“Babies cry. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with her.”
Robbie scowled at the woman, full of contempt.
“Oh, really? How do you know?”
Peeling back the soft cashmere blankets, he lifted his sister to his chest, rocking her softly till her cries subsided. It was two in the morning, and outside the nursery window a full moon illuminated the Manhattan sky.
Are you out there, Mom? Can you see me? Can you see how good I’m taking care of her?
Everyone, including Barney, had been worried that Robbie might have very conflicted feelings toward the baby. He might even become violent toward her, “blaming” Lexi in some simple, childish way for their mother’s death. But Robbie had confounded them all with an outpouring of brotherly love that was as unexpected as it was clearly genuine.
Lexi was Robbie’s therapy-Lexi and his beloved piano. Whenever he felt the smooth, cool ivory beneath his fingers, Robbie was transported to another time and place. Every other sense shut down and he became one with the instrument, body and soul. At those times he knew his mother was with him. He just knew it.
“Robert, darling, don’t lurk. Come in.”
The forced cheeriness in Peter’s voice made Barney Hunt wince. He turned and saw his young godson hovering in the doorway.
“Uncle Barney’s here. Come and say hello.”
Robbie smiled nervously.
“Hi, Uncle Barney.”
He never used to be nervous, thought Barney. Who’s he afraid of? His dad?
Standing up, he clapped Robbie on the back.
“Hey, sport. How you doing?”
“Good.”
Liar.
“Your dad and I were just talking about you. We were wondering how things were going at school.”
Robbie looked surprised. “School?”
“Yeah, you know. Have the other kids been giving you a hard time? About the stuff in the newspapers?”
“No, not at all. School’s great. I love it there.”
He likes school because it’s an escape from this place. An escape from grief.
“Did you want to ask me something, Robert?”
Peter’s tone was tense, his speech clipped. He’d remained seated behind the desk since his son came in, rigid-backed, his whole body clenched, like a prisoner on his way to the firing squad. He wished Robbie would go away.
Peter Templeton loved his son. He was aware that he was failing him. But every time he looked at the boy, he felt overcome by a wave of anger so violent he could hardly breathe. Suddenly the bond that Robbie and Alexandra had shared in life, the love between mother and son that had once been Peter’s greatest delight, left him consumed with jealous rage. It was as if Robbie had stolen those hours from him, those countless, loving moments with Alex. Now she was gone forever. And Peter wanted those moments back.
He knew it was crazy. None of this was Robbie’s fault. But still the fury corroded his chest like battery acid. The irony was that Peter felt nothing but love for Lexi, the baby who had “caused” Alex’s death. In his grief-addled mind, Lexi was a victim, like himself. She had never even known her mother, poor darling. But Robert? Robert was a thief. He had stolen Alexandra from Peter. Peter couldn’t forgive him for that.
Even now, Peter sometimes overheard the boy talking to her.
Mommy, are you there? Mommy, it’s me.
Robbie would sit at the piano, a beatific smile on his face, and Peter knew that Alex was with him, comforting him, loving him, holding him. But when Peter woke in the night, screaming Alex’s name, there was nothing. Nothing but the blackness and silence of the grave.
“No, Dad.” Robert’s voice was barely a whisper. “I didn’t want to ask anything. I…I was going to play the piano. But I can come back another time.”
At the mention of the word piano, a nerve in Peter’s jaw began to twitch. He’d been idly tapping a pencil on the desk. Now he gripped it so hard it snapped in his hand.
Barney Hunt frowned. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
But Peter wasn’t fine. His hand was bleeding. One by one, slow, heavy drips of blood splashed onto the polished wood of the desk.
Barney smiled reassuringly at his godson. “We won’t be long. Five minutes and then I’ll come and find you. We can play some catch, how’s that sound?”
“Good.”
Another shy smile and Robbie was gone, slipping out of the room as silently as he had arrived.
Barney took a deep breath.
“You know, Peter, the kid needs you. He’s grieving, too. He-”
Peter raised his hand. “We’ve been through this, Barney. Robert’s all right. If you want to worry about something, worry about these damn newspaper reporters. They’re the damn problem, okay?”
Barney Hunt shook his head.
He felt for Robert, he really did. But there was nothing more he could do.
Eve Blackwell closed her eyes and tried to fantasize about something that would bring her to orgasm.
“Is that good, baby? Do you like that?”
Keith Webster, her husband, was drenched in sweat, pounding away at her from behind like an overexcited terrier. He’d insisted on regularly “making love,” as he put it, throughout Eve’s pregnancy. Now that her time was fast approaching, her belly was so vastly swollen that doggy-style sex was the only option. A small mercy for Eve, who was no longer forced to look at Keith’s weak, weaselly face twisted into a mask of sexual ecstasy every time he made love to her.
If you could call it making love. Keith’s dick was so small, it registered only as a mild irritant. Rather like having a badly behaved child seated behind you in a movie theater who won’t stop kicking the back of your seat.
Eve faked a moan.
“That’s wonderful, darling! I’m almost there!”
And suddenly she was, her mind lost in a delicious, slow-moving slide show of images from the past:
Herself as a thirteen-year-old, seducing her married English teacher, Mr. Parkinson. When she’d cried rape, she’d destroyed the pathetic little man’s life. But he’d deserved it. They all did.
Fucking her way through the military academy that adjoined her and Alexandra’s finishing school in Switzerland. How intoxicating sex had been back then, back when men used to throw themselves at her feet!
Stabbing George Mellis in the heart and dumping his body in the sea at Dark Harbor. Just thinking about the look of surprise on George’s face as the blade tore through his flesh could sometimes bring Eve to climax.
The world knew George Mellis as Alexandra Blackwell’s first husband-a footnote in the great Blackwell family history. In reality, he’d been a sadistic playboy and pathological liar who had once raped and sodomized Eve, a crime for which he ultimately paid with his life.
Of course, Alex never knew the truth about George Mellis. She never knew he was in league with her evil twin sister; never knew that Eve and George had remained lovers throughout Alex’s brief marriage to him; never knew that the pair of them had intended to murder her and steal her inheritance, or that Eve had been forced to murder George instead when their plans went awry.
Alex never knew the truth. But Eve knew. Eve knew everything.
Not that Eve had minded killing George. In fact, it had been a pleasure.
Keith Webster increased the pace of his thrusts, shaking with excitement as his delicate surgeon’s hands reached around for his wife’s enormous, pregnancy-swollen breasts.
“Oh Christ, Eve, I love you! I’m coming, baby, I’m coming!”
He let out a sound that was half groan, half whimper. Eve pictured George Mellis at the moment of his death, then mentally substituted Keith’s face for George’s. She orgasmed instantly.
Keith slid off her back like a toad slipping down a wet rock. He lay back against the pillow, his eyes closed in postcoital contentment. “That was incredible. Are you okay, honey? Is the baby okay?”
Eve stroked her belly lovingly. �
��The baby’s fine, darling. You mustn’t worry.”
Keith Webster had been neurotic about his wife’s pregnancy from the start, but Alexandra’s death a few weeks ago had heightened his anxiety tenfold. It was common knowledge that Eve and Alexandra’s own mother, Marianne, had died giving birth to them. Now the same fate had befallen Alex. It was easy to imagine that Eve might be next. That some unseen genetic fault lurked in the shadows, waiting to snatch his beloved from him.
Keith Webster had loved Eve Blackwell from the moment he set eyes on her. It was true that shortly after their marriage, he had deliberately mutilated her face. Playing on Eve’s innate vanity, he had persuaded her to let him perform a minor operation to erase the laughter lines around her eyes. Then, once he had her under anesthetic and utterly at his mercy, he had proceeded to destroy her beautiful features one by one.
At first Eve had been angry, of course. He’d expected that. But now she saw things clearly. He’d had to do it. He had no choice. As long as Eve remained so mesmerizingly, intoxicatingly beautiful, he was at risk of losing her. Losing her to other, less worthy men, men who could never love her the way he did. Men like George Mellis, who had once beaten Eve so badly she had almost died. Keith Webster had restored her looks after that attack. It was the day they met. Eve had been so deliciously grateful afterward, he’d fallen in love with her on the spot.
But what Keith Webster giveth, Keith Webster could also taketh away.
It was a lesson Eve needed to learn.
Others might find his wife’s grotesquely scarred features repellent, but not Keith Webster. In his eyes, Eve would always be beautiful. The most beautiful creature on earth.
Keith Webster had no illusions about his own appearance. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a slight, shortsighted man with only a few wisps of sandy hair left clinging to his otherwise bald head, like seaweed on a bare rock. Women had never been interested in him, period, never mind women as insanely attractive as Eve Blackwell. He’d felt no compunction about blackmailing Eve into marriage (Keith knew she had murdered George Mellis and threatened to go to the police if she didn’t marry him) and he felt no guilt about it now. After all, how else was he supposed to possess her? To fulfill her destiny, and his own?
Once again, Eve had given him no choice.
Resting a loving hand on her baby bump, Keith felt replete with happiness. Terrified of being photographed and ridiculed like a carnival sideshow, Eve had become a virtual prisoner in their penthouse apartment since he “re-created” her, as he liked to think of it. With nothing to do with the long, lonely hours of her existence but cater to his every whim, she had finally capitulated and given Keith the one thing he desired above all others: a baby, their baby, a living, breathing affirmation of their love.
What more could any man ask for?
She’d had a rotten pregnancy, poor thing, with violent bouts of morning sickness throughout. Although Keith knew there had never been much love lost between his wife and her twin sister, he was sure that Alexandra’s sudden death must have frightened Eve.
Still, only a few weeks to go now.
Bending his head reverently, he kissed his wife’s belly, murmuring endearments to his unborn child.
Soon the baby would be born. Then all their troubles would be over, the pain of the past forgotten.
Eve’s labor was long and agonizing. While the press huddled like baying bloodhounds beneath her hospital window, Eve spent sixteen grueling hours feeling her body being ripped apart from within.
“Are you sure you won’t consider a pain killer, Mrs. Webster? A shot of Pethidine would really take the edge off your contractions.”
“My name is Blackwell,” Eve hissed between clenched teeth. “And no.”
Eve was adamant. No drugs. No relief. She had conceived this child to wreak her vengeance, to bring righteous suffering to her enemies and to reclaim her stolen inheritance: Kruger-Brent. It was right that he should be born from suffering. That the first sound he heard should be his mother’s screams.
If she didn’t despise him so intensely, Eve might almost have felt sorry for Keith Webster. The pathetic, inadequate milquetoast she’d been trapped into marrying actually believed she was happy to be having his child! Hovering over her like an old maid, full of pity for her morning sickness…except it wasn’t morning sickness at all. Eve’s violent bouts of vomiting were triggered by pure revulsion. The very idea of Keith’s seed growing inside her was enough to make her retch.
True, she had allowed him to impregnate her. This baby was no mistake.
He thinks I conceived out of love.
Eve laughed aloud. The arrogance of Keith’s madness knew no limits.
The truth was that Eve Blackwell hated her husband. Hated him with a murderous passion so strong, she was surprised the nurses couldn’t smell it on her skin.
When Keith had first removed Eve’s bandages and shown her her ruined face, five long years ago, she’d screamed until she passed out. In the weeks that followed, she had sobbed and raged, her emotions swinging wildly from shock to disbelief to terror. At first she’d been so desperate she had actually clung to Keith. Yes, he’d done this terrible thing, but he was all she had. Without his protection, she feared being flung to the wolves, torn to shreds like a hunted animal. As the years passed, however, Eve stopped worrying about Keith abandoning her. She realized, with amused horror, that the man was so deranged he actually still found her attractive. Keith Webster had turned Eve Blackwell into a monster: the Beast of the Blackwells. But she was his monster. To Keith, that was all that mattered.
“The baby’s crowning, Mrs. Web-Ms. Blackwell. I can see the head!”
Eve wished the nurses would stop smiling. Didn’t they realize the agony she was in? It was like being attended by a troop of giddy schoolgirls.
Thank God Keith had agreed to stay in the fathers’ waiting room.
Eve had begged him: “I want you to still find me sexy, my darling. You know what they say about men who watch their wives give birth. It ruins, you know, that, forever.”
Keith insisted that nothing could dim his passion for her. But to Eve’s astonishment, he’d agreed to stay away.
“One more push! You’re almost there!”
The pain was so strong Eve was surprised she hadn’t lost consciousness. Like a riptide it pulled at her till she was no longer aware of anything but the sensations deep inside her womb.
She thought about Alex, realizing for the first time how physically painful and terrifying her sister’s death must have been.
Good.
It was ironic. Eve thought about all the time and effort she’d put into trying to kill her twin over the years: setting her nightgown alight at their fifth birthday party; arranging riding accidents, sailing accidents and finally the whole complicated murder plot with George Mellis. (Knowing George was both penniless and psychotic, and that his rich-playboy routine was all an act, Eve had encouraged him to woo and marry her sister. The plan was for George to win Alex’s trust, persuade her to make a new will that left him everything, including her controlling stake in Kruger-Brent, then get rid of her, splitting the inheritance with Eve.)
But somehow Alexandra had survived every one of Eve’s elaborate schemes. The bitch was like one of those novelty birthday candles you couldn’t blow out. And then bam! Out of nowhere, a simple act of God had come along and erased her, like the unwanted stain she was.
Alexandra Blackwell, Kruger-Brent heiress and famous beauty. Dead in childbirth at the age of thirty-four.
It was so perfect, it was almost biblical.
Eve heard a loud, feral noise. It took a moment to register that it was her own voice, screaming as the final contraction racked her body. Seconds later, she felt a warm wetness between her legs and the frenzied kicking of tiny legs. A slimy, bloody creature, covered in waxy-white vernix, slithered into the waiting arms of the midwife.
“It’s a boy!”
“Congratulations, Ms. Blackwell!”
One of the nurses cut the cord. Another cleaned up the afterbirth.
Weak with exhaustion and blood loss, Eve slumped back against the sodden sheets. She watched as the nurses cleaned and examined the baby, ticking things off on a chart. Suddenly she felt choked with panic.
“What’s wrong with him?” She sat bolt upright. “Why isn’t he crying? Is he dead?”
The midwife smiled. Well, how about that for a surprise? Eve Blackwell had been so detached and hostile during the birth-quite frankly, she’d been an out-and-out bitch to the nursing team-they’d begun to suspect she didn’t want her baby. But obviously they’d misjudged her. The concern in Eve’s voice now was unmistakably genuine. She’s going to make a great mommy after all.
“He’s right as rain, Ms. Blackwell. Here, you can see for yourself.”
Eve took the white bundle. When she looked down, Eve saw a small, olive-skinned face topped with a crown of glossy blue-black hair. The nose and mouth were babylike and nondescript. But the enormous, dark brown eyes with their fringe of black lashes and steady, focused gaze; those were extraordinary. The boy looked up at her, silently scanning her face. To the rest of the world, Eve was a freak. To her baby, she was the universe.
Eve thought: He’s intelligent. Cunning, like a little gypsy.
She smiled, and though she knew it wasn’t meant to be possible, she could have sworn he smiled back.
“Have you thought of a name for him yet?”
Eve didn’t even look up.
“Max. His name is Max.”
It was a simple name, short, but to Eve it suggested strength. The boy would need strength if he was going to fulfill his purpose and avenge his mother.
Eve had conceived Keith Webster’s child for one reason and one reason only. Because she needed an accomplice. Someone she could mold in her own image, feed with her own hatred, and send out into the world to do all the things that she, a prisoner in her own home, could no longer do for herself.
Max would make Keith Webster pay for what he’d done to her.
Max would bring Kruger-Brent back to her.
Max would worship and adore and obey her, the way that men had always worshipped, adored and obeyed her, before Keith robbed her of her looks.
Mistress of the Game Page 3
