Lily and Sonny at their wedding Jason and Sonny on the island Carly and Sonny

Michael "Sonny" Corinthos Jr.  Portrayed By: Maurice Benard 1993 to Present   Sonny first showed up in Port Charles in 1993 as the owner of a strip club called the Paradise Lounge where Karen Wexler worked as a stripper. Sonny lived with a young man he had taken under his wing named Stone in the apartment above the club. Karen and Sonny become lovers and Karen’s boyfriend, Jagger Cates beat Sonny up when he found the two of them in bed together.  Sonny then put a hit out on Jagger, but Marco Dane (Jagger's manager and previous nemesis of Llanview/OLTL) offered Sonny a piece of Jagger's boxing winnings as a payoff.  Sonny's strip bar was eventually closed down when Police Commissioner Sean Donelly learned that Sonny had employed underage kids.  Sonny began working with Luke Spencer, becoming involved with organized crime under Frank Smith. He met and began casually dating Lila Quartermaine’s assistant, Brenda Barrett. Sonny tried to help Luke break Frank Smith break out of jail, but a shoot out ensued and Sonny ended up being sot.  As he was attempting to drive away, he passed out and crashed into Brenda’s car.  She brought him back to his apartment and called a doctor.  Her donation of blood ended up saving Sonny’s life.  Brenda introduced Sonny to her friend, Lois Cerullo. As it turned out, Lois and Sonny grew up together. The three of them started L&B Records. Sonny also partnered up with Luke Spencer to open a blues club called “Luke’s Club”.  A drifter, Mike Corbin, approached Luke for work and a Sonny was furious when he learned that Luke had hired him.  As it turned out, Mike was really Sonny’s estranged father who had left his wife and son years before, believing them to be better off without him.  Sonny hated his father for leaving, particularly because after he left, his mother married a cop named Deke who beat and terrorized the two of them mercilessly.

Concerned about the family friend, Ned hires Mac to investigate Sonny, by this time, Brenda had moved in with him. After getting shot at in the shower Brenda becomes suspicious of Sonny's career and Ned and Lois, fearful for her life, convinced her to wear a wire and trap Sonny into admitting that he is involved with organized crime.  As it happened, Lily Rivera warns Sonny in time.  He found the wire on Brenda and viciously evicted her from their penthouse. 

Sonny’s beloved protégé, Stone, tearfully told him and girlfriend Robin that he had contracted the AIDS virus. As Stone succumbed to the illness and required expensive medical care, Sonny was forced to take money from an illegal account to cover his medical expenses.  Stone's death left Sonny devastated.  

Brenda was aggressive in her campaign to get Sonny to forgive her for wearing a wire and just as it seemed they would reunite, Sonny learned that the FBI was investigating him for racketeering.  Worried about his partners, he sold his shares of Luke’s Club to Lucy Coe and L&B to Edward Quartermaine.  Lily's father, Rivera made an offer Sonny could not refuse:  his legal problem would disappear if Sonny would marry Lily.  Not having a choice, he married Lily and although he cared for her, he did not love her as he did Brenda.  Their passion continuously drew them together and they made plans to run away together, knowing that Rivera’s men would have  a hit on him as soon as he left Lily.  As he was preparing to tell Lily he was leaving, she revealed that she was pregnant.  This changed everything and Sonny sadly told Brenda that they could not be together.  Sonny and Lily bonded and celebrated their coming child.  Senior Rivera learned that Sonny was leaving Lily, but not that they had reunited.  In an attempt on Sonny’s life, he had Sonny’s car bombed and inadvertently ended up blowing up Lily and his unborn grandchild.  Sonny was consumed by grief and guilt over the death of Lily and their child, believing if he had not planned a life with Brenda, they would still be alive.  His new employee and sidekick, the newly brain-damaged Jason Morgan, helped him through his grief.  With Jason wanting to distance himself from the invasive Quartermaine family, working for Sonny was right up his ally. 

After Sonny told Brenda they could not be together due to Lily’s pregnancy, she allowed herself to be wooed and won by playboy corporate pirate, Jasper Jacks, much to Sonny’s derision.  When the couple planned a second, formal wedding (their first had been an impromptu ceremony on a yacht), Sonny set about his own plans.  Prior to the “I do’s”, Sonny showed up with Miranda, Jax’s presumed dead wife.  This put a block between Brenda and Jax and resulted in the fire between Brenda and Sonny rekindling.  Jax stepped aside and Sonny and Brenda planned to marry.  On the day of their wedding with Brenda standing at the altar, Sonny sent Jason to tell her that there would be no wedding and that he was leaving town for her own good and safety.  Sonny decided to forsake love rather than bring Brenda into his life of organized crime. 

After Brenda’s death, Jason went to find Sonny and brought him back to town.  Trying to go legit, the two started a coffee importing business together.  When Moreno, the kingpin to whom Jason had relinquished Sonny’s mob territory when he tried to go clean, began terrorizing Sonny’s people and taking over Port Charles, Sonny was forced to go back into “the business” again, still with the cover of the coffee importing business as a cover. 

When Sonny met Hannah Scott, a waitress who had just lost her job at Jake’s for borrowing money from the till, he was immediately intrigued.  Not only did she bear a striking resemblance to Sonny’s beloved Brenda, but she had a strength of character and snappy personality all her own.  After a brief courtship, Sonny and Hannah were officially an item. 

Around this time, a young Latino man began hanging around Port Charles, seeming to follow Sonny.  He turned out to be Juan Santiago, the son that Sonny’s wife, Lily, had given up at birth for adoption.  Convinced that Sonny was his natural father, Juan tailed him everywhere.  After Juan took a severe beating from Sorel, one of Moreno’s men, Sonny and Juan shared a painful hospital visit in which Sonny realized Juan’s misunderstanding.  Later, at a graveside visit to Lily, Sonny told Juan that although he would be proud if he were his son, the truth was that his father was Miguel Morez, L&B singing sensation.  

The FBI’s investigation of Sonny on RICO violations became heated and Sonny felt the bite, even though to all appearances, he was totally clean.  He was devastated when Jason and Carly revealed to him that Hannah was an undercover FBI agent, assigned to bring him down. He continued the relationship long enough to feed false into to the feds, then threw her out of his penthouse.  Although she begged his forgiveness and assured Sonny that once she had fallen for him, she had only protected him, he turned a deaf ear to her and cut her out of his life. 

Still reeling from the pain of Hannah betrayal, when Carly Quartermaine, who he despised, came to him thinking Jason and Elizabeth Webber were having an affair, he led her to believe they were and taunted her about it.  The two had fierce, angry sex, which led to Carly becoming pregnant with Sonny’s child.  Jason walked in on them the morning after, having been shot in a conflict with Moreno.  After he healed, Jason left town in disgust.  Desperate, pregnant and without Jason to turn to, Carly was drawn into a painful emotional blackmail orchestrated by AJ Quartermaine, her husband at that time.  He forced her to pass the baby off as his own and remain married to him, despite their mutual hatred of one another.  AJ believed the child to be Jason’s and was more than happy take his child after Jason raised his son, Michael, for a year.  Sonny learned Carly was pregnant when AJ angrily told him to pass the word along to Jason that he and his wife were expecting.  Knowing AJ and Carly had not slept together in months, Sonny guessed that the baby was his.  After going to Bobbie for confirmation, Sonny crashed the Quartermaine family party, celebrating the new coming baby, and informed them all that he was the father of Carly’s baby.  Carly was too stunned to refute his claim and the family was mortified.  Sonny asked to speak to AJ privately, then told him that he had proof that he had paid an arsonist to set fire to Sonny and Jason’s coffee warehouse the year before when he was embroiled in a custody battle over Michael.  He told AJ that if he did not agree to an immediate divorce from Carly and sign over all parental rights to Michael, he’d go to jail that very night.  AJ angrily signed the papers and Sonny told Carly she was free.  As the realization set in, Carly’s eyes filled with tears of joy and in a matter of minutes, she, Leticia and Michael were in Sonny’s limo.   

Carly was in for a surprise when Sonny told her that they would now be living with him so that he could monitor her prenatal care.  After a few weeks of conflict, the two felt themselves irresistibly drawn to one another and they eventually really made love.  Their life was working out to be ideal until, in a conflict with a drunken AJ, Carly fell down a flight of stairs at the Quartermaine mansion.  Upon arriving at the hospital, Sonny learned from Tony Jones that the placenta had detached and his son would die.  If the baby was not taken immediately, Carly would also die.  Sonny said a tearful good-bye to his son while Carly lay unconscious, then watched as the baby was born by cesarean and died almost immediately.   

Carly and Sonny both comforted one another and pushed one another away in their grief.  Sonny took Carly away to his island retreat and they re-bonded.  Unfortunately, Carly misunderstood a conversation she overheard between Sonny and Benny, his accountant, and believed that Sonny was only taking care of Michael out of an obligation to Jason.  Tearfully, she said a painful good-bye to Sonny and went to live in the brownstone with Bobbie.

Carly and Sonny found their way back to one another and eventually married again, vowing with their hearts this time in a romantic private wedding.  Despite Carly's manipulations and repercussions from Sonny's mob life, the two continue to share a loving and passionate marriage.