by Lucy Score
Shit. He should have had her ask the captain about shark activity.
She skipped back over to him. “We’re at sixty feet right here. Perfectly safe!”
“I highly doubt he used those words.”
She ignored his sarcasm. “They’re deploying one of those floating trampoline platforms off the stern so we can swim back to it and lay out.”
“If we’re not eaten by sharks first.”
“Don’t be such a baby, Xavier. Get your ass up there on the rail!”
They climbed over together and stood, knees quaking.
Waverly didn’t look scared, she looked energized. His little adrenaline junkie, he thought. So many years without any control over her own life had made her hungry for choice, for action, maybe even for consequence.
She looked at him, eyes glittering with excitement. “Trust me, X?”
“I’m putting my life in your hands, Angel. Be gentle.”
She took his hand. “On three then. One. Two. Three.”
They fell for what felt like forever before dropping into the warm waiting waters. He still had a grip on Waverly’s hand, and before he could start dragging their bodies to the surface flickering with sunlight, she appeared before him.
Her lips brushed his once, twice. And then she was pulling them up toward the light.
--------
Sylvia and Robert returned to the Sea Goddess with shopping bags galore.
“Is there anything left on the island, Mom?” Waverly asked with a laugh as Leonidas called in reinforcements to help tote the bags into the cabin.
“Only what she couldn’t carry,” Robert teased.
“Let me change, and then it’s present time,” Sylvia announced, clapping her hands. Her filmy maxi dress fluttered around her legs in the breeze. She blew them all kisses and fluttered and fussed her way into the master cabin.
“Speaking of gifts,” Robert said, he pulled a tiny canvas bag out of his shirt pocket. “I saw this and thought of you.” He handed it over to Waverly.
She opened the delicate little drawstring and a woven bracelet in turquoise and gold fell into her waiting palm. It wasn’t an expensive trinket, not like the drawerful of apology glitter she had back home, but it was obviously handmade.
“A little girl was selling them by the dock. She and her grandmother sit down every Saturday afternoon and make them,” Robert explained.
Charmed, Waverly slid it onto her wrist. “Thank you, Dad.” She hesitated and then threw her arms around his neck for a hug. The awkwardness reminded her that there had been a lot of disappointments and disagreements between them and their last hug.
“I’m just really glad we’re all here together,” her father said haltingly, as ill at ease as Waverly.
She smiled at him. “Me, too.”
“Who’s ready for their present?” Sylvia asked, clapping her hands as she reappeared. She’d changed into a snake print kaftan and a pair of matching platform sandals. She held a large shopping bag emblazoned with Greek in one hand and a significantly smaller bag in the other. “One for each of you,” she announced, shoving the big bag at Waverly and the little one at Xavier.
“I can’t accept—” Xavier began.
“Don’t bother, X. My mother doesn’t take no for an answer,” Waverly warned him.
“Open, open!” Sylvia chirped.
Within her bag, Waverly found an oversized, floppy sun hat in white linen. It screamed Hollywood. She laughed and placed it on her head. The brim was so wide it drooped to her shoulders. She put her sunglasses on and posed, hand on hip, looking off into the distance. “How do I look, dah-lings?”
Sylvia giggled. “Oh, please, can I take a picture?”
Waverly felt her spine stiffen and then relax. At least this picture had no ulterior motives, just Sylvia’s daughter enjoying their family vacation. She could give her this one. “Sure, Mom.”
Sylvia gleefully plucked her phone out of her bathing suit strap. “Over by the rail so we can see the island in the background,” she ordered.
Waverly posed for six or seven shots before her mother was satisfied. “Now how do I find those filters Kate showed me?” Sylvia muttered to herself. She wandered off to the shade to edit the picture to perfection.
Waverly returned to Xavier who was still staring into his bag.
“Did you get a matching hat?” she teased.
Xavier shook his head. “Uh, nope.” He pulled a piece of material out of the bag, held it by two fingers.
“Oh, my God. Mom!” Waverly screeched, snatching the red and blue Grigioperla swim trunks out of Xavier’s hand. “That is so inappropriate!”
“What?” Sylvia asked innocently. “I didn’t know if Xavier had brought a suit, and I wanted him to be able to enjoy the pool.”
Waverly covered her mouth to hide her horrified laughter. “You’re unbelievable.”
“Darling, he’s got just an amazing physique—you really do, Xavier,” Sylvia beamed at him. “It would be a crime to put him in some voluminous, knee-length discount store trunks.”
Xavier snatched the trunks back, held them over his hips, and Waverly got a good look at just exactly what would be barely covered by them.
“Too bad we already had our swim today,” he whispered.
“At least they aren’t thong.”
--------
Late that afternoon, Waverly went below to grab a nap before getting ready for dinner, and Xavier used the time to call Micah in L.A.
“How’s the high life, brother?” Micah’s voice came through the phone crystal clear.
“Oh, you know, just another day aboard a multi-million dollar yacht.”
“Yeah, I bet all those islands start to look the same,” Micah mocked.
“You get my emails?”
“All eleven of them,” his friend snorted.
“What’s new since then?” Xavier asked, squinting off the bow into the cerulean horizon.
“FBI’s decided to take a look at our two missing persons, see if they can’t scare up any information or bodies,” Micah told him.
“Are the locals going to release that email from Plotts to us?”
“I’m talking to them and the feds. Feds have jurisdiction, but they’re backlogged into next year with cyber shit.”
“Well, keep offering. I don’t want this guy to slide because some ten-year-old embezzling court case is hogging up staff capacity.”
“Will do. The feds are also releasing Ganim’s identity to the press today. The tips have started to slow down on the sketch alone. They were hoping he’d try to run back to El Plano if he thought they hadn’t connected him to the case. But no such luck. So they’re going to go public with what they have.”
“Are they going to mention the missing girls?”
“Dunno. They aren’t real open and into sharing if you know what I mean.”
Xavier had expected it. “Well, keep pushing with Hansen. He’s not going to want to get cut out of this either.”
“How’s our bombshell client these days?”
Xavier thought about the drop of his stomach as they’d jumped into the sea, her laughter when they surfaced together. “She’s good. It’s good to get her out of town, away from it all.”
“There’s going to be a lot of questions for her in London, especially if Ganim’s name goes public.”
Xavier leaned over the rail and sighed. “She’ll handle it. She’s tough.”
“Uh-huh.” Micah said a lot with very little. “Any other ethical slips I need to be aware of?”
He thought of Waverly under him, screaming his name as she came.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he said evenly. There was no point in confessing. His partner would just try to drag him off the job and replace him with someone else. Someone he couldn’t trust to be as good as he was. He was the one who needed to be here with Waverly. He’d deal with the fallout later.
&n
bsp; “Good,” Micah said even though he didn’t sound convinced. “Look, seriously Saint. If you’ve got anything you need to talk about…”
“I’m good. Everything is good. Or it will be once we find this bastard.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The day started off as all the others had, blissful and beautiful. Today, it was Mikonos off the starboard side of the Sea 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 your entire life trying to keep a family together and three careers on track, then you 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.
She ventured outside to see how the other half of her gene pool was fairing and found her father slumped in a chair at the dining table, staring off at the horizon. Xavier was pretending to mind his own business on an overstuffed armchair near the door.
Waverly took the chair next to her father. “Why, Dad? Seriously. I just don’t get it.”
Robert sighed, the weight of the world on his chest. “It’s one of those things I hope you never understand.”
“Help me understand. It’s getting harder and harder for me to forgive you. What compelled you to stick your tongue down our bartender’s throat with your wife just feet away?” Waverly could hear the anger in her voice, knew it would shut him down. But her control was rusty. She just wanted to shake him.
“Waverly, this is between your mother and me.” His tone was tired. He was already withdrawing from her, from himself. “Maybe you could tell her—”
“Why does it have to be me? Why can’t you tell her what you want her to hear?”
“She’s upset right now—” Robert began.
“I’m upset right now. She drinks all the time, Dad. You’re never around because you’re so busy trying to screw your way through the West Coast, which by the way, what do you think that does to your twenty-year-old daughter? How much longer do you think you two can go on like this? Someone is going to get hurt, an
d it’s not going to just be me this time.”
Robert put his head in his hands, and she knew he was done. There would be no more discussion, no more answers.
She let her words hang heavy in the salt air and the sunshine. Let them absorb the exotic paradise that surrounded them and leave nothing but ugliness and emptiness. Maybe it was what they all deserved. Maybe this was all there was.
Just like her mother, the fight drained out of her. She would never understand, never be able to fix it. And with that crystal clear knowledge, that final acceptance weighing on her, she walked past Xavier into the salon and down the steps to her cabin.
--------
Xavier didn’t bother knocking. He just opened the door and closed it behind him. She was sitting on the bed propped up by pillows staring blankly. She looked shell shocked. No tears, he noted. Just the exhaustion of a fighter who had finally given up.
He debated sitting on the couch, then decided he’d feel better closer. So he sprawled across the foot of her bed again. Without acknowledging him, she scooted her feet closer to him, and he took them in his hands. They were cold. The rest of her probably was, too. And not just from the Arctic air conditioning.
“What can I do?” he asked.
Waverly just slowly shook her head. “Nothing. There’s nothing you can do and nothing I can do to fix this,” she said, head still shaking. “I have no control over them, no matter how much I want it, no matter how much better I could make them.”
“It’s not up to you, Angel.”
“But I could help. I could have fixed it before it got to this.”
Xavier scooted up the bed until he was sitting next to her. He threw an arm over her shoulders. “Angel, it’s not your job to fix them. They’re damaged, but they are responsible for their damage. And they’re responsible for fixing it.”
“Am I damaged?” Waverly asked.
“You’ve got a few dents and dings, but I don’t think you’re damaged.”
“I need to get away from all of this, X,” she said. “If I don’t, it’s going to suck me in, and I’ll never get out.”
