Mistress-of-the-Game - By Tilly Bagshawe Sidney Sheldon Page 0,51

Froid. Degueulasse.

"She's not 'a teenager.' She's my sister. I love her. And you know, it's been years."

"I know, my darling. And I also know why. You know how your father feels about your lifestyle. About me."

Peter Templeton was proud of his son's success. But he had never fully come to terms with Robbie's sexuality. Now that Robbie was famous and gave interviews in which he spoke openly about his love for Paolo, Peter's disapproval had intensified.

"It's your life," he would tell Robbie grudgingly, during their increasingly rare phone calls. "I don't see why you have to be so flagrant about it, that's all."

"I love him, Dad. The same way you loved Mom. You were flagrant enough about that, weren't you?"

Peter was incensed.

"Your involvement with that man bears no comparison to my love for your mother. The fact that you think it does shows just how far off course your moral compass has drifted. I knew it was a mistake, letting you go to Paris."

Paolo had never tried to come between Robert and his family. He didn't have to. Peter's attitude, combined with Robbie's own hectic life in Europe, made the growing distance between them inevitable.

"I wouldn't be going for Dad. I'm doing this for Lexi."

"But Lexi stays with us every summer. Can't you throw her a second birthday party in Paris, after the tour?"

Robbie shook his head. He didn't expect Paolo to understand about Dark Harbor and Cedar Hill House. About what those places meant to him and to his sister. How could he? But the time was right. He had to go back. Lexi's sixteenth was as good an excuse as any.

"You're sure you won't come with me?"

Paolo shuddered. "Quite sure. Je t'aime, Robert, tu sais ca. But a Blackwell family get-together on some godforsaken American island, making small talk with your homophobic father? Non merci. You're on your own."
Chapter Fifteen

GABE MCGREGOR STEPPED OUT OF THE GATES OF WORMWOOD Scrubs Prison onto the street. It was six-thirty on a cold November morning. It was still dark. A light drizzle of icy rain was beginning to soak through his thin gray woolen jacket.

It was, without question, the happiest moment of his life.

"Got somewhere to go?"

The guard at the gate smiled. Wormwood Scrubs was a shitty place to work. The screws hated it almost as much as the inmates. But watching men like Gabe McGregor savor their first taste of freedom in eight long years, reformed young men with their lives still ahead of them, that was a joy that never got old.

Gabe smiled back.

"Oh yes. I've got somewhere to go all right."

Thanks to Marshall Gresham. I owe that man my life.

On his first night in prison, Gabriel McGregor tried to kill himself.

Michael Wilmott, his lawyer, had told him not to panic. That the sixteen-year term handed down by the crown-court judge would likely be reduced on appeal.

"If it goes down to twelve, chances are you'll be out in seven or eight."

Seven or eight? Years?

The longest Gabe had been without heroin was seven days. The worst seven days of his life. It was his first week on remand, and he had not yet learned how to buy drugs inside. Once you knew the system, heroin was easy enough to come by. The big dealers all had guys working inside on a commissioned-sales basis. Heroin and crack were both priced at a 30 percent markup. As long as you had money and a friend on the outside who could make regular payments to the gangs, you were okay. But those first seven days! Gabe would never forget the misery. Nights spent screaming, convulsed by cramps so violent he felt like he were being hanged, drawn and quartered. The sweats, the vomiting, the hallucinations.

A figure on a white horse was coming to get him. Jamie McGregor! In his hand was an ax. As he rode, he swung it to the left and right, slicing off the limbs of the screaming women who surrounded him. Gabe knew the women. There was Fiona. Angela. There was Caitlin, pleading for her life as the man on the horse laughed maniacally, severing her head with a single stroke. All the girls Gabe had used to feed his habit suffered the same fate. Then he saw his mother's face, contorted with terror. She was crying out to him: "Gabriel! Save me! It's Jamie McGregor! He's killing me, he's killing us all!"

Gabe woke up. His sheets were drenched in sweat. He wanted to scream, but his throat was so