day I woke up without Jake. For every day he had to beg Nikolas to bring him home, and Nikolas didn’t.”

“I know,” Jason said. He drew Elizabeth to her feet. “Because I want her to pay for every tear you cried. For every minute of pain she put Cameron through. But it doesn’t matter if I kill her or if you do. Revenge isn’t going to make it so none of that ever happened.”

“No, it won’t,” Elizabeth said. She lifted her eyes to meet his. “But killing her and every other Cassadine as evil as she is will make it over. We need to finish it, Jason, so that they never have to take up the fight. I don’t want to be like Laura, mourning both my boys because I didn’t do enough. Helena Casasdine and her damn family aren’t going to take one more thing from me.”

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