The ending is a little wonky because I ran out of time. Written in 23 minutes.

Stefanie Webber was going to see her father whether he—or her mother—liked it or not. For her entire life, they’d waited for him. Waited for him to call, waited for him to visit, waited for him to leave, to go back to the city where they were, for some reason, never allowed to visit. Oh sure, her mother had always told her that one day Stef would understand. Love was complicated.

But she was fourteen now and really tired of hearing she’d understand when she was the older. As her oldest brother had always told her, that was just some shit adults told you to get you off their back. Well, Stef was done waiting for answers from her mother, and since her father wasn’t expected to come back to San Diego until her birthday in July, showing up on his doorstep in April might shock him enough to explain why the hell he lived somewhere else if he loved her mother so damn much.

Her mother didn’t often let Stefanie out of her sight overnight—her brothers told her that was mostly their fault—Jake had apparently been kidnapped twice as a kid and Cameron had never met a curfew in high school he hadn’t broken. But every once in a while, she could convince her mom to let her sleep over Trisha’s house, and this time—she’d managed to convince Trish to cover for her at least until Saturday morning.

Because by then she’d be in Port Charles and would have confronted her father about never being around and she wouldn’t need a cover story anymore.

Of course all of that had seemed like a great idea until her layover in Chicago had screwed everything else. Her connecting flight had been cancelled and they couldn’t get her on a new one until the next morning. Which meant she’d be in the air right about the time she was supposed to be home from Trisha’s house.

It couldn’t be helped, Stef told herself, as she got into the taxi that would take her from the airport to her father’s penthouse — his address had been ridiculous easy to find. She’d found it on his driver’s license three years ago.

She turned on her phone…just to see if she’d gotten away with it so far and found that she had four missed calls and three texts—as well as a text from her oldest brother, Cameron. She wrinkled her nose, weighed her bets, and called Cameron.

“Stef, Mom is flipping out. You turned off your location on your phone—”

“Hello to you, too, Cam,” Stef said with a roll of her eyes as the taxi turned towards the downtown area with its taller buildings. “So she doesn’t know where I am yet?”

“She doesn’t, but only because I didn’t tell her you’ve been asking questions about Dad again.” Cameron waited a moment. “What the hell, Stef—are you just going to show up on his doorstep?”

“That’s the general idea. Don’t you think it’s strange we’ve never been allowed to come to see him? He has family here. I know he does. Why don’t we get to know him?”

“This isn’t the way to figure it out—”

“Sorry, Cam. The taxi is dropping me at his apartment building now. You can tell Mom all you want. It’s not going to stop me.”

Fifteen flights above, Jason Morgan was having a terrible morning. It hadn’t started that way, but the people in his life always knew how to screw things up. He leaned back against his pool table and listened to his third visitor of the day throw the second tantrum she’d had that week. His first two visitors were still there, listening and throwing in their advice. Like always.

The knock on his door made him grimace. He could only imagine who was here this time. He walked away from the trio in his living room and pulled the door open.

“Dad?” His daughter blinked up at him with her mother’s blue eyes, and shoved her dark hair out of her eyes. “Um. Hi.”

“Dad?” one of the women behind him demanded. “What the hell—”

Jason scowled and turned back. “Sam—”

“Wait, a second—” the other woman said. She strode forward to get a better look at Stefanie who shrunk back from both of them. “Who the hell—”

“Dad?” Stefanie repeated, more hesitantly now, taking a step back. “What’s going on?”

“Stefanie—” He sighed, dipped his head, then took her by the elbow and led her into the penthouse living room. “Stefanie, this is Sonny and Carly Corinthos. And that’s Sam.”

“Sam,” Stefanie repeated, flicking a glance at her father, as if questioning why Sam didn’t have a last name.

“Sam Morgan, his wife,” Sam snapped. Stefanie paled as Jason shot her a dark look.

“Ex-wife,” Jason growled. “For sixteen years. Don’t start, Sam.” He looked back at Stefanie with her wide eyes, then sighed. “This is Stefanie Webber. My daughter.”

“Webber?” Carly screeched as Sonny smirked and Sam scowled.

“You wanted to know the reason I never came to live in San Diego?” Jason asked with a sigh. “Because they would have followed me.”

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