Post by Hellokitty on Aug 19, 2006 8:50:47 GMT -5
Falling Book 2: Finding Marlena – Chapter 7
Back and forth the small boat rocked as the tide ebbed and flowed in and out of the deserted cove. For the past two hours had John sat beside Marlena on her makeshift cot on the well-worn floor keeping a lookout. Dawn was still a couple of hours away and there wasn’t enough light to safely navigate the small island. Squinting, John peered over the gunwale of the boat, trying to figure out where the safest place to bring the boat to shore was. They were surrounded by rocky cliffs, some 200 feet or higher and a rich lush canopy of trees. There was a small beach, but John couldn’t tell from where he was sitting if an underwater reef was lying silently below the surface waiting to claim yet another boat. It was better to take their time and approach the island in daylight.
Exhausted from the long journey, John gently picked up Marlena’s hand and held it to his forehead and closed his eyes. He wanted nothing more than to go below deck and grab a nap on the bunk but didn’t have that luxury. Every waking thought was consumed by millions of questions that he didn’t have the answer to or the faintest idea where to start looking.
Had they been followed and the nightmare was about to start? Or were his own quick thinking and Marlena’s surprising skills as a seafaring sailor enough? He hoped to God they were. All he needed, all they needed, was a couple days of rest and time to rethink their plan of where they would go, knowing that it was too risky to rely on the ISA for help.
“25, 68, 99,” Marlena mumbled in her sleep. John immediately opened his eyes and bent down closer to her, all the while holding her hand to his forehead. “25, 68, 99….25, 68, 99…..25, 68, 99.” Quickly committing the numbers to memory, John let go of her hand and pulled the wool blanket up to her chin, wishing for once that she would have an uninterrupted nights sleep. Almost every night she seemed to wake up from some terror of her past.
“25, 68, 99,” Marlena mumbled again. John softly stroked her cheek. “25, 68, 99….25, 68, 99…..25, 68, 99.” What did the numbers mean, if they meant anything at all? He knew it had something to do with Channing Owens, that much Marlena had told him earlier when she remembered the number 25. John had so many questions about Channing Owens and his brother Maxwell Owens. What was the connection to the Dimera family beyond drugs and crime?
“Can’t tell….promised that I wouldn’t tell,” Marlena whispered out loud.
“Marlena, what’s inside of you that has you so frightened,” John said softly to her, knowing that she couldn’t hear him. “Why won’t you let me in?”
“I won’t tell anyone, please let me go,” she begged out in her sleep. John watched helplessly as she started crying in her sleep. “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to do it…I didn’t…please let me go,” she cried out in her sleep, rolling on her side into a fetal position. John watched as she brought her knees up to her chest and held onto them tightly. In the glow on the moonlight he could see deep gashes on her arms, gashes that looked like someone had purposely dug their fingernails into her arms. He felt the pain of her injury deep in his gut. All this time she had to be hurting and yet never said anything. The question was where did the gashes come from? Did she do it to herself?
“Doc, its me John,” he said tenderly as took her into his arms, afraid to wake her up for what information her subconscious might unknowingly divulge.
“John…I love John,” Marlena whispered as she smiled. “I don’t want to hurt John, he’s my savior…can’t let him leave me.”
“Doc, why won’t you let me in? Why can’t you let me in…don’t you know by now how much I love you and will always love you regardless? There’s nothing that you could tell me that would ever change how I feel about you,” John whispered in frustration and desperation to Marlena, at a loss as to how to really help her. “Give me a chance.”
“You weren’t there for me,” Marlena whispered in response to John’s request. “You didn’t care….you say that you do, but I know that you really don’t,” she called out in a little more louder and far more demanding tone. She was trying to tell John how she felt but he wasn’t listening. He stood silently before her with his arms crossed over his chest, his mouth moving inaudibly. Her father stood quietly in the corner watching her.
“No man will ever love you or want you,” he told her cruelly, taunting her. His eyes were as black as coal in the shadows of her mind.
“Shut up…I’m trying to talk to John,” she angrily said as she turned to look at him, growing impatient with her father and his intrusion. She looked up to John, but he had turned his back to her, unwilling to hear what she was trying to tell him.
“Don’t you tell me to shut up…you’re a loser Marlena….a loser. You always have been and always will be.”
“John doesn’t think I am…he loves me….right John?” She asked as she approached him. “Right John?”
“What do you dream about that you can’t share with me Doc?” John asked Marlena as he watched her thrashing about and talking to an unknown force in her dreams. Was she dreaming about him? Channing? Mason or Alex? Her father?
“He doesn’t love you…you repulse him…you repulse everyone…”
“That’s not true…it’s not…he said no secrets…if I tell him everything, he’ll understand.”
“He’s a man…no one wants used up goods….face it….you’re a mess…less than desirable….”
“No…John loves me…he loves me…he told me he loves me….John, where did you go?” Marlena panicked as she looked around and couldn’t see him.
“You’re still a damn fool Julie,” Channing told her as he stepped out of the shadows into the light. “Still as sexy as hell….wouldn’t mind having me some.” She felt his hot breath on her neck as he approached her and took her into his arms. She struggled out of his grasp and leaned up against the wall.
“If your John Black loves you so much, why was he never there for you when you needed him?” her father asked.
“Yeah, Julie…why?” Channing reiterated as he approached her once again.
“He didn’t know…he didn’t,” Marlena cried out as she tried to escape the hands of the men as they tried to hold onto her.
“He knew…he just didn’t want to deal with you or another one of your situations,” her father said to her as he gently ran his fingers along her jawbone. She instinctively closed her eyes and tried to not to react as the felt the bile slowly rise up her esophagus.
“That’s not true,” she cried out as the tears of fear that she tried to hold inside came to the surface. “He told me before that he didn’t know, that he was sorry,” she told her father thinking back to when she told John about how she had been attacked years ago and he dismissed her.
“So he says…He’s a man Julie, ” Channing said callously as he approached her and grabbed her chin holding her head where she had to look at him. “That’s right Jules, he only wants one thing.”
“No….that’s not true…he loves me,” she empathetically said, trying to act braver than she felt. Struggling out of Channing’s grasp, she ran, not knowing where she was going.
“He loves being inside of you, but that’s about the only part of you that he loves,” her father said as he grabbed her from behind and held her tightly to him.
“Let me go,” Marlena demanded as she struggled to move back and out of his grasp. She felt the pain in her bare shoulders as his fingernails dug into her skin. The memory of her being held down against her will and being violated in the parking garage bathroom permeated her mind.
“No…Stop it…Stop it….Stop it,” she yelled at Channing and her father as she grabbed her head and tried to stop the immense pain she felt deep in her soul.
“I love it when you beg,” Channing taunted her.
“Stop….I don’t want to remember…I don’t,” she cried as she struggled out of Channing’s grasp.
“Don’t want to remember what a freak you are and all the things you’ve done including murdering me in cold blood, murdering your father and murdering Rafael Torres?”
“I don’t want to remember….It’s too painful…John wouldn’t understand,” she cried out loud. “I had to do it…I had no choice…it was the only way to end things.”
“Marlena, wake up,” John said as he gently shook her, concerned about her dream. She was trashing about and crying out in pain. As much as he wanted to know about her hidden past, it wasn’t worth the pain and mental anguish she appeared to be going through.
“Come on Jules…remember the good times we had.”
“You sick fuck….I was twelve….twelve fucking years old…what choice did I have?” she screamed at him, then cowered when she saw the look in his eyes. “Don’t you touch me.”
“What are you going to do? Kill me again?” Channing maniacally laughed. “Julie, ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?”
“Stop,” she screamed. “STOP.” One memory after another of her past returned with surprising clarity. She saw and experienced things long since forgotten or repressed.
“Shut up bitch,” the stranger said as he pushed her down on the tile floor. She watched through half closed terrified eyes as he lowered his pants and rolled the condom carefully down the length of his shaft. Crawling on top of her ripped her underwear off and spread her legs wide. She tried to move back from away him, not wanting to go though with it, not in this place. “No…No,” she begged, hoping that he would see her fear and stop. “No.”
“STOP,” she screamed at Channing once again as he stood before her callously laughing. She saw and felt the stranger as he grabbed her hands and held them tightly over her head as he roughly entered her in one move. “Stop…please stop…you’re hurting me,” she sobbed. His eyes were demonic as he moved in and out of her at a quickening pace. “You’re a crazy bitch,” the stranger laughed at her as he continued to pump into her. Marlena tried to move her hands, but he held them firmly above her head. “Please stop,” she begged the man. The physical pain was tolerable, the emotional pain unbearable. Where was John? “Shut the fuck up before I kill you,” he yelled. He lowered his head and tried to kiss her. Marlena felt the taste of bourbon on his breath as his tongue entered her mouth. The mixture of the blood from the cut on her lip when he’d hit her, the bourbon and the salt from her tears created a unique combination. She struggled against him, trying to stop the assault, trying to stop the pain, but her was too big and strong for her. Giving up, she layed there on the floor and sobbed, allowing the stranger to violate her. With each thrust she felt her hair being pulled as he moved her body back and forth against the dirty tile floor. She tried to imagine herself in another place, far away, a place where she was safe and loved. Her mind tried to find that place, but couldn’t. She didn’t feel safe and loved. Things with John were so fractured; they were barely on speaking terms, strangers living in the same house. They never talked anymore, only argued. With a final push and a grunt the stranger came and then pulled out of Marlena and stood up leaving her on the floor. “You mention this to anyone and I’ll kill you…Alex was right….you are crazy,” the stranger said as he quickly buttoned his pants and adjusted his red checked flannel button down shirt.
“STOP…Please make it stop Channing,” she begged him, thinking that he was controlling her memories. She needed John, she wanted John.
“John,” she called out. “I need you John…I can’t do this by myself.”
“Doc,” John said as he held her. “I’m here…I’ve always been here and always will be here for you.”
“John is here for me,” she told Channing.
“No he’s not…You’re crazy….have to be with all the things you’ve done.”
“He’s here,” she said with a fierce determination.
“Do you see him anywhere around here?” her father asked as he once again stepped out of the shadows.
“I feel him….he’s inside me.”
“Crazy Julie, such a little foolie,” Channing taunted her as he bent his head down and kissed her neck.
“Get away from me now,” she said as she struggled against him. “You’re dead…you’re not really here.”
“Am I?”
******************************
“President Owens, there’s a man here to see you,” the young aide nervously said into the intercom. Per White House office protocol only the president’s secretary and secret service were allowed to approach the inner sanctum of the oval office without being announced on the intercom first.
“I don’t have any appointments today Mandy,” he said coldly, pissed that he had been interrupted yet another time today but the idiotic aide.
“Sir, I apologize… but, the man said that you would want to see him.” After three years of working for Maxwell Owens, Mandy was still as terrified of him as the first day she met him. There was a coldness behind his cheerful family man façade that chilled her to the bone.
“Very well…who is it?” he barked into the phone.
“He won’t tell me his name….but he’s been cleared already,” she added hoping that this would make her interruption somewhat better.
“What?” President Owens wondered how in this day and age with concerns over national security and nations harboring terrorists and weapons of mass destruction how one man could be in the White House wanting to see him and didn’t have to give a name. Only few men in the world had that kind of power.
“Sir, I’m sorry but that’s all I know.”
“Thank you Mandy, give me five minutes and then show him in,” Maxwell Owens said as he slowly rose from his black leather chair and walked to the back of the office where a secret door recessed into the wall kept all the recording equipment. Secret Service demanded that all visitors in the Oval Office be taped for security reasons.
Pushing the off button on the cameras and recorders and shutting the door behind him, Maxwell Owens went back to this desk and sat down. Taking his handkerchief out of his pocket, he wiped the line of sweat that was forming on his brow. A knock on the door interrupted him. Quickly he placed the handkerchief back into this pants pocket. “Come in.”
“Owens, we have a lot to talk about,” the man said with authority as he entered the Oval Office and took a seat. “Don’t bother to waste your time by standing up and properly greeting me….It’s not needed or wanted.” Maxwell Owens watched with fascination as the man took something out of his pocket and looked around the room. “Lighter?” he asked.
“Um….there’s no smoking in the White House…A rule of my wife,” he joked. He’d heard stories about this man for the past forty years but had never seen him in the flesh.
“Lighter?” the man asked again, as he took his Cohiba cigar.
Grabbing a lighter out his desk drawer he tentatively got up from his desk and approached the man, nervously handing it to him.
“Ah President Owens….have a seat,” the man said, pausing as he took the lighter and lit his cigar. “You and I have a lot to talk about…a lot,” the man said as he patted the seat beside him. Handing a folder to the President, he watched as the President sat down on the couch and opened the folder.
The man watched with a level of satisfaction he hadn’t experienced in years as the color drained from the son of a bitch’s face.
“Where’d you get this?” he asked the man.
“There is nothing that I cannot get…you of all people should know that by now.”
“What do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
“I can’t give that to you….Justice must be served.”
“Justice will not be served, not in this case,” the man said as he slammed his fist down on the arm of the red floral print couch.
“She’s just a woman…”
“She’s not just a woman…she’s my brother’s child,” Stefano Dimera yelled at Maxwell Owens. “She’s my niece…I don’t care that you’re the President…you will call off the NSA, ISA, Secret Service, FBI and any other goon you have looking for her….and you will do it now.”
“What if I don’t?”
“You don’t want to find out…ask your associates what happens to those who cross me or displease me.”
“Are you threatening me.”
“Yes. Oh and Mr. Owens….you have twenty four hours to return Eric Brady to Salem,” Stefano said as he calmly rose from the seat and walked to the door of the Oval Office. “Don’t think that this is the last you will see of me either…there is the matter of my Marlena and what you and your brother did to her….justice will be served, I promise you that.”
Just as quickly as he entered the White House he left with an air of mystery and the smell of Cuban cigars.
Back and forth the small boat rocked as the tide ebbed and flowed in and out of the deserted cove. For the past two hours had John sat beside Marlena on her makeshift cot on the well-worn floor keeping a lookout. Dawn was still a couple of hours away and there wasn’t enough light to safely navigate the small island. Squinting, John peered over the gunwale of the boat, trying to figure out where the safest place to bring the boat to shore was. They were surrounded by rocky cliffs, some 200 feet or higher and a rich lush canopy of trees. There was a small beach, but John couldn’t tell from where he was sitting if an underwater reef was lying silently below the surface waiting to claim yet another boat. It was better to take their time and approach the island in daylight.
Exhausted from the long journey, John gently picked up Marlena’s hand and held it to his forehead and closed his eyes. He wanted nothing more than to go below deck and grab a nap on the bunk but didn’t have that luxury. Every waking thought was consumed by millions of questions that he didn’t have the answer to or the faintest idea where to start looking.
Had they been followed and the nightmare was about to start? Or were his own quick thinking and Marlena’s surprising skills as a seafaring sailor enough? He hoped to God they were. All he needed, all they needed, was a couple days of rest and time to rethink their plan of where they would go, knowing that it was too risky to rely on the ISA for help.
“25, 68, 99,” Marlena mumbled in her sleep. John immediately opened his eyes and bent down closer to her, all the while holding her hand to his forehead. “25, 68, 99….25, 68, 99…..25, 68, 99.” Quickly committing the numbers to memory, John let go of her hand and pulled the wool blanket up to her chin, wishing for once that she would have an uninterrupted nights sleep. Almost every night she seemed to wake up from some terror of her past.
“25, 68, 99,” Marlena mumbled again. John softly stroked her cheek. “25, 68, 99….25, 68, 99…..25, 68, 99.” What did the numbers mean, if they meant anything at all? He knew it had something to do with Channing Owens, that much Marlena had told him earlier when she remembered the number 25. John had so many questions about Channing Owens and his brother Maxwell Owens. What was the connection to the Dimera family beyond drugs and crime?
“Can’t tell….promised that I wouldn’t tell,” Marlena whispered out loud.
“Marlena, what’s inside of you that has you so frightened,” John said softly to her, knowing that she couldn’t hear him. “Why won’t you let me in?”
“I won’t tell anyone, please let me go,” she begged out in her sleep. John watched helplessly as she started crying in her sleep. “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to do it…I didn’t…please let me go,” she cried out in her sleep, rolling on her side into a fetal position. John watched as she brought her knees up to her chest and held onto them tightly. In the glow on the moonlight he could see deep gashes on her arms, gashes that looked like someone had purposely dug their fingernails into her arms. He felt the pain of her injury deep in his gut. All this time she had to be hurting and yet never said anything. The question was where did the gashes come from? Did she do it to herself?
“Doc, its me John,” he said tenderly as took her into his arms, afraid to wake her up for what information her subconscious might unknowingly divulge.
“John…I love John,” Marlena whispered as she smiled. “I don’t want to hurt John, he’s my savior…can’t let him leave me.”
“Doc, why won’t you let me in? Why can’t you let me in…don’t you know by now how much I love you and will always love you regardless? There’s nothing that you could tell me that would ever change how I feel about you,” John whispered in frustration and desperation to Marlena, at a loss as to how to really help her. “Give me a chance.”
“You weren’t there for me,” Marlena whispered in response to John’s request. “You didn’t care….you say that you do, but I know that you really don’t,” she called out in a little more louder and far more demanding tone. She was trying to tell John how she felt but he wasn’t listening. He stood silently before her with his arms crossed over his chest, his mouth moving inaudibly. Her father stood quietly in the corner watching her.
“No man will ever love you or want you,” he told her cruelly, taunting her. His eyes were as black as coal in the shadows of her mind.
“Shut up…I’m trying to talk to John,” she angrily said as she turned to look at him, growing impatient with her father and his intrusion. She looked up to John, but he had turned his back to her, unwilling to hear what she was trying to tell him.
“Don’t you tell me to shut up…you’re a loser Marlena….a loser. You always have been and always will be.”
“John doesn’t think I am…he loves me….right John?” She asked as she approached him. “Right John?”
“What do you dream about that you can’t share with me Doc?” John asked Marlena as he watched her thrashing about and talking to an unknown force in her dreams. Was she dreaming about him? Channing? Mason or Alex? Her father?
“He doesn’t love you…you repulse him…you repulse everyone…”
“That’s not true…it’s not…he said no secrets…if I tell him everything, he’ll understand.”
“He’s a man…no one wants used up goods….face it….you’re a mess…less than desirable….”
“No…John loves me…he loves me…he told me he loves me….John, where did you go?” Marlena panicked as she looked around and couldn’t see him.
“You’re still a damn fool Julie,” Channing told her as he stepped out of the shadows into the light. “Still as sexy as hell….wouldn’t mind having me some.” She felt his hot breath on her neck as he approached her and took her into his arms. She struggled out of his grasp and leaned up against the wall.
“If your John Black loves you so much, why was he never there for you when you needed him?” her father asked.
“Yeah, Julie…why?” Channing reiterated as he approached her once again.
“He didn’t know…he didn’t,” Marlena cried out as she tried to escape the hands of the men as they tried to hold onto her.
“He knew…he just didn’t want to deal with you or another one of your situations,” her father said to her as he gently ran his fingers along her jawbone. She instinctively closed her eyes and tried to not to react as the felt the bile slowly rise up her esophagus.
“That’s not true,” she cried out as the tears of fear that she tried to hold inside came to the surface. “He told me before that he didn’t know, that he was sorry,” she told her father thinking back to when she told John about how she had been attacked years ago and he dismissed her.
“So he says…He’s a man Julie, ” Channing said callously as he approached her and grabbed her chin holding her head where she had to look at him. “That’s right Jules, he only wants one thing.”
“No….that’s not true…he loves me,” she empathetically said, trying to act braver than she felt. Struggling out of Channing’s grasp, she ran, not knowing where she was going.
“He loves being inside of you, but that’s about the only part of you that he loves,” her father said as he grabbed her from behind and held her tightly to him.
“Let me go,” Marlena demanded as she struggled to move back and out of his grasp. She felt the pain in her bare shoulders as his fingernails dug into her skin. The memory of her being held down against her will and being violated in the parking garage bathroom permeated her mind.
“No…Stop it…Stop it….Stop it,” she yelled at Channing and her father as she grabbed her head and tried to stop the immense pain she felt deep in her soul.
“I love it when you beg,” Channing taunted her.
“Stop….I don’t want to remember…I don’t,” she cried as she struggled out of Channing’s grasp.
“Don’t want to remember what a freak you are and all the things you’ve done including murdering me in cold blood, murdering your father and murdering Rafael Torres?”
“I don’t want to remember….It’s too painful…John wouldn’t understand,” she cried out loud. “I had to do it…I had no choice…it was the only way to end things.”
“Marlena, wake up,” John said as he gently shook her, concerned about her dream. She was trashing about and crying out in pain. As much as he wanted to know about her hidden past, it wasn’t worth the pain and mental anguish she appeared to be going through.
“Come on Jules…remember the good times we had.”
“You sick fuck….I was twelve….twelve fucking years old…what choice did I have?” she screamed at him, then cowered when she saw the look in his eyes. “Don’t you touch me.”
“What are you going to do? Kill me again?” Channing maniacally laughed. “Julie, ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?”
“Stop,” she screamed. “STOP.” One memory after another of her past returned with surprising clarity. She saw and experienced things long since forgotten or repressed.
“Shut up bitch,” the stranger said as he pushed her down on the tile floor. She watched through half closed terrified eyes as he lowered his pants and rolled the condom carefully down the length of his shaft. Crawling on top of her ripped her underwear off and spread her legs wide. She tried to move back from away him, not wanting to go though with it, not in this place. “No…No,” she begged, hoping that he would see her fear and stop. “No.”
“STOP,” she screamed at Channing once again as he stood before her callously laughing. She saw and felt the stranger as he grabbed her hands and held them tightly over her head as he roughly entered her in one move. “Stop…please stop…you’re hurting me,” she sobbed. His eyes were demonic as he moved in and out of her at a quickening pace. “You’re a crazy bitch,” the stranger laughed at her as he continued to pump into her. Marlena tried to move her hands, but he held them firmly above her head. “Please stop,” she begged the man. The physical pain was tolerable, the emotional pain unbearable. Where was John? “Shut the fuck up before I kill you,” he yelled. He lowered his head and tried to kiss her. Marlena felt the taste of bourbon on his breath as his tongue entered her mouth. The mixture of the blood from the cut on her lip when he’d hit her, the bourbon and the salt from her tears created a unique combination. She struggled against him, trying to stop the assault, trying to stop the pain, but her was too big and strong for her. Giving up, she layed there on the floor and sobbed, allowing the stranger to violate her. With each thrust she felt her hair being pulled as he moved her body back and forth against the dirty tile floor. She tried to imagine herself in another place, far away, a place where she was safe and loved. Her mind tried to find that place, but couldn’t. She didn’t feel safe and loved. Things with John were so fractured; they were barely on speaking terms, strangers living in the same house. They never talked anymore, only argued. With a final push and a grunt the stranger came and then pulled out of Marlena and stood up leaving her on the floor. “You mention this to anyone and I’ll kill you…Alex was right….you are crazy,” the stranger said as he quickly buttoned his pants and adjusted his red checked flannel button down shirt.
“STOP…Please make it stop Channing,” she begged him, thinking that he was controlling her memories. She needed John, she wanted John.
“John,” she called out. “I need you John…I can’t do this by myself.”
“Doc,” John said as he held her. “I’m here…I’ve always been here and always will be here for you.”
“John is here for me,” she told Channing.
“No he’s not…You’re crazy….have to be with all the things you’ve done.”
“He’s here,” she said with a fierce determination.
“Do you see him anywhere around here?” her father asked as he once again stepped out of the shadows.
“I feel him….he’s inside me.”
“Crazy Julie, such a little foolie,” Channing taunted her as he bent his head down and kissed her neck.
“Get away from me now,” she said as she struggled against him. “You’re dead…you’re not really here.”
“Am I?”
******************************
“President Owens, there’s a man here to see you,” the young aide nervously said into the intercom. Per White House office protocol only the president’s secretary and secret service were allowed to approach the inner sanctum of the oval office without being announced on the intercom first.
“I don’t have any appointments today Mandy,” he said coldly, pissed that he had been interrupted yet another time today but the idiotic aide.
“Sir, I apologize… but, the man said that you would want to see him.” After three years of working for Maxwell Owens, Mandy was still as terrified of him as the first day she met him. There was a coldness behind his cheerful family man façade that chilled her to the bone.
“Very well…who is it?” he barked into the phone.
“He won’t tell me his name….but he’s been cleared already,” she added hoping that this would make her interruption somewhat better.
“What?” President Owens wondered how in this day and age with concerns over national security and nations harboring terrorists and weapons of mass destruction how one man could be in the White House wanting to see him and didn’t have to give a name. Only few men in the world had that kind of power.
“Sir, I’m sorry but that’s all I know.”
“Thank you Mandy, give me five minutes and then show him in,” Maxwell Owens said as he slowly rose from his black leather chair and walked to the back of the office where a secret door recessed into the wall kept all the recording equipment. Secret Service demanded that all visitors in the Oval Office be taped for security reasons.
Pushing the off button on the cameras and recorders and shutting the door behind him, Maxwell Owens went back to this desk and sat down. Taking his handkerchief out of his pocket, he wiped the line of sweat that was forming on his brow. A knock on the door interrupted him. Quickly he placed the handkerchief back into this pants pocket. “Come in.”
“Owens, we have a lot to talk about,” the man said with authority as he entered the Oval Office and took a seat. “Don’t bother to waste your time by standing up and properly greeting me….It’s not needed or wanted.” Maxwell Owens watched with fascination as the man took something out of his pocket and looked around the room. “Lighter?” he asked.
“Um….there’s no smoking in the White House…A rule of my wife,” he joked. He’d heard stories about this man for the past forty years but had never seen him in the flesh.
“Lighter?” the man asked again, as he took his Cohiba cigar.
Grabbing a lighter out his desk drawer he tentatively got up from his desk and approached the man, nervously handing it to him.
“Ah President Owens….have a seat,” the man said, pausing as he took the lighter and lit his cigar. “You and I have a lot to talk about…a lot,” the man said as he patted the seat beside him. Handing a folder to the President, he watched as the President sat down on the couch and opened the folder.
The man watched with a level of satisfaction he hadn’t experienced in years as the color drained from the son of a bitch’s face.
“Where’d you get this?” he asked the man.
“There is nothing that I cannot get…you of all people should know that by now.”
“What do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
“I can’t give that to you….Justice must be served.”
“Justice will not be served, not in this case,” the man said as he slammed his fist down on the arm of the red floral print couch.
“She’s just a woman…”
“She’s not just a woman…she’s my brother’s child,” Stefano Dimera yelled at Maxwell Owens. “She’s my niece…I don’t care that you’re the President…you will call off the NSA, ISA, Secret Service, FBI and any other goon you have looking for her….and you will do it now.”
“What if I don’t?”
“You don’t want to find out…ask your associates what happens to those who cross me or displease me.”
“Are you threatening me.”
“Yes. Oh and Mr. Owens….you have twenty four hours to return Eric Brady to Salem,” Stefano said as he calmly rose from the seat and walked to the door of the Oval Office. “Don’t think that this is the last you will see of me either…there is the matter of my Marlena and what you and your brother did to her….justice will be served, I promise you that.”
Just as quickly as he entered the White House he left with an air of mystery and the smell of Cuban cigars.