Page 89 of Crossing the Line
The day started off as all the others had, blissful and beautiful. Today, it was Mikonos off the starboard side of theSea Goddess.Their anchorage in a sheltered bay brought them much closer to shore than they had been before. Waverly felt like she could almost see into the cliff top homes.
She took her breakfast, a goat cheese omelet with fresh squeezed orange juice, on the main deck with Xavier. He scrolled through news from home on a tablet next to her while she dug back into her novel. She had just lifted her dainty cup of espresso to her lips when they heard a shrill scream from the salon.
“Stay here,” Xavier ordered her as he jumped up from his chair. As he ran toward the salon doors, Waverly saw him reach behind him for the gun that wasn’t there. He hadn’t been carrying since the first day onboard. A sign that he was relaxing a bit… and probably regretting it now.
She ignored his order. She knew one of her mother’s screams when she heard them. It could be over an old enemy appearing in a guest role on a popular TV show or the glimpse of a spider.
By the time she entered the salon, her mother was sobbing on the couch. But the cause of her reaction was still evident. Talia, the stunning Greek girl, was close to tears herself. Guilt and fear made her dark eyes wide as a full moon eclipse. Her lipstick, a dusky rose, was currently painting Robert Sinner’s mouth.
“Sylvia, for God’s sake, calm down,” Robert begged.
“How could you?” Sylvia glared at him, mascara streaking down her cheeks. The wounded wife. “You’re on vacation with your wife and daughter, and I catch you with this Grecian whore!”
Xavier smoothly shifted into non-life-threatening crisis mode. He signaled for one of the other guards who had appeared to escort the now-sobbing Talia out of the room. Waverly felt bad for the girl. So many girls before her had fallen victim to Robert Sinner’s smooth charm. It made them feel special, important. But sooner or later, it always ended the same. Robert never left the wife he promised them he didn’t love, and the girl drifted away feeling used and less worthy than before.
When Robert made a move to lay a hand on Sylvia’s shoulder, she flinched and shrieked.
“Stay away from me! I hate you!”
Robert shriveled back, and Waverly made her way to her mother’s side. She put a protective arm around Sylvia’s shaking shoulders and telegraphed to Xavier that he needed to get her father out of the room before there was bloodshed.
Xavier put a hand on Robert’s chest and spoke quietly to him. Her father didn’t take much convincing, and Xavier guided him out of the room opposite the way Talia had exited.
Sylvia’s tears showed no signs of slowing. Waverly got up and found a bottle of water in the small refrigerator behind the bar. She pressed it into her mother’s hands. “Here, Mom. Drink. You’ll make yourself sick if you can’t calm down,” Waverly said gently.
Sylvia blinked back tears as she looked down at the bottle in her hands, and then she hurled the bottle across the salon. “Who does he think I am?” she railed, getting to her feet. “I made him. Me marrying him was the best thing that ever happened to his career, and he thinks he can just sleep with anything with a pair of legs? Six days. I asked him for six days with us, and he can’t even give us that.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Waverly felt her mother’s rage as if it were a physical presence in the room. But she’d seen it before, and it had always passed. She always forgave, or if not forgave, then forgot.
“Everything I have done in this life is for us. I play this role so that we can have the life we deserve, the life everyone wants. But your father is content to throw it away. And for what? So he can fuck a girl his daughter’s age to feel important, desirable.”
Sylvia stormed over to the bar and wrestled a bottle of vodka free from the shelf.
“Mom, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Sylvia turned on her. “How about after you spend yourentirelife trying to keep a family together and three careers on track,thenyou can tell me what’s a good idea.” She wrenched open the bottle, poured a shot, and then downed it.
“Why don’t you leave him?” Waverly had never asked the question out loud before. Only a dozen times a week in her own head. God knows he’d given his wife plenty of reasons in their twenty-one years of marriage. “Why do you keep settling for this?”
“Settling?” Sylvia’s face went white. “This is what everyone in the world dreams of having.” She threw her arms out wide, keeping the bottle clutched tight in her fingers. “You wouldn’t be basking on a yacht in the Mediterranean if it weren’t for all the sacrifices I’ve made. You would be making B-list movies with your tits out. No one would care about us if your father and I had divorced over his first infidelity. But together, we’re more. Together, we’re stronger.”
God, she was talking about their brand, not their family.
Sylvia poured herself another shot and downed it, oblivious to the tears that still fell. It was crushing to know that her mother still felt the pain this deeply. As celebrated an actor as Sylvia Sinner was, movies hadn’t even begun to scratch her depth, Waverly realized.
“You could be happy if things were different. You’re obviously not happy now,” Waverly tried again.
“What does happiness add up to in the end? Loss. You marry someone you love and then you lose them. Where’s your happiness then?” Sylvia demanded. “But if you build something, a legacy, no one can take that away from you. I did this for you, and you ask me why as if I should be ashamed of myself. Everything I’ve ever done has been to build this legacy for you. You’ll never know what it’s like to be no one, to not matter.”
“Mom.” Waverly didn’t know what else to say.
The fury had blown out of Sylvia. Her shoulders stooped. She reached for a glass behind the bar and filled it with ice.
“Next time you feel like judging me,” she said, pouring a stream of vodka over the ice, “you just remember that everything I’ve done in this life is for you.”
Drink and bottle in hand, Sylvia quietly left the room, climbing the interior stairs to the master cabin. “Have a steward move Mr. Sinner’s things from the cabin.” Waverly heard Sylvia snap the words at someone. “I don’t care what you do with them. Throw them and him overboard for all I care.”
Thank God for non-disclosure agreements, Waverly thought.
