Mistress-of-the-Game - By Tilly Bagshawe Sidney Sheldon Page 0,23

made him weep.

"Mom!" He gasped. "Is it...real?"

"Of course it's real. And very old. It's been in my family for a long, long time."

Lovingly, Max stroked the gun's trigger, his childish fingers caressing, exploring. Such power. And it was all his.

Eve said: "You're almost a grown man now, Max. You're too old for toys. Keith doesn't understand that, but I do."

Eve Blackwell always referred to her husband by his Christian name in front of their son, never as Dad or Daddy. In the early days, Keith had complained about it.

"I wish you'd drop the whole first-name thing. It's creepy. Max doesn't call you Eve."

But Keith's sporadic efforts to introduce the d-word into his son's vocabulary always petered out after a few weeks.

Eve would insist: "It's not me, darling, it's Max. Besides, I don't see that it's such a big deal. It's just one of his little quirks. The more you go on about it, the more he'll dig his heels in. You know what children are like."

"Does Keith know you've given it to me?" Max asked, still mesmerized by the gun. It was perfect. Like his mother.

Eve smiled. "No. It's our secret. I'll keep it in the safe for you so as not to arouse his suspicions. You may take it out whenever you wish. Just ask me and I'll get it for you."

A shocking thought suddenly occurred to Max.

"It isn't Uncle Peter's gun, is it? The one he...you know. When I was little?"

Four years earlier, Max's uncle, Dr. Peter Templeton, had almost shot his children in a drunken rage. No one was sure whether he'd intended to kill himself, or Lexi, or Robert. Peter himself was too drunk to remember. All anyone knew was that the housekeeper had arrived at the Templeton brownstone early one morning to the sound of shots, that she'd wrestled the gun from Uncle Peter's hands, and that in the process she'd been shot in the arm.

The woman had been paid off, of course. Max overheard Keith saying that the check was "in the millions," but evidently the money had been well spent: the story never made its way into the press. From that day on, Max's uncle Peter had not touched a drop of liquor. The gun he used had mysteriously disappeared.

Eve shook her head.

"No, darling. It's not Uncle Peter's gun. It's far more special than that. This gun once belonged to my grandfather, David Blackwell. Your great-grandfather."

Max's eight-year-old chest swelled with pride. He loved to hear his mother tell stories about her family. His family.

Max's earliest memories were of his mother's deep, sensuous voice lulling him to sleep with tales of his great-great-grandfather Jamie McGregor and the thrilling empire that he founded. Max's first word was mama, his second Kruger and his third Brent. While other boys dreamed about dinosaurs and Superman, Max's subconscious glittered with the stolen diamonds on which Jamie McGregor had built his fortune. My fortune. Max Webster had no need for fairy tales, of wronged princesses and dragons and gingerbread castles. His mother was the wronged princess. Eve had had her kingdom stolen from her and been imprisoned by his evil father in her penthouse tower. He, Max, was Eve's avenging knight. Kruger-Brent was their castle. As for the dragons to be slain, there were too many to count. Everyone Max knew was an enemy, from the despicable Keith, to the boys at school who made fun of his mother, to his Templeton cousins, Robert and Lexi.

Your cousins have stolen your inheritance, my darling. They have taken what's yours and cast you out like a serpent in the desert. Just as I was cast out.

Max's mother made their struggle sound mythical. And so it was. Eve had been cast out of the Garden of Eden. Max was the chosen one, the prophet, the messiah. It was Max who would restore the promised land to Eve.

Only by returning Kruger-Brent to his mother would Max win the greatest prize of all: her love. That was their covenant, sealed with the blood of his birth. Max thought about it constantly.

Until that day, the glorious day when he fulfilled his destiny, he must learn to survive on the scraps of love Eve tossed him. Usually his mother was cold and distant. Her constant physical presence in the apartment was like exquisite torture. Max longed for her embrace like a scorched riverbed longs for rain, but time after time he was denied. Keith Webster could touch her, with his sick, cold hands. But Max could