Her Predator Or Protector

October 1983 Scarsdale, New York "Mama, don't cry." The five-year-old boy with a heavy head of dark, wavy hair, peered up at his mother's shadowed face, blinking as her tears spilled down to his own upturned one. Sebastian Vice frowned, not because this was the first time he'd seen his mother so sad like this, but because for once, she didn't say anything. She used to tell him many things—many of the reasons why she cried. He knew it was his father who made her cry but she used to always tell him why Sebastian shouldn't become angry with him. Today, there was none of that. She just cried so silently, he worried that she'd forgotten to speak because of her sadness. "Mama, I love you." He didn't say it very often to her but he did whenever she was sad like this and nothing else worked. She would always smile and kiss him on the forehead and tell him that she loved him too. This time, she just cried harder and Sebastian didn't know anymore what to do. He lowered his head and rested it on her lap, blinking and listening without a word as more of her tears fell on his face and rolled down his cheeks. He wondered if his father was a bad man despite what his mother had said. He must be if he always made her cry. And Sebastian wondered, when people told him he was exactly like his father, whether that meant he would grow up to be a bad man, too, and make a woman cry.