Dante Falconeri had known cold—bitter winter winds off the docks, sleepless nights in unheated stakeout vans—but nothing compared to the icy dread settling in his bones now. Port Charles was shrouded in fog, but not even that could hide the grief that had consumed him since the day Sam McCall died. Or the grief he believed he had to live with… until tonight.

What began as a pilgrimage to Sam’s grave spiraled into a night of confessions, heartbreak, and a revelation that would blow the roof off Port Charles—and Dante’s sanity.

Lulu Spencer stood beside him at the cemetery, brittle as frost, her voice hollow. She admitted she couldn’t bear to look at their son. To her, Rocco didn’t look like their child. He looked like Sam—the woman whose liver had supposedly saved Lulu’s life after a catastrophic medical crisis. Sam’s sacrifice had allowed Lulu to survive.

But her words—“Every time he looks at me, I see her”—cut Dante open, exposing a rage he didn’t know he was capable of.

Grief warped his judgment. Pain fueled every breath.

And in one devastating moment, Dante said the unforgivable:

“Sometimes… I wish it was you down there instead of Sam.”

The words ricocheted through the cemetery like a gunshot. Lulu crumbled. The world stopped.

And then—they heard the small, broken gasp.

Rocco had heard everything.

Before Dante could reach him, their son fled into the fog, and suddenly grief turned to terror.

***

The search that followed took them across Port Charles, desperation overriding their grief-stricken quarrel. They followed his phone signal to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town—a forgotten relic of the Cassadine empire.

The lock was broken. Someone had been here.

Inside, dust swirled in the beams of their flashlights. Rocco’s footprints led deeper into the structure. Then down a stairwell. Then… they stopped.

But something else lay on the floor—a plastic hospital wristband.

Dante picked it up.

Samantha McCall.

Lulu went white. “That’s Sam’s—from the surgery. Dante… why is it here?”

Before he could answer, a low electronic hum filled the hall. Dante pushed open a set of heavy double doors—and froze.

This wasn’t a basement.

It was a laboratory.

High-tech, sterile, humming with servers and medical equipment. Screens displayed data streams, heart rate graphs, neurological scans. Files littered the desks, stamped with Cassadine insignias.

Dante grabbed the nearest folder.

Project: Memory Mapping.

He flipped through it—and his blood ran cold.

Vital signs. Brain activity. Logs dated weeks *after* Sam’s supposed death.

“This… this can’t be,” Lulu whispered.

But it could. And it was.

The donor organ Lulu received wasn’t Sam’s. It was a synthesized, bio-printed replica.

Sam had never died.

She’d been taken.

The funeral, the grief, the sacrifice—fabricated. A cover for something monstrous.

“This was staged,” Dante said, voice shaking. “They faked her death. They took her.”

A small whimper cut through the room.

Rocco.

Dante found him curled beneath a bank of monitors, knees pulled to his chest, trembling. When Rocco pointed to the screens overhead, Dante followed his gaze.

And the world shattered.

On the largest monitor, a live feed showed a white room. A glass containment cell.

Inside—

Sam.

Alive.

Thin. Disheveled. Pacing like a caged animal. Her fists hammered the glass as she screamed words they couldn’t hear.

For Dante, reality split in two.

The grief he’d carried—the grief that had nearly destroyed him—was replaced by a roaring blaze of hope and fury.

“It’s her,” Dante whispered. “It’s really her.”

Rocco clung to him. “Dad… you have to get her. You have to bring her home.”

He would. Dante knew he would. But bursting in guns blazing would get Sam killed. And Lulu—now a witness to the truth—was also a target.

“Take Rocco,” Dante told her. “Go to the car. Drive to the station. Do not tell anyone what you saw. If the Cassadines know we found this—Sam is dead for real.”

Lulu nodded, shaken but resolute.

When they were gone, Dante approached the screen, pressing his palm to the cold glass as if he could reach through it.

“I’m coming for you, Sam,” he murmured. “I swear to you—I’m coming.”

Grief evaporated.

What replaced it wasn’t hope.

It was war.

***

Across town, at the Quartermaine estate, a different storm brewed.

Drew Cain stood at the altar, the weight of his ambitions heavy on his shoulders. His marriage to Willow Tait was less about romance and more about strategy—an alliance designed to shield Willow from legal threats and to bolster Drew’s political aspirations.

Willow, trembling, could hardly breathe. Her eyes kept drifting toward Michael Corinthos in the front pew. The ache between them was palpable, the unspoken heartbreak suffocating.

Before the officiant could finish the vows, the chapel doors exploded.

Armed mercenaries stormed the room, rifles sweeping across terrified guests.

And at their center—striding with chilling confidence—was Jett Sidwell.

The man whose power stretched far beyond Port Charles—and whose vendetta pointed directly at Jason Morgan.

Sidwell stormed the altar, pressing a cold gun to Willow’s temple.

“Jason Morgan,” he snarled. “Show yourself. Or the bride dies.”

Michael lunged, but Dante—fresh from the warehouse of horrors—grabbed him, voice sharp:

“Don’t! There’s a sniper in the balcony!”

Tension fractured the air.

Then—

Jason stepped from the shadows.

Monumental. Silent. Ready to sacrifice everything.

The room held its breath.

And in that moment, Port Charles teetered on the edge of war—one that connected Jason’s return, Dante’s discovery of Sam, and the Cassadine plot spiraling through every family, every secret, every life.

For Dante Falconeri, the time for mourning was over.

The fight for Sam had just begun.

And for everyone else in Port Charles…

The nightmare was only getting starte