Carly paced back and forth, constantly running her fingers through her hair. Why hadn’t she heard from him? It had been over two weeks. He was planning, plotting, trying to drive her slowly insane. Well, better men than him had tried and failed. She had defeated Tony Jones and the whole Quartermaine family to protect Michael. Ric had no idea what she was capable of or the lengths she would go to protect her family.

Unconsciously she rubbed her belly, as the baby inside of her kicked. She walked over and sat down at Sonny’s desk. Picking up the connected twin frames, she stared at the pictures. The first was of her and Sonny on their wedding day on the island and the other picture was of the three of them, playing upstairs in Michael’s room. They looked so happy, like a happily ever after family.

For so long she had wanted this, craved this. Her daddy had left long before he had physically left her and her mama. Mama tried so hard to be both mother and father, but it wasn’t enough. She, Caroline Corinthos nee Benson, needed more. She wanted to be like the rest of the kids at her school with a loving mother and doting father. Instead she had an overprotective and super involved mama and a dad, who thought visitation rights was seeing his signature on the child support checks he sent every month.

Rising from the desk, she opened the sliding-glass door and walked onto the balcony, trying to enjoy the sunshine and the view of Port Charles. Thoughts of her dad, who couldn’t even be bothered to attend her mama’s funeral, always reminded her of Bobbie. She remembered the moment she knew she was going to destroy Bobbie. She had stopped by Bobbie’s to borrow something, she couldn’t even remember what it was now. And there, sitting prominently in the middle of the mantle, displayed for the whole world to see, was Bobbie and Tony’s wedding photo.

Each one of them holding a baby and smiling. In that moment, she had never hated or despised anyone with such intensity as much as she did Bobbie and those kids.

Bobbie, whom she had felt just discarded her in order to have an Ozzie and Harriet life. And the rage she felt against BJ, her mother’s namesake, and Lucas, her uncle’s namesake. Two kids who had the Cosby or Keaton picture perfect family, the two beautiful kids spaced just right and a nurse mother and a neurosurgeon father. So on top of being loved and wanted, they were well off.

Carly shook off these thoughts, she hadn’t thought about that particular time in her life, in a long time. But those thoughts served as a reminder, she and Sonny were close to having what was in that picture. She couldn’t allow Ric to destroy that.

If her mama were here now, life would be perfect. Her mama would be so proud to see her Caroline had everything she had every dreamed of. Tears ran down her face, how she missed her mama. How she wished she could talk to her again. Her mama would have loved Michael, especially his red hair. She would have been the best grandma. She loved Bobbie, but she wasn’t her mama and sometimes she resented that. With Bobbie, she couldn’t reminisce about how after two months of searching, she still hadn’t found the perfect dress to wear to her senior prom.

She and her mama had searched practically all of Florida for the perfect dress. Then she came home one day and laying on her bed was the dress she had described over and over again in minute detail to her mama and anyone who would listen. Her mama had secretly made the dress for her. It was just as she had imagined. She was on cloud nine for days, she had made her mama preserve the dress like it was her wedding dress. Her mama complained about doing that, but she knew her mama was thrilled that she had loved the dress enough to keep it. Maybe one day her daughter could wear the dress her grandma had painstakingly made.

Memories like that, she wanted to create for her children, for her family and Ric wasn’t going to stop that. She had a plan. Now it was time to enforce it.