The bad seed renders its bitter fruit.

And here is where Victor Newman shows up and is forced to confront his handiwork, namely Patty, and the havoc she's wreaked. And, as so often happens in the last scene, the Monster turns on its Creator.

Patty Williams pointed her gun at her final target, the tyrant who dumped the last of her marbles into the same lake that would ultimately claim his sweet-natured goddaughter. With a pull of the trigger, Patty Williams tried to do what so many others dreamed of and failed at - ridding the world of one of its most hateful scourges. Bang. Bang. Bang. Three shots would change everything.

Or would they?

Colleen would suffer the same fate as her father with one difference; though her brain was dead, her body was still functioning. Now, she lay in a hospital bed with no hope for a future except as a body full of organs waiting to be harvested. And ironies of ironies, only feet away, riddled with shrapnel, lay Victor Newman, the cause of all this needless suffering and sadness. You could almost hear him wheezing: "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse."

Despite his recovery, Victor Newman is a not new man, they tell us. A few days after the incident at Lake Elizabeth, Newman's family graciously released a sidebar verbal memorandum during a Savaneure shareholders' meeting implying his perfect health and continuing impeccable business savvy. But how can that be? He wasn't sick with the flu, nor he didn't break a pinky, or more likely, burst a blood vessel browbeating his pet dragon.

In fact, Victor Newman had a heart transplant, but we have to wonder at the choice of words. After all, when it comes to medicine, the word "transplant" popularly assumes there is something to replace. Wouldn't "implant" with its connotation of inserting something where nothing was before be more accurate?

Regardless, as always (and undeservedly as always) Victor Newman got the best of the best; the delicate flower of a young woman's heart, but not just any young woman. Beating in the once-empty cavity of Victor Newman's chest is the heart his victim, an utterly intelligent, kind, compassionate human being and my niece entered the world with. Which makes me wonder: Will "CeCe's" heart have any effect on Victor? And if so, what will that mean for his family, his business colleagues and rivals - humanity? If Victor Newman is no longer the detestable pestilence he's always been, where will our moral compass land? Without South, we have no North.

This is the million dollar question, folks. If in fact Newman Enterprises survives this latest SEC scandal questioning the fitness of Savaneur's chief executive officer, and the timeliness (or un-timeliness) of the Newman family disclosure, not to mention what has to be a looming Corazal Bank investigation, what kind of man will Victor Newman be? Will he rise from the ashes to recapture the business crown of Vlad the Impaler (aka Dracula)? Or will he wither on the vine, and slowly bleed-out into obscurity and irrelevance, his loathsome nature poisoned perhaps by the innate decency of his latest "acquisition"? That may be putting too narrow a parameter on the possibilities. We are assured, ad infinitum, that Victor Newman was a vital and dynamic man before being shot by a crazy lady on a lake. Perhaps the future Victor Newman lies not in his past, but in the life of the beautiful person whose heart now beats within him.

CeCe Carlton was very special to me. But she was more than just my niece, she was also my best friend. I was closer to her in a lot of ways than my own brother and sisters. We came of age in the Millennium, not the mid-Seventies. We both knew the difference between a tweet and a twitch. Colleen was the first person to tell me she loved me and the last person to tell me what a screw up I was, and never missed her chance at either. I loved her like I do my brother and sisters. The day she died I would have rather ripped out my own heart and given it to Mr. Newman than have him take hers. That was the most difficult decision my sister Traci has ever had to make, and one in all honesty, I didn't fully agree with, and am still trying to understand. To shut off her only child's life so that someone else might live is wrenching enough, but to turn around and share that gift with Victor Newman is the action of a human far more evolved than I.

Victor Newman has waged war with my family for more days than anyone is really willing to count. His weapons range from classic double-crosses to destructive acts of vengeance motivated by sheer pettiness to destructive acts motivated by nothing more than the fact that he can. For my sister to share the enormous gift of her daughter's life with someone who has caused nothing but pain for my family is truly the work of an angel.

Will Mr. Newman tread a new path now? Will the beating of a young woman's heart soften his ossified sense of male prerogative? Will we one day cross paths and banter about Michael Kor's assertions on Project Runway? Will he and my sister have "girlfriend time" over popcorn and the latest Sandra Bullock movie? Will he end up teaching a lost man or woman to love again as a Beverly Hills escort? The possibilities are endless, but they also include the sad prospect that he'll be the same petulant bastard he always was.

I'd like to think people change, or at least are capable of a change of heart. There is no heart finer than the one Victor Newman has received, but he should earn it. It's my hope that he eschews past rapacity and predation for the spirit of kindness and hope embodied by my niece CeeCee. If he stays his current course, doubtless he will hear the thump-thump of CeeCee's Tell-Tale Heart. For his sake, I hope he dreams now of butterflies and Care Bears and peace in the Middle East. I hope he has tea parties with his daughters and begins retaining water in the middle of the month and marches for Women's Rights in front of the U.N.

Victor Newman can take any direction he wants. My niece no longer has that option.

As the Zen master said, "We'll see."