Thursday, June 12 will mark the final appearance of Camila Banus on NBC’s “Days of our Lives” as Gabi Hernandez shares an emotional goodbye with her brother Rafe (Galen Gering), Will Horton (Guy Wilson) and Sonny Kiriakis (Freddie Smith), among others, as she prepares for the next phase in her life. Before she goes, however, it was revealed in today’s episode that the character played a pivotal role in the death of former lover Nick Fallon (Blake Berris).

Banus, who filmed her final scenes in mid-January, reveals in the newest issue of Soap Opera Digest Gabi’s reason for fatally shooting Nick. “Basically, Nick was blackmailing Gabi the entire time since he came back to Salem earlier this year. Gabi was afraid of Nick; she had to make him think that she still loved him. She was fearful of what Nick would do if he realized that she didn’t have feelings for him. Her biggest worry was that he would harm Ari. She didn’t know how far he would go. He could have killed her at any minute. So Gabi had to be very careful about what she said to Nick and how she acted towards him. As an actress, I wanted to play the scenes with Gabi being very smart and thinking about the safety of her baby. I played it as if Gabi was going with Nick as something she did to make him happy. I think when people see the scenes this week, they’ll understand a little more of what Gabi was going through, where her mind was at, because on the surface, the things that she did, going back to Nick after everything he did, may not have made sense to some people.”