Chapter 57

Since this story is sort of in the future, the stuff that happened this year, the fire, etc., happened, except they found Lucky after a couple of months and Luke and Laura reunited. I decided to throw it in to keep things interesting. :-)

Laura rolled her eyes. “Don’t start, Luke.”

“No, no, I’ll start if I want to! It’s bad enough I gotta share the same city with him, I ain’t sharing my dinner table as well!”

“Look, Stefan is Nikolas’s father, whether you like it or not, and if he had wanted to accompany Nikolas today, he would have been welcome,” Laura said firmly.

“Keep your enemies closer, right dad?” Lucky asked, unable to resist the opportunity to throw his father’s words back at him.

Luke glared at him. “Go make out with your girlfriend or something!”

Lucky blushed, causing Liz to laugh, which made him blush even more.

“What’s Stefan going to do here anyway? Kill all of us while we eat? I don’t think so!” Laura said, trying to reason with him, knowing it was an impossible task when it came to the Cassidines.

“With Count Vlad, you never know. He’d probably try to freeze the place.”

“Come on, Luke, that was a little uncalled for,” Bobbie warned.

“Sorry, Barbara, but I’m not taking any advice from you when it comes to the Cassidines. In case you forgot, you married the creep once!”

She rolled her eyes. “And I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

Luke chuckled and shook his head. “Oh no, I’ll be using that bit of info for the rest of our lives!”

“Can we please stop bashing my father for once? He’s not even here to defend himself,” Nikolas said, tired of hearing everyone come down on his family.

“And how exactly would he defend himself, Nikolas? The man tried to kill me once!” Lucky said. “Does he have some magic excuse for that?”

“What?” Liz asked, turning to Lucky in shock. “He tried to kill you?”

“It was a computer game... long story,” Lucky muttered, looking back at his brother, who was silently fuming.

“Not to defend him or anything, but there are a lot of people in this town more dangerous than Stefan Cassidine,” Amy said, hoping to change the subject.

“Like who?” Chloe asked, curious to hear about her new home.

“You mean, aside from the obvious?” Mac asked, looking pointedly at Sonny and Jason.

“Oh, give it up Mac. We haven’t killed anyone and you know it!” Sonny said, tired of being the target.

“Not that we can prove, you mean,” Mac muttered.

“Hell, the Quartermaines have probably killed more people than the Cassidines,” Carly said, trying to move the focus away from her husband and Sonny.

“Hey, that’s my family you’re talking about!” Emily shouted, glaring at Carly. “At least they don’t drug people and throw them in laundry carts so they think they’ve fallen off the wagon!”

“No, but they all cheat on each other, lie to each other, do drugs, steal babies, and of course, kill people,” Carly said with a smirk, counting the points off on her fingers.

“At least none of them have had an affair with their mother’s husband!” Emily shot back.

“No, but your mother slept with her nephew!”

“Nephew only by marriage, and she didn’t know that’s who he was at the time!”

“Sorry, Cassidines got you both beat there,” Luke said with a grin. “Nikky here takes the cake by sleeping with Daddy’s fiancee!”

Nikolas glared at Luke. “We’re not talking about the Cassidines now. But if we were, at least we’re not afraid of our servants!”

Emily looked at him. “And we are?”

“One word: Cook,” Nikolas said with a laugh.

“Just a minute, Cook is a delight!” Chloe said, defending the woman that everyone else feared.

Emily was on a roll, and kept the insults flying at Carly. “At least my family doesn’t shoot people in the middle of a courtroom! And none of them have spent time in the nuthouse!”

“Oooh...fine, you want to play dirty? I can play dirty. I didn’t nearly kill my brother while driving drunk, and then let my cousin take the blame!”

“Hey, you should be happy about that one! If Jason hadn’t been in that accident, he would have never given you the time of day, let alone married your sorry butt!”

“Excuse me, but I am in the room here,” Jason said, more amused than he was annoyed.

Ignoring him, they continued with their accusations. “I swear, Lila’s the only sane member of that family!” Carly said. Luke and Felicia exchanged knowing looks, which did not go unnoticed by their spouses.

“Hey, I’m a member of that family too! Are you saying I’m not sane?” Chloe asked, hurt.

“Well, if I remember correctly, you married your cousin once so you could keep your business. My God, your butler has committed more crimes than I have! I guess that goes back to the fearing the servants part, huh?” Carly shouted.

“I can vouch for that one,” Luke chuckled, grinning at Felicia. Both Mac and Laura glared at him.

“How can you say that? Reginald is just loyal to the family,” Emily countered.

Carly laughed. “Loyal? Is that what you weirdos call it? Emily, he poisoned Katherine Bell and locked my uncle and Felicia in a crypt! And Lord knows how many secrets he’s keeping!”

“Locked in a crypt?” Liz asked, her curiosity getting the best of her.

“Let’s not go there, okay?” Mac asked angrily.

“I don’t know, I’d kind of like to hear about it,” Sonny chuckled, happy to have the heat away from him for once.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Felicia said. “We were researching for Lila’s memoirs and he locked us in the family crypt. He thought we were endangering Lila, he was only trying to protect her.”

Laura glared at her. “I still don’t understand why you had to drag Luke into it!”

“I was trying to distract him from his grief while you were off playing house with Stefan!”

Laura didn’t say anything in response, just shot daggers at the woman with her eyes. Seeing that the conversation was about to take a very ugly turn, Tammy decided to try to be the voice of reason. “Look guys, this game of ‘who’s committed more crimes’ is getting silly. Anyway, you can’t compare an entire family to one person!”

Emily grinned. “Okay then, I’ll admit it’s a little unfair. But, if this came down to the Quartermaines versus the Spencers, well, we all know who would win that one!”

Nikolas grinned and squeezed her shoulder. “Oh, the Spencers, definitely!”

Luke glared at him. “You stay out of this, Nikky!”

“Why? What have the Spencers done?” Liz asked naively.

Nikolas started laughing. “Do you want a list? “ Liz just looked at him strangely, then turned to Lucky to see if he was joking. He just shrugged.

“Let’s see, for starters, he killed my uncle! And my grandfather!”

Liz turned to look at Luke for confirmation. He shook his head. “Stavros fell. It wasn’t my fault. Anyway, he was attacking Laura. And Mikkos was trying to freeze the world. I think that’s reason enough to kill him, which I didn’t do either. He fell into the weather machine.”

“Funny how people happen to die accidentally around you, huh? Okay, fine, but you did work for the mob for a while, and you killed Frank Smith! I know that was no accident!”

Luke shrugged. “He deserved it.” Liz felt like she was at a tennis match, looking back and forth between Luke and Nikolas.

“Since when is that an excuse? ‘I’m sorry, your Honor, but he deserved it?’ It’s still murder! What about Katherine? You almost killed her too!”

“No, Natasha and I were aiming for Helena. Katherine just got in the way. Anyway, the Q’s tried to kill her, too, so I’d say the two crimes cancel each other out!”

“Natasha?” Liz asked Lucky. “Nikolas’s aunt, Alexis. Her real name is Natasha.” He explained.

“I thought this was supposed to be Quartermaines against Spencers, not just Luke!” Felicia said, trying to defend her friend. “He’s not the only one in that family!”

“What are you trying to say?” Laura asked angrily, glaring at Felicia.

“Well, for one thing, I know you’ve killed a few people yourself!”

“Only two. One was an accident when I was 12, and the other was self-defense! What about Bobbie? She was a prostitute!”

“Hey!” Tammy yelled from the other end of the table. “What’s wrong with that?”

Bobbie glared at her. “Thanks, Laura.”

“Yeah, was that really necessary?” Jerry asked, trying to defend her.

“Oh, come on, everyone here knows that anyway! But, do they know you faked blindness to get a man to marry you, and faked a pregnancy to get my husband?”

“I thought Luke was her brother!” Liz said in disgust. Lucky laughed and shook his head. “Her first husband, Scott Baldwin.”

“What about trying to buy a black-market baby?” Laura asked, referring to Lucas.

“You know that I didn’t know that at the time! You kept your son secret from your husband for 16 years, and then continued to keep his true paternity a secret! It must run in the family,” she added, looking at Carly, who just glared back at her.

“I only did that to protect him!” Laura shouted.

“How about stealing to feed a gambling addiction?” Nikolas asked, looking at Lucky.

“Oh, that was low, man,” he answered, ignoring the look he was getting from Liz.

“Well, at least the only person in my family who faked their death was Grandfather! Haven’t all of you been presumed dead at one time or another?”

“Not me, but Laura’s been dead twice, so that makes up for it,” Bobbie said with a laugh.

“Whoa, how can you have all been presumed dead?” Chloe asked, becoming very confused.

“Trust me, it’s not that hard,” Luke said with a laugh. Although, we didn’t all do it on purpose.” He looked at Lucky and smiled.

“Then which of you hasn’t been dead?” Chloe asked again.

“I haven’t,” Bobbie said, “and Lulu hasn’t, but she’s still young, give her time.”

“I haven’t,” Carly said. Luke shook his head and laughed. “Actually, Caroline, you have. I told Bobbie that her daughter was dead when I first found out who you really were.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” she said, sitting back in her chair.

Chloe waited a moment before realizing that no one else was going to speak. “That’s it? The rest of your family has been presumed dead at least once? I mean, I knew about Lucky, but I never thought....”

“Yep,” Luke said, almost proudly.

Liz gasped and looked at Lucky. “You too?”

He laughed at her obvious mortification. “Me too. I was kidnapped last year by a man that everyone thought was dead,” he laughed at the irony and continued, “named Cesar Faison. He made it look like I burned to death in a fire, but he was careless, and Dad found out and rescued me after a few months.”

“Why would he do that?” she asked, unbelieving.

“He was in cahoots with Helena Cassidine. I think it was her idea. All Faison really cared about was the Scorpios.”

Liz shook her head. “You’re all crazy, you know that?” she asked, causing everyone to laugh.

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