Free Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game by Sidney Sheldon, Tilly Bagshawe Page B

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 hismother 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 not. On the rare occasions when his mother held him close, like today, the little boy felt he could move mountains. Pressed against her, lost in the intoxicating smell of her skin, joy coursed through his child’s body like heroin.
    Eve stood up. Drawing her silk robe more tightly around her, she walked over to the window.
    Max sat alone on the bed. As always, he felt his mother’s leaving like a physical pain. He clasped the gun, her gift, pressing it lovingly to his cheek.
    “Your great-grandfather David never used that pistol. Never fired a single shot.”
    Eve was looking out the window. She seemed to be speaking to herself rather than to him.
    “He was too much of a coward.”
    Max took the bait, an innocent lamb gamboling to the slaughter. “ I’m not a coward, Mommy. I’m not afraid to use it.”
    Eve turned around.
    “Is that so? And what will you use it for, my darling?”
    Max didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
    They both knew what the gift was for.
    I’ll use it to kill Keith Webster.
    I’ll use it to kill my father.
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S IX
    LIONEL NEUMAN LOOKED AT THE YOUNG MAN SITTING OPPOSITE him and found his mind wandering back into the past.
    It was 1952, a similar bright June morning. Kate Blackwell was sitting in the very same chair as the young man. Counting back, Lionel Neuman realized with a shock that Kate must already have been sixty at the time. The image his mind’s eye had carefully filed away was of a middle-aged but still beautiful woman: slim, impeccably dressed, and with a full head of glossy black hair only intermittently laced with silver threads. She was worried about her son.
    Tony isn’t himself, Lionel. It’s as if something has died inside. I’ve tried everything I can to make him happy, but it’s no use. He’s determined not to marry.
    The problem with Kate Blackwell was that although she sought advice from time to time, from Lionel Neuman, Brad Rogers and a few other Kruger-Brent lifers, she never took any of it. Any fool could see what was wrong with Tony Blackwell. The boy wanted to be an artist, and Kate wouldn’t let him. Her ruthless trampling on his dreams eventually cost poor Tony his sanity. But Kate Blackwell could never see it that way. She went to her grave believing she’d done the best for her son. That it was Tony who had let her down.
    Of course, Tony