A whisper in Salem becomes a thunderclap: beneath the town’s familiar streets, behind the polite facades and charity galas, something dangerous is taking root. EJ DiMera — cool, commanding, and always several moves ahead — is quietly building a secret lab under the hospital. He needs secrecy, and anyone sniffing around could shatter his plans. Enter Leo Stark: curious, bold, and dangerously close to finding out too much. Now the question hangs in the air like a blade: will EJ order Gwen to betray Leo and silence him before he exposes everything?

EJ’s motives are clinical and cold. He has invested in a subterranean project that can’t withstand public scrutiny. Rumors swirl about clandestine experiments, and familiar names — Dr. Ralph among them — are drifting back into Salem at convenient moments. The timing is not an accident. With old allies and unexpected returns converging, EJ’s appetite for discretion grows sharper. He needs someone inside Salem who can neutralize threats without leaving fingerprints — someone who knows Leo intimately and can get close without arousing suspicion.

That someone is Gwen. Once a partner in mischief with Leo, recently rekindled into an uneasy truce, Gwen stands at the crossroads of loyalty and leverage. EJ’s whisper to her is simple: keep Leo occupied, get him off the scent. The request is wrapped in persuasion and pressure — not necessarily a threat, but a reminder of the stakes. Gwen knows how dangerous it is to cross EJ; she also knows how threatening it would be if Leo, a reporter for The Spectator, blows the lid off whatever EJ is hiding.

Leo is exactly the kind of journalist who would pry. He’s nosy by nature, a Scooby-Doo figure who ends up at construction sites and in dark corridors following the smallest clues. He’s already poked around the hospital project, rummaging through the mystery like a detective with a flair for drama. A lost earbud story — the one where he claims he dropped it while rescuing Gwen during the blackout — has put him on EJ’s radar. Worse, Leo has pushed the narrative that EJ may have been behind the townwide blackout, an accusation EJ angrily dismissed as the fault of Salem’s aging infrastructure. But accusations stick in a town like Salem, and Leo’s persistence could become a hazard to EJ’s carefully laid plans.

Gwen’s past with Leo complicates everything. Once close as conspirators, their relationship collapsed after a betrayal: Leo slept with Gwen’s husband, Dimitri. The wound still smolders. Gwen admitted as much to EJ — she keeps grudges, she doesn’t forgive easily, and that bitter memory is powerful leverage. Yet their history also means she knows how to charm him back into trust. Gwen has already made moves to soften Leo — an invitation to lunch or a staged attempt at reconciliation — under EJ’s instruction. If she can convince him she’s mended fences, she can steer him away from the lab and into complacency.

But Gwen is not a blank slate; she is a complicated player with motives of her own. She may resent Leo for the pain he caused, sure, but she isn’t necessarily a simple betrayer. The choice EJ asks her to make — to mislead or even harm someone who once saved her — is morally jagged and dangerous. Competing loyalties tug at her: loyalty to herself and the truth, fear of EJ’s power, and the gnawing possibility she might owe Leo for past kindness. The situation is ripe with risk of miscalculation.

EJ’s circle is already mobilized. Rita, his aide, keeps him informed of Leo’s movements. She’s the one who reported Leo’s snooping and the earbud story, proving that EJ’s network extends into the town’s rumor mill. EJ has labeled Leo “a problem that needs to be dealt with.” Those words, soft as they may sound, carry an unmistakable imperative in Salem: when EJ singles someone out, trouble follows.

What might “dealt with” look like? The options grow darker the more you think about it. Leo could be distracted, persuaded, or inveigled away harmlessly — lunch dates and fake reconciliations that lead nowhere. Or he could be removed from the field: threatened, silenced, or kidnapped. Salem has seen worse: men and women taken in the night, experimental schemes where bodies become bargaining chips, and prisons of secrecy where the truth is buried. EJ’s rumored subterranean lab conjures chilling possibilities — what if Leo ends up a victim of the very experiments EJ wants to hide?

There’s also room for redemption and ironic twists. Leo once rescued Gwen during the blackout — a fact that complicates any thought of permanent betrayal